Unfortunately the military seems to be in a sad state these days. Military contractors always do one of two things, they overstate the capabilities and expected delivery of their product or they undercut the projected costs to fractions of the real costs that ultimately the taxpayer ends up paying. Everything is made by the contractor that overstates their product's capabilities and flat out lies about the costs to the point of fraud. It would seem telling the truth about your product's capabilities and real costs to develop said capabilities is a type of ritual suicide in the defense world, and thus never happens.
LEMV now unfortunately appears to be one such endeavor. MAV6 had posted a scientific study about the likelihood that LEMV would be able to stay in the air for 21 days on their blog. The study concluded that LEMV was unlikely to stay in the air even 5 days and that the Blue Devil 2 was more likely to achieve it's projected 6 to 7 days because it was a traditional LTA craft. It did state that Hybrid Airships would still be undoubtedly better at cargo operations then LTA airships but the stated 21 day surveillance was highly questionable because there would never be enough fuel to carry the fuel needed to stay in the air for 21 days.
Well, now LEMV is apparently 6 tons overweight, and somehow, as if by magic, this changes it's projected operational duration from 21 days to 3 or 4 days (Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/blimp/)
This seems to be rather convenient, especially when we consider that the real projections done by a scientist concluded that the 21 day endurance was probably the result of inflating the blimp with super-powered-ego-particals created by Northrup broad members. This indicates to me that Northrup lied to get the contract in the first place.
This is a clear and present danger to the United States Of America. We now live in a country where government contractors who lie are rewarded for their lies and government contractors who tell the truth are shown the door. When do the higher ups in the military plan to correct this problem? Shouldn't there be some type of good conduct initiative? Where contractors who live up to their contracts are rewarded with more contracts and contractors who don't are penalized by not participating in the next set of contracts?
I have been critical of the military for picking the Grumman/HAV team over the Lockheed team because Lockheed already had a working prototype that was much bigger then the Grummen/HAV team. They also showed a great amount of initiative by building the prototype P-791 on their own dime. Realisticly the Army should have picked Lockheed, but because Grummen had overinflated their projections to something beyond reality, Grumman won the contract. And now we are paying the price.
The Army is thinking of flying LEMV at 16,000ft where it might be able to stay up for 16 days. But I would not count on the 16KW of electrical power for that whole time, something tells me they probably got that one wrong too.
Fortunately this is not a deathblow for the airship program as a whole. Hybrid airships are still the most efficient option for transporting air-cargo, they just aren't as good at surveillance as the military had hoped for. And when we consider the ever growing police state we now live in, that might not be a bad thing.
I think there is another aspect here, one that has been overlooked. The reason the LEMV is overweight is because the subcontractors failed, not the primary contractor. The primary reason that happened, in turn, is the absolutely ridiculous schedule they gave the LEMV. Had they been given more time to develop the parts, I have no doubt they could have done it within weight limits.
ReplyDeleteBut, as they say, haste makes waste. The subcontractors making the fins and gondola failed. There was no time to enforce consequences, not to mention no funding to force them to do it over. As such, we are left with a LEMV that is very much a "Prototype."
Still, all things considered, is 16 days at 16,000 feet really all that bad?
Yes, Northrop Grumman took advantage of a schedule Lockheed said was ridiculous. But whose fault is it, really? The company that tried, with ultimately mixed results, or the terms of the contract itself, which was so utterly idiotic and uneducated, it was functionally impossible to achieve?
Lastly, I'd like to note that you are seeming to imply that the inadvertent weight gain, which amounted to six tons(12,000 lbs), is related to the scientific study claiming the LEMV had a top endurance of 5 days under the best conditions. But let's examine those numbers: basically, to fly for 21 days, the LEMV carried 18,000 pounds of fuel. Now, the prototype, which was shafted by the subcontractors, has an endurance of about 3 1/2 days. Essentially, we can consider that additional 12,000 pounds is subtracted from the fuel carried, leaving only 6,000 pounds for fuel. If it could go for 3-4 days at 22,000 feet on only 6,000 pounds of fuel, you can extrapolate that to 9-12 days if it wasn't overweight.
Now, that proves the scientific paper was wrong. But doesn't it also prove the LEMV was never capable of getting to 21 days in the first place?
The answer can be found in the very scientific paper claiming the LEMV had such a limited endurance. It says, correctly, that the initial fuel burn as it is fully laden is a huge amount more than its fuel burn at the end of a flight, when the LEMV is close to lighter-than-air. This is because the extra weight is translated into increased drag, and increased fuel burn.
Fuel weight goes away during flight, structural weight does not. Keeping those factors in mind, it is absolutely not a stretch to imagine a production LEMV with properly lightened parts making it to 21 days with no problems.
The reason I imply that their was some failure on Northrop's part for overstating LEMV's capabilities is because MAV6 predicted that this would happen. Almost word for word on their blog, the scientific study they posted was just the backing for their argument, which was that Hybrid Airship's are not well suited for surveillance, and that traditional LTA craft would be far better for the task.
ReplyDeleteNow we find ourselves in a situation where we have a completed hybrid airship that's more or less broken for the job it was made for, and a decommissioned spy blimp that would do the job far better, but it's never seen the outside of it's own hanger and now it's in creates!
This is a complicate logistical Snafu on the part of the military. Airforce and Army both screwed the pooch on this one. However I don't believe it was all their fault when they were more or less basing their decision on the blatant miss-information that Northrop was giving them about LEMV.
On the other hand, MAV6 which has pretty much come through on a good amount of what they said they would do, has been punished for failing to live up to the unrealistic and totally made up fantasy specifications of LEMV.
So more or less what has happened is that one contractor has been punished for telling the truth and the other has been rewarded for telling us blatant miss-information. Worst yet, this is not an uncommon scenario in the defense world, stuff like this happens all the time and to this day no one in politics or the military has made a real effort stop this from happening, and people wonder why have have budget issues in defense!
Obviously this shows us that the military really, really doesn't need more money. The have proven this to the public time and time again by creating a culture where the defense contractors that are more or less in bed with the government are all liars by design because that's what the military rewards.
Something needs to be done about this issue, and it seems to me that everyone is just ignoring it. So that's what makes me upset, especially at Northrop which like Lockheed and other primary government contractors are all accustom to this culture of institutionalized lying.