High court won’t help either side in legal fight over Navy’s canceled A-12 plane

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused on Monday to take sides in a long-running billion-dollar dispute between two defense contractors and the government over a cancelled contract for a Navy plane.

The high court unanimously threw out court decisions that would have helped both the federal government and Boeing Co. and General Dynamics, the companies that were supposed to build 850 A-12 Avenger attack planes for the military.

“Neither side will be entirely happy with the resolution,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion for the unanimous court.

The A-12 Avenger attack plane was canceled by the Pentagon in 1991 based on claims that the companies failed to meet the terms of the contract. The A-12, designed with stealth technology to help it evade radar, was more than 18 months behind schedule and at least $1 billion over budget when it was canceled. The government and the contractors disagreed over who was responsible for the delays and cost overruns.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/high-court-says-legal-fight-over-navys-canceled-a-12-plane-will-continue/2011/05/23/AFA6ol9G_story.html

as other companies.
Where is the free market system when it comes to bombs and guns.

Defense contractors should just build things and go out to the market place and try to sell their products, like other companies.

unlike the "free market" there are not many customers in the defense market- plus, many of the customers require equipment that is especially tailored to their needs- for example- canadian armored vehicles are specifically designed for the cold while Egyptian armored vehicles are designed for hot, dry weather. A one size fit all approach will not work- and could lead to unsafe equipment that our soldiers would have to use.

Also, you won't save any money forcing defense companies to subsidize equipment development- all that will happen is that the Per-Unit-Cost will increase to off-set development costs (EVERY MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD DOES THIS- THE R&D COSTS ARE BUILT INTO THE CONSUMER PRICE)

When the Syrians and Egyptians cozied up to the Soviets in the '50s and '60s, they bought thousands of T54/55 tanks. They were cheap, simple, and well made, and had a wide stance that was probably pretty good on sand and rocks.

But apparently they weren't air conditioned, and the Soviets, having a zillion tankers to choose from, made them very small inside and selected their tanker crews by height. I doubt Egypt and Syria could be so selective.

I never tracked that half-remembered factoid down to my satisfaction, but it still makes me wonder how much of a role heat exhaustion played among the Egyptian and Syrian tank crews in the 1967 and 1973 wars.

You're still right, because today some of those same T55s are still around, and are still being rebuilt and resold--but they've been completely upgraded into fairly effective modern tanks well suited for their environment. Nobody would take a raw deal like that now.

So the taxpayers got the best of this argument - one less overpriced piece of crap. If they REALLY have to have some attack planes, build some more A-6s Build them with newer engines and the latest electronics and still save a bundle. Of course, now they've got F-18s that suffice - so this old argument is just that.

plus the A-6 airframe is out of date and wouldnt get past any modern air defense system.

the B-36. It was just too cool....

And as a flying truck for cruise missiles, drones & other RPV's it would be able to carry a whole bunch.

for its time. Today the B-36 would be a sitting duck and only capable of doing sorties in the most permissive of environments. So in essence, you would need another aircraft to bomb an a country to gain air superiority, then you could use the B-36- which would essentially negate the reason for having the B-36.

What the U.S. really does need is Stealth Long Range Strike drones (which their are prototypes flying). Something like the X-47B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B

I still think we should bring back the B-36.

Bring back the B-36 and the Goblins as well!

Yes, the Goblins were cool as well. We could do this all again!!!! :hi:

The B-60 was a B-36 with swept wings and the same jet engines of the B-52. It was 100 mph slower so was rejected. The reason it was slower is that massive fuselage, designed to carry fuel for a 6,000 mile mission with a 10,000 pound bomb load. On shorter missions it could carry even heavier bomb loads, more bombs then any other plane internally 72,000 pounds (Vietnam era B-52 had exterior racks installed so they could carry up to 70,000 pounds of conventional bombs on missions into Vietnam, thus almost matching what the B-36 could carry internally. through do to its pusher propellers there was no way to install external bomb racks to the B-36).

Sorry, what the B-36 could do in the late 1940s and till it was replaced by the B-52 in 1959, can be done by the B-52 or even a converted 747. The B-36 ability to defend itself was against planes, NOT the most likely form of opposition, Air to Surface missiles. In Afghanistan we used C-130s to drop huge bombs, these bombs were dropped and then guided to their targets using lasers or other mechanisms.

There were people at that time (the 1940s) that thought the B-36 was a waste of money, especially when aerial refueling was perfected in 1947. Just keep flying the smaller B-29/B-50s was the opinion. One problem with that proposal was with the development of the H-Bomb in the early 1950s, early versions of the H-bomb were to large for the B-29/B-50s, thus something had to carry them and that was the B-26 (Even the B-47, the First US Jet Bomber could NOT carry the H-bombs of the time period, only the B-26 and later in the mid to late 1950s the B-52).

Sorry, the need for a massive bomb load to be dropped at one location is of limited military usefulness today (If it really had any real military value, the studies of the Allied WWII bombing campaign against Germany found that it did more good for the Germans in the form of bringing the war home to the Germans in Germany AND forcing people to move to the Suburbs, where the Factories had moved to, then in any real destruction of Germany's ability to fight). Since WWII, most Air Forces has been to prepare to way for some sort of Ground Attack, the Ground Attack forces the enemy to concentrate his forces, making them easy targets for the Air Force, the Air Force also destroys the ability of the enemy to concentrate his ground forces to stop the Ground Attack. Either way the Enemy is destroyed by this combined ground and air attack. This was the most effective use of Air Power in WWII, and continues to be the most effective use of Air Power to this day. The B-36 was never capable of performing this duty, the B-52 can perform it to a degree (Most Bombers like the B-52, the B-1 and the B-2s are used to hit long range targets that affect the command, control or supply of the enemy forces as opposed to direct support, but the strategic bombing concept of WWII is basically abandoned as ineffective).

Sorry, the B-36, well a very cool looking plane, is like the German "Mouse" Tank at the end of WWII, of limited value when made and even less military value today.

And with the exception of maybe Russia and China, we can establish air superiority before we send in the A-6s. Right now we're spending ourseleves into the poorhouse trying to build aircraft for conflicts for which the technology doesn't yet exist! Read that:LUNACY :crazy:

Don't know about restarting the A-6 line but the F/A- 18 line is still in production, we could simply make more of them as airframes wear out (and they do). I suspect that stealth technology isn't too important when dropping bombs or other things onto the Taliban as they really don't have too much in air defenses and certainly no air force.

A-12 was supposed to replace the A-6.

This is an A-6:


This is an A-12:

plane. The A-12 is just the earliest designation for the SR-71 Blackbird.



A beautiful aircraft, but even Lockheed could not engineer it to fly upside down at 3-foot altitude.



The more recent stealth money pit was supposed to look like this:

Please tell me you don't think that looks like the Batplane.