Obama threatens to veto defense bill over F-22/F-35 engine

[MKSheppard]

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White House Threatens to Veto Defense Bill
June 26, 2009 9:23 AM

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Congress and the White House appear headed for a collision. The White House this week threatened to veto a defense bill if it includes military spending that Defense Secretary Gates outlined as wasteful and unnecessary. The House passed the $680 billion bill with those provisions Thursday, by a vote of 389-22.

Specifically, President Obama opposes the inclusion of $369 million in the bill for more F-22 fighter jets and $603 million for development and procurement of the alternative engine program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program.

If the final bill presented to the president contains either of those provision, a White House statement released Wednesday threatened, "the president's senior advisors would recommend a veto."

In that statement on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, the White House said it "has serious concerns with a number of provisions that could constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions, that depart from Secretary Gates' decisions reflected in the president's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget which carefully balanced fiscal constraints, program performance, strategic needs and capabilities, or that raise other issues."

The White House also expressed objections to other provisions in the bill restricting aircraft retirements and limiting U.S. engagements with NATO and European allies regarding missile defense programs, as well as other provisions, but none of them were objectionable enough to merit a veto threat.

"I think the president has outlined projects, as well as the Secretary of Defense, that he believes are not necessary spending." White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday. "And we issued yesterday a statement of administration policy that said if the projects that the Secretary of Defense had outlined to the President were included in appropriations bills, then, upon the advice of the Secretary and senior advisors in the White House, those bills would be sent back, as I think (Office of Management and Budget director) Peter Orszag testified today."

"The president will veto bills that don't meet his standards," Orszag told Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., Thursday.

The veto threat didn’t seem to have much impact on the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who voted 13-11 in favor of more F-22s. The committee also voted to support the other provision that President Obama said could invoke a veto -- an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

“It is regrettable that the administration needs to issue a veto threat for funding intended to meet a real national security requirement that has been consistently confirmed by our uniformed military leaders,” F-22 proponent Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said Thursday.

This is not Mr. Obama's first veto threat.

In January, before he even had been sworn in as president, he told Democrats on Capitol Hill that he would veto any bill blocking the release of the second $350 billion for the troubled asset relief program to help stabilize the financial sector.

-- jpt

UPDATE: Luis Martinez reports that Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman today said, “The position of the Department remains the same. We believe that we should bring the F-22 program to its completion, as has been the plan for some time. With respect to the alternate engine our position’s pretty clear too. So, yes, both of these provisions coming out of the Senate are things that we would fundamentally disagree with.”

Would Defense Secretary Gates recommend a veto?

“When it comes to these programs, certainly," Whitman said.

Last week, Gates characterized the House inclusion of F-22 funding as a “big problem.” Does he remain opposed?

“He’s made his position very clear and it has not changed," Whitman said.

So yeah, a mere $1 billion to keep F-22 production possibly ticking over by ordering long lead items for more F-22s, plus funding an alternate engine for the F-35 brings out the budget hawk in Obama and his threatened veto pen.

Nevermind that entire engine families have failed before in the past -- a lot of 1950s jets died prematurely because Westinghouse couldn't deliver on their turbojets -- and the F-15/F-16 had a lot of teething troubles which led to the procurement of different engine for them in the 1980s.

[erik_t]

Saying we need two F-22/35 engines because lots of 1950s engines died is like saying you demand a starter crank on your car's engine because you're afraid the starter might break, or that you need a wood stove in your house so you don't freeze to death if the town gas lines fail.

[Sea Skimmer]

Saying we need two F-22/35 engines because lots of 1950s engines died is like saying you demand a starter crank on your car's engine because you're afraid the starter might break, or that you need a wood stove in your house so you don't freeze to death if the town gas lines fail.

The main engine for F-35 uses completely new technology including composite turbine blades, not to mention the highest compression ratio ever in a service jet engine. We have plenty of reason to think we will have major unexpected problems could occur in that. Even when design is perfect the maintenance routines may introduce problems.

With only one engine type we could have the entire F-35 fleet grounded by one fuckup, and since we have so few F-22s that’d leave us laid bare around the globe. We HAVE had a number of fleet wide groundings for engines in the F-15 and F-16, but with F-16s flying on two different power plants it was never a critical problem.

[KroLazuxy_87]

I agree with the White House on this one. Having two engines means you need to train mechanics twice as much and you're buying spare parts for both engines, i.e. more spending now means more spending down the road too.

The Pratt & Wyatt F135 engine looks to be a very reliable engine with a lot of power, let Rolls Royce build an engine for something else. The f135 is derived from the f-22 Raptor's F119-PW-100 engine, an engine that has never had problems and after being in use for as long as it has, Pratt and Wyatt has had plenty of time to know how it works and how to improve both its performance and reliability.

Here's a link to some info on the F135(even though it reads like a sales ad):
http://www.pw.utc.com/StaticFiles/Pratt ... t_card.pdf

Info on the F-22's engine:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 2-f119.htm

[raptor3x]

Saying we need two F-22/35 engines because lots of 1950s engines died is like saying you demand a starter crank on your car's engine because you're afraid the starter might break, or that you need a wood stove in your house so you don't freeze to death if the town gas lines fail.

The main engine for F-35 uses completely new technology including composite turbine blades, not to mention the highest compression ratio ever in a service jet engine. We have plenty of reason to think we will have major unexpected problems could occur in that. Even when design is perfect the maintenance routines may introduce problems.

With only one engine type we could have the entire F-35 fleet grounded by one fuckup, and since we have so few F-22s that’d leave us laid bare around the globe. We HAVE had a number of fleet wide groundings for engines in the F-15 and F-16, but with F-16s flying on two different power plants it was never a critical problem.

There's no such thing as a composite turbine blade, unless you're talking about a kazoo.

[FSTargetDrone]

There's no such thing as a composite turbine blade, unless you're talking about a kazoo.

Eh, wot?

Strength Analysis of Composite Turbine Blades
Nicholas J. Pagano

AFWAL/MLBM Wright Patterson Air Force Base Ohio 45433

Som R. Soni

Adtech Systems Research Inc. 1342 N. Fairfield Road Dayton, Ohio 45432

Turbine engine blades can be made in a laminate form of composite layers oriented in various directions. In this work we derive two approximate analytical models to describe the stress/strain field within each layer of a rotating turbine blade. At the foundation of the model is the fundamental observation that the very low width-to-thickness ratio precludes the use of the assumptions of classical lamination theory. Reasonable assumptions regarding the response distributions that are consistent with overall equilibrium lead to the appropriate analytical expressions. Strength predictions are made for three different blade architectures, one with orientations used by an existing design, the second prone to failure, and the third not prone to failure for a given angular velocity. The results show that an op timum blade architecture can be determined using these models. A comparison is made between the predicted results by an existing model and one of the present models by using effective material properties of the laminate. A computer code for IBM-PC computer has been written using these models for conducting the strength analysis of the turbine blade.

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites, Vol. 7, No. 6, 558-581 (1988)
DOI: 10.1177/073168448800700603

[erik_t]

Saying we need two F-22/35 engines because lots of 1950s engines died is like saying you demand a starter crank on your car's engine because you're afraid the starter might break, or that you need a wood stove in your house so you don't freeze to death if the town gas lines fail.

The main engine for F-35 uses completely new technology including composite turbine blades, not to mention the highest compression ratio ever in a service jet engine. We have plenty of reason to think we will have major unexpected problems could occur in that. Even when design is perfect the maintenance routines may introduce problems.

With only one engine type we could have the entire F-35 fleet grounded by one fuckup, and since we have so few F-22s that’d leave us laid bare around the globe. We HAVE had a number of fleet wide groundings for engines in the F-15 and F-16, but with F-16s flying on two different power plants it was never a critical problem.

Skimmer, I'll thank you to not preach aviation to me.

[raptor3x]

There's no such thing as a composite turbine blade, unless you're talking about a kazoo.

Eh, wot?

I take it that you aren't able to access the paper, they only dealt with computer predictions of various stacking sequences that could be used to make turbine blades; furthermore, they were only looking at centrigual loading. In terms of making an actual turbine blade that would actually run in a gas-turbine engine, there's no way to do it with current technologies as the temperatures are way too high. The only use of composites in turbomachines that I'm aware of is GE's use of composite compressor blades and I think Rolls-Royce had some composite unducted fan designs in the late 80s.

[FSTargetDrone]

I take it that you aren't able to access the paper, they only dealt with computer predictions of various stacking sequences that could be used to make turbine blades; furthermore, they were only looking at centrigual loading. In terms of making an actual turbine blade that would actually run in a gas-turbine engine, there's no way to do it with current technologies as the temperatures are way too high. The only use of composites in turbomachines that I'm aware of is GE's use of composite compressor blades and I think Rolls-Royce had some composite unducted fan designs in the late 80s.

Conceded. I just noticed the date on that (1988).

[Sea Skimmer]

Skimmer, I'll thank you to not preach aviation to me.

Unhun, I don’t fucking care what you do if your not even going to try to defend your own position. So you can concede, or explain why doing the exact same thing on F-15/16 made sense, and actual lead to in service swaps of engine types when the F110 ultimately proved superior, and yet does not make sense now on a much more expensive aircraft that will essentially represent the entire US fighter force in the future.

[Sea Skimmer]

There's no such thing as a composite turbine blade, unless you're talking about a kazoo.

Composite might be the wrong word, but the blades aren’t solid cast pieces of machined metal , it’s a bunch of powder baked together. The plane has already been significantly delayed by F-135 engine problems too.

The cost of completing F-136 development meanwhile is about 900 million, with 1.5 billion already spent.

[Julhelm]

It's ridiculous that Obama so vehemently opposes spending a billion on the two most advanced combat aircraft projects of the world while he had no trouble at all throwing hundreds of billions into the financial sector.

[Starglider]

It's ridiculous that Obama so vehemently opposes spending a billion on the two most advanced combat aircraft projects of the world while he had no trouble at all throwing hundreds of billions into the financial sector.

Is it actually Obama that's dead set against them? I got the impression that Gates was the one obsessed with transferring money from 'cold war' programs to 'we need more special ops', and that Obama is just going along with what he says. Though is there any political angle here, in terms of campaign contributions from the two engine manufacturers and their execs?

[CmdrWilkens]

It's ridiculous that Obama so vehemently opposes spending a billion on the two most advanced combat aircraft projects of the world while he had no trouble at all throwing hundreds of billions into the financial sector.

Is it actually Obama that's dead set against them? I got the impression that Gates was the one obsessed with transferring money from 'cold war' programs to 'we need more special ops', and that Obama is just going along with what he says. Though is there any political angle here, in terms of campaign contributions from the two engine manufacturers and their execs?

The article certainly steers an awful lot os the focus onto the DoD. All of the direct quotes are from DoD personnel indicating that Gates would recommend a veto. While the White House has made statements nobody has Obama himself on record at this point which suggests that this is more about him trusting Gates' decision than having a firm position with regards to the two programs.

[raptor3x]

There's no such thing as a composite turbine blade, unless you're talking about a kazoo.

Composite might be the wrong word, but the blades aren’t solid cast pieces of machined metal , it’s a bunch of powder baked together. The plane has already been significantly delayed by F-135 engine problems too.

The cost of completing F-136 development meanwhile is about 900 million, with 1.5 billion already spent.

I cannot speak for every turbine blade currently manufactured as there are a lot of different casting techniques employed but I can tell you for sure that the blades and vanes of the high turbine on the f135 are indeed single cast pieces of metal, that are later machined to create the fir tree structure and film cooling holes. I spent two summers during my masters in the turbine durability division of pratt & whitney working on the f135 project. The technique you're referring to is, as far as I know, not used in any of the turbine blades or vanes produced by pratt; possibly the rotor disks or some of the compressor parts are made that way. BTW, I'm a heat transfer CFD guy, so my knowledge of materials is limited, but I'm quite sure about this as it comes directly from the turbine durability division at pratt.

P.S. People have been attempting to create composite turbine parts for some time. They'll likely be some kind of combination of ceramic with silica, but at this point creating stationary parts is out of our capability, nevermind rotating parts.

[raptor3x]

Just in case someone feels like calling bs on my claim that I've worked at P&W, I'll offer some proof in advance.

http://www.clemson.edu/scies/UTSR/UTSRS ... ellows.htm

Go to 2007, I'm sure one of the mods can verify that my name is William Humber. Also, you cannot open my presentation because it involves work on the F135 project.

[K. A. Pital]

Aw man. That was a nice insider's look. Hope you didn't leak anything classified. Thanks for chiming in. I like SDN for that.

People have been attempting to create composite turbine parts for some time.

Would you know of any reports (monographies, articles, whatever) that would detail the reasons for failure and/or show some failed experiments? I'm interested in the tech solutions offered in these attempts.

[The Dark]

Aw man. That was a nice insider's look. Hope you didn't leak anything classified. Thanks for chiming in. I like SDN for that.

If it's available on an open system like that, it's pretty damn unlikely that it's classified. Even if it was just company proprietary data, it'd be on a secured system.

People have been attempting to create composite turbine parts for some time.

Would you know of any reports (monographies, articles, whatever) that would detail the reasons for failure and/or show some failed experiments? I'm interested in the tech solutions offered in these attempts.

Early on, it was the cost of the technology. Pratt & Whitney developed composite blades for the JT8D (their DC-9, 727, and 737 engine) in 1969 that were 40% lighter than titanium, but it wasn't cost-effective to switch. Now, it's become more efficient, since making composites is cheaper, and fuel is more costly. General Electric's GEnx-2B engine for the 787 does have composite blades (carbon graphite blades with metal composite tips and edges) and housing, which makes each engine 1,000 pounds lighter than an equivalent all-metal engine. Since the technology's not mature (as far as being flight-proven goes), it wouldn't be wise to put it on high-performance combat aircraft yet.

[raptor3x]

Aw man. That was a nice insider's look. Hope you didn't leak anything classified. Thanks for chiming in. I like SDN for that.

If it's available on an open system like that, it's pretty damn unlikely that it's classified. Even if it was just company proprietary data, it'd be on a secured system.

People have been attempting to create composite turbine parts for some time.

Would you know of any reports (monographies, articles, whatever) that would detail the reasons for failure and/or show some failed experiments? I'm interested in the tech solutions offered in these attempts.

Early on, it was the cost of the technology. Pratt & Whitney developed composite blades for the JT8D (their DC-9, 727, and 737 engine) in 1969 that were 40% lighter than titanium, but it wasn't cost-effective to switch. Now, it's become more efficient, since making composites is cheaper, and fuel is more costly. General Electric's GEnx-2B engine for the 787 does have composite blades (carbon graphite blades with metal composite tips and edges) and housing, which makes each engine 1,000 pounds lighter than an equivalent all-metal engine. Since the technology's not mature (as far as being flight-proven goes), it wouldn't be wise to put it on high-performance combat aircraft yet.

You're talking about compressor blades here, compressor blades and turbine blades are completely different beasts.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Are you allowed to roughly describe the composition of the turbine blades?

[erik_t]

Skimmer, I'll thank you to not preach aviation to me.

Unhun, I don’t fucking care what you do if your not even going to try to defend your own position. So you can concede, or explain why doing the exact same thing on F-15/16 made sense, and actual lead to in service swaps of engine types when the F110 ultimately proved superior, and yet does not make sense now on a much more expensive aircraft that will essentially represent the entire US fighter force in the future.

Uhhh... because our predictive capabilities in high temperature materials, heat transfer and reacting fluid flows is a bit more advanced than it was 40 years ago? What part of this isn't making sense to you?

[Sea Skimmer]

Uhhh... because our predictive capabilities in high temperature materials, heat transfer and reacting fluid flows is a bit more advanced than it was 40 years ago? What part of this isn't making sense to you?

The part in which you just totally ignore the fact that we must rely on the F-35 far far more then any previous aircraft, so it must be far more reliable just to keep even. Two engines is a guarantee that a single engine problem cannot ground the entire fleet. What part of that do you not get? You got some secret proof that we now develop flawless aircraft and engines? The testing so far sure doesn’t support it after two different F135s exploded on the test stand on what was supposed to be a final checkout. Never mind the fact that for every new fighter the manufactures and design teams promise and the military demands three times the reliability and one third the maintenance hours, and it just doesn’t happen.


It’s not just about reliability either, it’s also about competition. The engine which runs better or runs cheaper will win out more orders, encouraging both manufactures to make continuous improvements even when they have to spend there own money to do so.

Now if two engines are a bad idea, then explain to me why the 100% civilian A380 and 787 also have more then one engine option and the ability to swap out types after production?

Meanwhile we are completely betting the farm on this plane and forgoing any kind of comprehensive upgrade program for legacy planes to afford it, meaning they'll all be cannon fodder soon enough with EW gear from the early 1990s at best. Saving less then a billion dollars out of one trillion is retarded, and its not the military that want it cut. Its one man, Robert Gates, who has constantly proven that he just does not care about conventional warfare. He rejects what had been a core value of the US military, that it should be capable of full spectrum operations, and he totally trashed the militarys own internal review process. The actual Air Force meanwhile wants the engine, and a proper defence review, something Congress also wants, which is why its funding was restored over his head.

Hell Gates can’t even rig his own studies, he created the “ISR task force’ to justify his desire to buy what became MC-12 Liberty… and yet the report it churned out still favored UAVs as providing as much as 2.5 times the surveillance coverage of the same money spent on manned aircraft. Gates had Liberty bought anyway.

[Questor]

Ok, stupid question.

Did congress fix McNamara's loophole? If they fund it, does he have to do it now?

[Starglider]

Uhhh... because our predictive capabilities in high temperature materials, heat transfer and reacting fluid flows is a bit more advanced than it was 40 years ago? What part of this isn't making sense to you?

Most of that advancement seems to be applied to pushing the limits of performance, not making existing engines more reliable (at least, in military applications). I'm sure if the F-135 was designed for the same thrust rating as the F110 it could be made much more reliable, but it puts out about 50% more thrust in the CTOL version, plus there's the additional complexities of the VTOL version.

[erik_t]

The part in which you just totally ignore the fact that we must rely on the F-35 far far more then any previous aircraft, so it must be far more reliable just to keep even. Two engines is a guarantee that a single engine problem cannot ground the entire fleet. What part of that do you not get? You got some secret proof that we now develop flawless aircraft and engines? The testing so far sure doesn’t support it after two different F135s exploded on the test stand on what was supposed to be a final checkout. Never mind the fact that for every new fighter the manufactures and design teams promise and the military demands three times the reliability and one third the maintenance hours, and it just doesn’t happen.

I wasn't aware that "perfect" was the only acceptable metric for reliability.

If life were perfect and dog poop were chocolate and resources were infinite, of course it would be better to have multiple engines. However, as I've said several times now, gas turbine technology has matured vastly since the late 1960s. In fact, I had to struggle to think of any fleet groundings due to engine problems; the most recent major turbine grounding I can think of is the CFM56-3C in 1989, which resulted in 34 737-400s being grounded for a short time. The RAAF's F-111 fleet was also grounded for some time in 1999, although I don't think the legendarily shitty TF30 is particularly applicable to this discussion.

Compare to the substantial variety and severity of airframe groundings, most notably the F-15.

Further, these are administrative groundings in the most CYA sense of the word. It's not uncommon for a single unexplained aircraft loss to result in the grounding of a fleet. However, this emphatically is not the same as the aircraft being physically unable to function. Were both the F100 and F110 to experience a slew of problems that caused us to lose ten aircraft in a single day, and we "grounded" the fleet, this would not equate to a giant flashing sign that said "PLEASE COME BOMB MY DEFENSELESS ASS, MR. PUTIN". It would certainly affect low-level conflicts, but the defensive capability of the USAF would not cease to exist until the administrative grounding was rescinded. That is what you want to pay billions of dollars for. Not the defense of the country, but the opportunity to blow up the third-world opposition of the week.

It’s not just about reliability either, it’s also about competition. The engine which runs better or runs cheaper will win out more orders, encouraging both manufactures to make continuous improvements even when they have to spend there own money to do so.

Yeah, this would be nice. However the F-18, among others, seems to be soldiering on without these improvements.

Now if two engines are a bad idea, then explain to me why the 100% civilian A380 and 787 also have more then one engine option and the ability to swap out types after production?

This is the most retarded criticism I can imagine. A380 and 787 have multiple engine options because multiple engine companies have chosen to design engines for them. This costs Boeing/Airbus essentially nothing. Note that airlines always buy aircraft with engines of a single type; multiple engine sources would not keep any given airline's entire fleet from being grounded by a single engine problem.

Meanwhile we are completely betting the farm on this plane and forgoing any kind of comprehensive upgrade program for legacy planes to afford it, meaning they'll all be cannon fodder soon enough with EW gear from the early 1990s at best. Saving less then a billion dollars out of one trillion is retarded, and its not the military that want it cut. Its one man, Robert Gates, who has constantly proven that he just does not care about conventional warfare. He rejects what had been a core value of the US military, that it should be capable of full spectrum operations, and he totally trashed the militarys own internal review process. The actual Air Force meanwhile wants the engine, and a proper defence review, something Congress also wants, which is why its funding was restored over his head.

Hell Gates can’t even rig his own studies, he created the “ISR task force’ to justify his desire to buy what became MC-12 Liberty… and yet the report it churned out still favored UAVs as providing as much as 2.5 times the surveillance coverage of the same money spent on manned aircraft. Gates had Liberty bought anyway.

I don't see how any of this is relevant to the discussion, other than you drawing a line in the sand as to what savings are "just retarded" and what savings are worthwhile.