The “Flying Dorito” image of the A-12 Avenger II is likely to give the impression that it is a strange footnote of a plane. The more significant fact is that it was expected to be the first carrier based low-observable strike aircraft that was constructed to remove the A-6 Intruder and advance stealth into the carrier air wing long before the concept had become common.
The origin of the program was in the Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) program that took off in 1983 by the Navy. In 1988, a McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics joint venture bid successful bids on the development of what would become the A-12: a flying-wing, sharply triangular attack jet, developed not by radar signature control, but by deck-handling considerations. The wing size had been tailored to carrier choreography (two aircraft side by side on catapults and compatible with folded wings on deck edge elevators) and internal carriage would reduce drag and radar reflections.
Paperwise, the pitch of the A-12 was as simple as the Air Force low-observable airplane that had a weapons bay inside and could be used in weather and range as well as a moving airfield. It had an identity quirk as well that continues to hook aviation history fans. Although the F-117 was designated fighter even though it had no air-to-air capability, the Navy aircraft retained the attack prefix but was planned to carry two internally mounted AIM-120 AMRAAMs, which made them truly closer to a stealth aircraft with options of self-escort than their marketing at the time acknowledged the “stealth fighter.” The hypothetical weight of strike in the bay was approximately 5,150 pounds, which was sufficient to launch an accurate-focused doctrine, as well as warships such as AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles, aimed at assisting the creation of passages through radar defenses.
Hope did not live within slide decks. Deputy chief of naval operations (Air) Vice Admiral Richard Dunleavy said, “I like what I see and [it] will be a good airplane.” The buying spurt was immense: 620 would go to the Navy, 238 to the Marine Corps, and there was more expected to be interested outside of the sea services. That was an important scale since it meant that a stealth fleet consisted of hundreds, not dozens.
At that point the centre of gravity of the program changed to arithmetic instead of aerodynamics. When the senior leadership needed to make a decision on whether to restructure the effort, the jet was reported to be approximately 8,000 pounds overweight and it was approximately 18 months behind schedule. Complexities in manufacturing, particularly with regard to complicated composites and the reality of scale construction of a low-observable airframe, clashed with a contract system based on fixed prices that left very little margin to unexpected events. The A-12 had never flown, but was already failing the fundamental test regarding whether or not it could fulfill carrier requirements without becoming a maintenance and cost sink.
Research subsequently reported a regime that ensconced bad news as easy to conceal and difficult to pursue. Some of the causes listed included an “overly protective Navy establishment”, a “don’t-rock-the-boat element of Pentagon bureaucracy”, “overly sanguine A-12 contractors” and “excessive secrecy”, which included a project climate in which normal reporting protocols were discarded. Decisions in that environment were tardy and when they were made it was direct.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney scrapped the program on Jan. 7, 1991. The irony here was that a test of the iron chicken flight was underway: “The A-12 attack bomber is emerging as the most important U.S. Navy aircraft programme of the present decade and seems likely to be the last all-new type to enter service with the Navy this century.” Rather, an entire size mockup was the only A-12 that was ever built.
The post-effects were not technical alone. The cancellation resulted in a protracted legal battle that concluded with a settlement between Boeing (that had acquired McDonnell Douglas) and General Dynamics in 2014. The Navy operationally sewed up the “medium attack” gap with a lean towards the Super hornet family, which eventually supplanted a variety of types and ended up as the workhorse of the carrier deck instead of the stealth spear the A-12 was designed to be.
The carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter attained its first operating capability only several decades later when a dedicated stealth plane made it to appear on Navy decks in operational form. To that end, the failure of the A-12 can be seen less as an odd dead-end, and more as an early and costly exercise in how high the carrier environment intolerance is to the requirements of stealth ambitions and industrial learning curves, and how the procurement system can contain critical issues so long, until it starts to fail.
