Well, "Con" is the opposite of "Pro", so that means that "Congress" is the opposite of "Progress".
It's not a bad analogy, and I kinda think it would be.
All you have to do to debunk this line of thought is to consider how many counterfeit parts and assemblies there are, and how much they vary in quality. One does not simply build something to look like the original and expect to get the same quality of the original.
I don't think anything I wrote precludes putting a QC standard in the spec, and the fact that parts are easy to counterfeit doesn't mean that manufacturing quality parts isn't either possible or easy. It just means that manufacturing parts is easy, and that quality might vary.
I would argue that the procurement process is far more broken today than it was 50 years ago. The never-ending changes and "optimization" in the design/build/buy process (plus funding gamesmanship) lead to a long and tremendously expensive development process. Think about it. The F-22 took 16 years from when the initial ATF concept was put forward until the first production aircraft rolled out. The F-15 took about 4 years...
And none of that currently exists in a state suitable for rolling A-10's off the line. You can't just snap your fingers and start CNC milling parts from paper drawings and you can't assemble CNC'd parts in fixtures that no longer exist (and would probably have to change to adapt to new methods if they did), you need a whole new production line and people to run both ends of it. You also need to source new systems and subsystems including software, unless your plan is to rob spares for the current fleet to support the new fleet, which does not net you more airplanes. Might as well rework/SLEP* the ones sitting in the desert at AMARC as has already been mentioned a couple times and is a better and more practical idea IMNSHO if you really are willing to accept nothing more than more A-10s with no new capability or survivability.
That's got to be from contract award to first flight or IOC or something like that*, but work on concept development was well underway long before that. The same could be said for the A-10, but I'll bet near production-ready plans, drawings, etc. were pretty far along when the proposals were submitted. That is currently not the case with the A-10.
Best I could tell, the 4 years came from what I'll call the "final spec" to the first flight. They had a number of concepts (starting with the F-111), and after years of refining the concept ultimately wound up with the F-15 spec. Once that was finalized, 4ish years.
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) contract award was Dec 1969 and immediately went into full-scale development with first flight July 1972 from what was likely a production line or nearly so (Wiki doesn't say the part about the production line). It doesn't say when initial operational capability was reached, but that is a more relevant milestone for the fleet user. Still really fast - but I don't think many would argue that the cold war environment really accelerated things.
I got my "knowledge" from the same place. ;-)
I have a corollary to that for a new sophisticated development. If you go Cheap, it likely will not be so good and it definitely you will not get it fast.
This effect is not limited to the military, although they seem to have perfected the execution of project derailment.
Part of the problem is compartmentalization on the customer side. Each faction has one particular part of the problem that they care about, and it's hard to get any of them to see the big picture.
On a missile development I was leading some years ago (not going into details), I had several instances of trying to convince some Army expert that we had an approach that met (or beat!) the requirement, and their insistence on "better" would require a change order + change proposal, delay the schedule, and cost more money. More than once I heard the expert, who had to approve the design, say something along the lines of "I'm not worried about the cost; that's the PM's job." I, OTOH, did have to worry about cost and schedule, so when the impact was severe I bubbled it up to the Army CE or PM and achieved sanity, sometimes with the unfortunate result of pizzing off the customer expert that I still had to work with.
It only takes a handful of customer reps saying something like "I want to get the weight as low as possible" or "We need to increase the range" or "It needs to operate in XXX environment," when they don't have cost or schedule responsibility, to blow a program completely off the rails.
Certainly not the entire problem, but I've experienced it and it's definitely part of the problem.
Part of the problem is compartmentalization on the customer side. Each faction has one particular part of the problem that they care about, and it's hard to get any of them to see the big picture.
Agree but also might be an Engineer who has been drilled to make the $#%@%^ thing work like it's supposed to.
Having been asked on a few times to "Assist" on other Aviation Developments, I agree on your observation. The Army was the worst at that. The USAF and USN were about the same in doing minor "fiddling" with the design but usually controlled by the the Chief Engineer or PM.
Scope creep and changing requirements. Aargh.
That I agree with. But I do believe it's fixable. When the P-51 was designed in X months, I'm certain that part of that was because the stakes were high, and real. Even similarly with the F-15. The cold war was a real thing, and time was a factor.
or how long it's taking to get a new Air Force One out.
And that was supposed to be much “easier” because of CAD/CAM, Computational Fluid Dynamics and other related computational systems.
A trainer should be simple, reliable, and rugged. Not cutting edge.
I'm not going to answer the programmatic side of that directly but an advanced trainer to adequately prepare pilots to transition to 5th generation airplanes with advanced systems and capabilities is likely to be far more complex than, say, a T-34. Meeting (perceived or otherwise) reliability and 'ruggedness' requirements with the level of technology required to be an adequate trainer may not shorten the development process either. Look at how the airplane (and rest of the system) is intended to be used.
Why not just keep using C-172 and PA-28s? Why not keep making T-38s with avionics upgrades?
Since bringing back the A-10 is such an easy task maybe we can just dust off the A-10B and use that.
I'd have thought the trainer would be to train flying skills and sim's would be to train on advanced systems, then off to fly the real deal. 'Cause its spendy to build a trainer that teaches F-xx, B-xx, and C-xx systems and tactics.
Even with an existing Airframe and Engines. Granted that the Defensive and Secure COMM requirements plus the meddling of whoever is in the White House at the time.
Basic flying skills are learned in the T-6 Texan 316 kts max speed and High Performance flying in the T-7 max speed almost Mach 1 and 8 g’s in what I remember as lead in fighter training. After learning to operate the T-7, the next step is Figher/Attack training Wing in Operational Aircraft like F-15’s and F-22’s and then Operational Squadrons.
