PPRuNe Forums - USN calls for new fighter

The 3 main problems with A-12 were:

1. Insufficient knowledge/experience of the bid-winning companies with advance composite structural/surfacing materials*, leading to manufacturing & design problems, which led to both:

2. Massive cost over-runs. McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics won the bid with a target price of US$4.38 billion and ceiling price of US$4.84 billion for the design/development portion, while the losing Grumman/Northrop/Vought team had declined to enter a final bid after they determined they couldn't bid for less than US$6 billion. At the time of cancellation, cost over-runs meant that the end cost of the development phase would be at least equal to that G/N/V estimate, and likely higher. The main factor here was difficulties in designing and fabricating with the new composite materials and in manufacturing components with those materials.

3. A bad design in general. The airframe design was deemed "unsatisfactory" by the USN, whose experts had concluded that the aircraft would have insufficient reserve aerodynamic stability for safe recovery aboard a carrier with any battle damage to control surfaces, or malfunction of same. Since many USN aircraft of all types have successfully recovered aboard with such malfunctions and/or damage, I can see why the USN would not be happy with McD/GD.

I personally believe that, due to Northrop's recent experience with large structural/surfacing materials on the B-2 (Northrop was also a major partner in the F/A-18 Hornet, responsible for the composite structures in that aircraft), that they had a much better "handle" on those materials and on designing and building structures with them. I expect that this is why their bid was so much higher... they had a much more realistic grasp of what it would take to actually deliver the aircraft!

Also, I believe that, with Grumman & Vought's extensive experience with carrier aircraft (as well as Northrop's Hornet experience), they would have delivered a design with greater "damaged/malfunction" aerodynamic stability as well as better structural design & execution... likely at the same or less cost than the failed McD/GD design!

I know that McD had a long history of building carrier aircraft... but I think the engineers from GD managed to over-ride any objections from McD about the design.

GD had been expected to supply a navalized variant of the F-16 in the mid-1970s for the USN's F-4/A-7 replacement program (both the USAF & USN/USMC were supposed to buy the same aircraft), but their F-16N was considered by the USN to be a poor carrier aircraft, something GD dismissed as "the Navy is being too picky". This is what made the USN have McD/Northrop create the F/A-18 Hornet from Northrop's YF-17 Cobra design.

{edit: GD was also responsible for the failed F-111B, which led to Grumman building the F-14.

Funny how failed two GD carrier-fighter designs led to two excellent carrier-fighters being built by other companies.}