by Marsha B. Cohen

Two celebrations brought Lockheed Martin’s CEO, Marilyn A. Hewson, to Israel on April 9.

Hewson officially opened Lockheed Martin’s office in Beersheba, the closest major city to where IDF technical units are being consolidated at new bases in the Negev Desert, which will be supporting the defense contractor’s ”growing [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

Two celebrations brought Lockheed Martin’s CEO, Marilyn A. Hewson, to Israel on April 9.

Hewson officially opened Lockheed Martin’s office in Beersheba, the closest major city to where IDF technical units are being consolidated at new bases in the Negev Desert, which will be supporting the defense contractor’s ”growing presence” in Israel. “By locating our new office in the capital of the Negev we are well positioned to work closely with our Israeli partners and stand ready to: accelerate project execution, reduce program risk and share our technical expertise by training and developing in-country talent,” Hewson said in her speech.

Then was the arrival of the first C-130J Super Hercules airlifter at Nevatim Air Base in Israel. The state of the art Super Hercules, fitted with “Israeli-specific, post-production modifications,” has been dubbed Shimshon (Samson) by the Israel Defense Forces, about which Hewson waxed rhapsodic:

This aircraft is worthy of its given name, Shimshon…[sic] a leader whose power was thought to be as mighty as the sun. Shimshon used his power to combat the enemies of Israel and perform heroic feats.In the same way, this aircraft will support the defense of Israel and the men and women who are the heroes of the Israeli Defense Force.

(Apparently Ms. Hewson is unaware that the biblical Samson/Shimshon (Judges 13:1-17:31), for all his strength, actually met a rather unenviable end — in Gaza — using his final surge strength to destroy himself along with the enemy. Yet the Philistines lived to fight another day and were still around a hundred years later.)

Much of the publicity heralding the Samson’s arrival emphasized the air transporter’s capabilities in carrying out humanitarian missions. According to Lockheed’s product description, “This rugged aircraft is regularly sent on missions in the harshest environments, and is often seen as the first aircraft ‘in,’ touching down on austere landing strips before any other transport to provide humanitarian relief after natural disasters.” Reuters notes that “In non-combat, but harsh, environments, C-130Js are often the first to carry out missions such as search and rescue, aerial firefighting in the United States and delivering relief supplies after earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis around the world.” A Haaretz article anticipating the Samson’s arrival said that earlier versions of the Hercules aircraft had been used in 1976 to rescue hijacked Air France passengers being held hostage in Entebbe, Uganda and to transport Ethiopian Jews to Israel as part of Operation Solomon in 1991.

The Israeli Air Force website, however, describes the C-130J Hercules as “a tactical transport plane that is mostly used in joint missions with ground forces: supply missions, equipment transfer, airdropping combat forces and special missions.” The long version of the Super Hercules C-130J can carry 92 paratroopers and their equipment, which exceeds the 64 paratroopers the short version can accommodate. Comments by Israeli defense officials quoted in the Times of Israel suggest that Israel isn’t purchasing “Samson” for humanitarian intervention. The IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, who also attended the arrival ceremony, declared that the C-130J, which can fly close to the ground and land and take-off on primitive airstrips, was of “decisive importance” and would allow Israel to execute “more complex missions, under any conditions, deeper [within enemy territory], faster and more clandestinely.” IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel said that the “diversity of capabilities that the plane represents borders on the imaginary” [sic].

Israel orders its C-130Js, including the Super Hercules, through a Foreign Military Sale (FMS) contract with the US government. Israel’s annual Foreign Military Funding grant from the US signed in 2007 for a ten year period amounts to $3.1 billion to Israel annually (minus about $155 million due to the US government-mandated sequester). Considering that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu budgeted $2.89 billion for an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities for 2013 and again for 2014, that doesn’t go very far, even when assuming that the Samson is being purchased with an eye toward war with Iran.

With Lockheed’s active involvement, Israel has been able to utilize a scheme called a deferred payment plan (DPP), in combination with a Pentagon process known as cash-flow financing, to make current purchases with deferred debt on favorable terms, to be paid with the FMS grants it is scheduled to receive in future years. Israel used this method to fund Pentagon-administered Foreign Military Sale purchases of Lockheed F-16I and F-35I fighters. Through this creative means of financing, Israel has already earmarked nearly all Foreign Military Funding through 2018 for F-35 fighter jets, heavy troop carriers, airlifters and other equipment.

Now Israel wants to buy — and the Pentagon wants to sell — half a dozen V-22 Ospreys, originally intended for the US Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan. What to do?

On March 20, during a visit to Israel, two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Joe Donnelly (D-IN), told Reuters that, in spite of belt-tightening in Washington, the US will  continue providing Israel with military assistance after its current Foreign Military Financing package of $3.1 billion a year expires in 2017. Ayotte said that talks concerning the 2018-2028 package were already underway. Lockheed Martin is rated a “heavy hitter” among campaign donors by the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website. Thus far in the 2014 election cycle, Lockheed has contributed over $1.6 million to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, about two thirds going to Republicans and the rest to Democrats.

Ten days later, Defense News reported that Israel had agreed to take on more than $2 billion in commercial debt for near-term buys of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft and other Pentagon-approved weaponry, trusting that the US will provide a 2018-2028 FMF package to foot the bill. Under a US-approved DPP, Israel would pay only interest and fees over the course of the current agreement set to expire in September 2018. The principal of the debt incurred to purchase the Ospreys would be covered by a new Obama-pledged package that would extend annual foreign military financing (FMF) aid through 2028. Lockheed loves the idea, even if the first purchase goes to a competitor. Why? Once the new means of proactive financing kicks in — Israel borrowing against an aid package it hasn’t even received yet, which, following approval, won’t go into effect for five years — Lockheed can expect benefits as well. According to Defense News, “Lockheed is expected to play a pivotal role in the new DPP scheme, which government and industry sources here say will facilitate follow-on procurement of Israel’s second squadron of F-35Is.”

Photo: Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon inspects the IAF’s newest recruit, the Samson Super Hercules. Credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Office

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a black hole in the federal budget into which hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been sucked and billions more seem destined to vanish.

The most recent reminder came in an April 1 UPI article about the retirement [...]]]> via Lobe Logby Marsha B. Cohen

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a black hole in the federal budget into which hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been sucked and billions more seem destined to vanish.

The most recent reminder came in an April 1 UPI article about the retirement of Executive Vice President and JSF General Manager Tom Burbage from Lockheed Martin:

After spending 12 years fronting the Lockheed Martin F-35 program, Burbage retired Monday on an optimistic note but still far from clear about the aircraft’s ultimate cost and delivery schedule.

Burbage was named head of the F-35 program less than three weeks after the company beat Boeing to develop the aircraft. Then valued at $220 billion, the contract aims to build thousands of F-35 for the U.S. military and hundreds more for international partners…”The fundamental airplane is going to be there,” Burbage told reporters, Defense News said. “It’s going to be late, it’s going to be more expensive than we thought to do the development, but it’s still going to be there, which I think that’s the ultimate metric.”

Out of the “War on Terror”

The 9/11 attacks prompted the Pentagon in 2001 to push for a substantial increase of approximately $20 billion or more in its 2003 budget. Military officials expressed confidence that support for the “war on terror” would translate into recognition of the need to revitalize and rebuild the US armed services. Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had hoped to reduce the size of the US armed forces and cut back on big-ticket items, the Pentagon’s comptroller, Under Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, argued that spending had to go up because the military would need to build tanks, warships and tactical fighter jets. The already projected budget deficit with which the first year of the Bush administration had managed to eradicate the budget surplus of the Clinton presidency, and the cost of the war in Afghanistan (initially estimated to be $1 billion a month), was being funded through supplemental congressional allocations which weren’t even in the budget.

Six weeks after 9/11, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had awarded “the largest military contract in American history to Lockheed Martin to build a new generation of supersonic stealth fighter jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp.”  Describing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as “more Chevrolet than Porsche,” the Times noted that according to the over $200 billion contract, Lockheed would build “more than 3,000 of the relatively low-cost aircraft over the next two decades.”

Costs, Congress and the Pentagon

The price tag for these “relatively low cost aircraft” has now skyrocketed to $400 billion, according to Time Magazine. The Pentagon admits the overall cost of the F-35 program will reach at least $1.4 trillion dollars over the next 5 decades.

The F-35 has been plagued by problems caused by the contradictory and unprecedented demands made of a single aircraft. In a Foreign Policy article from last year headlined as “The Jet That Ate the Pentagon,” Center for Defense Information analyst Winslow Wheeler, a long time F-35 skeptic, wrote “A review of the F-35′s cost, schedule, and performance — three essential measures of any Pentagon program — shows the problems are fundamental and still growing.”

Asked how far behind schedule the F-35 program was, Lockheed’s Burbage referred to a restructuring of the program in 2010, adding, “I would argue the program post-2010 is not the program pre-2010, modified slightly. It’s really a new program.” That’s apparently enough to justify over a decade of development and the hundreds of billions of dollars that have already been expended on the “old” JSF.

So why aren’t the cheerleaders of fiscal austerity in our deficit-driven Congress demanding an immediate halt to this exorbitant project whose cost has skyrocketed while the problems with it have multiplied?

One actually has, Congressmen Ron Paul, who dared to use the F-word in a Texas Straight Talk commentary on March 3 about the sequester. It has received zero attention outside his fan base:

…the entire $1.2 trillion dollars that the sequester is supposed to save could be realized by cutting one unneeded, wasteful boondoggle: the $1.5 trillion F-35 fighter program. The F-35, billed as the next generation all-purpose military fighter and bomber, has been an unmitigated disaster. Its performances in recent tests have been so bad that the Pentagon has been forced to dumb-down the criteria. It is overweight, overpriced, and unwieldy. It is also an anachronism: we no longer face the real prospect of air-to-air combat in this era of 4th generation warfare. The World War II mid-air dogfight era is long over.

What’s most remarkable about this astute, candid and scathing criticism of the F-35 program is that Paul is from Texas. At least a quarter of Texas Congress members are strong supporters of the F-35, since a major portion of the work is being done in Ft. Worth. Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), the organizer and fairy godmother of the 48-member Joint Strike Fighter Caucus in the House, declared in a 2011 speech to Lockheed Martin that the JSF was sacrosanct budget-wise and “absolutely, absolutely essential to our national defense.” Not surprisingly, Granger and her JSF caucus receive twice as much in campaign contributions as other members of Congress, according to the Dallas Morning News, with Granger topping the list.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is also among the staunchest defenders of the F-35 in the Senate. This explains in part Cornyn’s vehement opposition — and that of Texas junior Senator Ted Cruz — to the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Before and during his nomination hearings, Hagel made no effort to hide his doubts about whether the F-35 was worth what it was costing the Pentagon, soaking up limited resources with no apparent end in sight. The alternative nominees for Secretary of Defense proposed by Hagel’s critics were supportive of the F-35

Ashton Carter, who heads acquisition for the Pentagon, certified to House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton in June 2010 that the development of the F-35 was “essential to national security”; that there were no acceptable alternatives to the F-35 that would provide “acceptable” capability at a lower cost; that the Pentagon’s Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation considered the F-35′s cost to be “reasonable”; and that the JSF was of a higher priority than other Pentagon programs that might have to be cut in order to fund it.

Michele Flournoy, the Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy between 2009-2012, whose name was also floated and cheered by Hagel’s opponents, co-authored a report by the Center for New American Security (which she co-founded), that recommended the Navy reduce the number of F-35Cs it planned to purchase by half and the Air Force cut its acquisitions of the JSF by about a third. The savings would then be applied to other acquisitions. It did not, however, call for scrapping the F-35.

The Israeli Tie-In and Sequester Silence

Which leads us to another under-reported aspect of congressional support for the F-35 that explains why Ron Paul is unique in his loud criticism of the program and certain pro-F-35 senators keep diverting media attention to Hagel’s alleged antagonism toward Israel during televised confirmation hearings. One of the justifications used by Lockheed and its partners for the problem-prone JSF is that its stratospheric cost will be offset by sales to US allies including Canada, Japan and, oh yes, Israel.

Since the inception of the JSF program, Israel made it known that it not only wanted to purchase the F-35, but be part of its development too. Israeli participation in discussions was briefly suspended in 2005 to reflect US disapproval of Israel selling advanced military technology to China, although Washington made it clear that this would not ultimately affect the sale of F-35s, which Israel hoped would begin arriving in 2012. By 2009, it was clear that the F-35s could not be delivered until 2014.

Much of the debate in Israeli military circles over whether and when Israel should attack Iran has explicitly or implicitly hinged on the JSF, with those advocating restraint arguing that Israel should wait until it has the enhanced military capabilities of the F-35 before striking. When Israel signed an agreement in October 2010 to purchase a squadron of F-35 fighters which would be received in 2015 and 2017, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Oren strongly hinted that an impending confrontation with Iran was the primary reason for the agreement. “It will be capable of sneaking in, penetrating defenses and pulling additional forces after it,” enthused Amir Oren in Haaretz, making the case for restraint until the F-35s were delivered. “The armed, in-flight refueling, flying computer will be the aircraft of the next war. And that is another reason to postpone the date.”

In July 2012, just prior to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s visit to Israel, the Pentagon also reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin to integrate Israeli electronic warfare equipment and Israeli-unique systems into the JSF. Israeli technology is a design component of the F-35′s augmented reality helmet, the cost of which is estimated at between $1-$2 million each. The Israeli Air Force is counting on the F-35 to maintain its qualitative edge, still eagerly anticipating and preparing for the delivery of its squadron.

There is a significant overlap among members of the House and Senate from both parties who have been most supportive of the F-35 (many of whom are also ironically “deficit hawks”) and those from both parties who claim they are Israel’s staunchest and most unwavering defenders. Not all “pro-Israel” members of Congress approve of the F-35, however. Arizona Sen. John McCain has expressed serious reservations, calling the program a “scandal” and a “tragedy” in 2011. Nonetheless, it’s Ron Paul — perceived as so anti-Israel that he alone among the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination was not invited to make his case to the Republican Jewish Coalition in 2012 — who can speak bluntly about killing the F-35 in ways that others won’t. In contrast, John Cornyn complained to AIPAC’s Policy Conference in March, “I’m so disappointed that our delivery of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft keeps getting delayed. The F-35s are remarkably sophisticated planes that will dramatically enhance Israel’s security.” (At least one Jewish news organization interpreted this as a swipe against the Obama administration.)

The problems with the F-35 aren’t going away. Two months ago, the Pentagon called for all F-35s to be grounded when a crack on a turbine blade in the Pratt and Whitney jet engine was discovered during a routine inspection of a test aircraft in California. Despite the promises of retiring Lockheed EVP Burbage about how the F-35 will eventually ”be there,” Pierre Sprey predicts the Pentagon will “kill the program after 500 airplanes.”

In the meantime, don’t count on hearing this F-word anytime soon during all the squawking about the sequester.

Photo: The US Navy variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C.

Iran’s Zahedan airport is located on a road named for Allama Iqbal (also known as Sir Muhammad Iqbal), the great Indian philosopher whom Pakistan adopted after partition as its national poet. The shaheen, or eagle, features prominently in Iqbal’s poetry, as a symbol of vigour, dignity and daring. It is contrasted against the [...]]]> By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Iran’s Zahedan airport is located on a road named for Allama Iqbal (also known as Sir Muhammad Iqbal), the great Indian philosopher whom Pakistan adopted after partition as its national poet. The shaheen, or eagle, features prominently in Iqbal’s poetry, as a symbol of vigour, dignity and daring. It is contrasted against the figure of the kargas, or vulture, which represents cunning, cowardice and ignobility. It is the latter appellation that the region frequently applies to the CIA drones which today dot the skies from Waziristan, Kandahar to Zahedan. But shaheen or kargas, they are both ferocious; and it is considered a feat to capture either. Small wonder then, that some in Iran see cause for celebration in the capture of CIA’s RQ-170 sentinel drone, a stealth surveillance craft manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

This is not the first time the CIA has delivered one of its most advanced aircraft for inevitable reverse engineering to its putative enemy. On April 9, 1960, people at the Zahedan airport watched anxiously as an aircraft with unusually wide wings approached from the north-east. The Lockheed U-2C was on a top-secret spying mission for the CIA, but its target was not Iran. Indeed, it was coming in to land after being chased by several fighter planes. Over the previous 8 hours, the plane had photographed four strategic Soviet military sites from an altitude of 70,000 feet, well out of the reach of the Russian MiGs and Sukhois. It embarked on its mission from the Badaber air force base 10 miles to the south of Peshawar.

Three weeks later, on May 1, 1960, another aircraft lifted off from Badaber. It was the U-2′s 23rd mission behind the Iron Curtain, an ambitious mission deep into the heart of the Soviet Union. Flying well over the reach of Soviet fighters, the CIA figured the U-2 could proceed with impunity. But where MiGs feared to tread, a SAM rushed in; a Russian SA-2 surface-to-air missile exploding near the high-flying jet sheered off one of its giant wings and its pilot, Gary Francis Powers, bailed out in time to provide the Soviets with living proof of the intrusion. The incident soon turned into an international scandal, putting an end to the ongoing Four Powers Paris Summit; it also soured relations with Pakistan where few had known about the nature of a mission which now left them vulnerable to the possibility of Soviet retaliation.

But another consequence of the U-2 incident is more germane to recent events. After Powers’s capture, the CIA determined that it will have to invest in new technology in order to avoid similar scandals in the future. One option was a faster plane like the CIA’s A-12, a Mach-3.35 reconnaissance plane developed by Lockheed which would later morph into the better known SR-71. Another option was to invest in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. In October 1962 development began on the D-21, a drone went into service in 1969 but was cancelled in 1971, after just 4 flights over China. The UAV program remained in limbo until advances in GPS revolutionalized the technology and, with the advent of the global war on terror (GWOT), the drones were finally weaponized. The rest is an all-too-sanguine history. And Badaber and Iran have both continued to feature in it.

Having briefly shed its obscurity in April 1985, when the Pakistani Army and its Afghan allies massacred 52 Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war during a prison uprising there, Badaber once again made headlines when it was discovered that the Pakistani military had leased its local base to the CIA to launch drone attacks in the neighboring tribal regions. The news predictably endangered the whole city of Peshawar, which became a frequent target of retaliating militants. Meanwhile, the new impunity accorded by the unmanned aircraft encouraged the US to push farther into the region, sending reconnaissance aircraft first into Pakistan itself (as during the killing of Bin Laden) and later Iran (as we have just discovered).

However, things have changed since the Cold War. Whereas in the past development of new technology like the D-21 required major industrial investment, today it can be done on the cheap, using pilfered R&D. Israelis have long used this strategy to develop their own variants of US and French technology. China, Russia and Pakistan, among others, have long engaged in industrial espionage to acquire advanced military technology which allows them to stay abreast of modern military technology without having to make the kind of massive investments that only rich countries like the US can afford. All resent (or envy) the impunity that the drones have accorded the US and would like to develop their own without reinventing the wheel. There was already news that Pakistani gave China access to the stealth technology that the US used during its raid to kill Bin Laden. It would therefore have come as nothing less than a blessing for the US to land its most advanced stealth drone virtually intact into Iran’s hands for possible delivery to China and Russia. It is not hard to imagine the glee with which the CIA’s gift will be received in Moscow or Beijing. It will save both years of R&D and plenty of dollars.

More alarming however is the prospect that this development could lead the CIA to move toward the development of more autonomous unmanned crafts in order to avoid interception or hijacking. Research along these lines is already under way. One such project, the Ethical Governor, inspired the following animation from the genius Glaswegian animator John Butler:

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a Glasgow-based sociologist and a columnist for Al Jazeera English.