“I do not want a bail out,” Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams remembered Dick Cheney saying this when the A-12 Avenger II went way wrong. The U.S. Navy took a lesson in what can in a single line make of the most ambitious carrier aircraft program of the 1980s a case study of what constitutes the clash of stealth, shipboard physics and procurement incentives.
The A-12 was developed as a long-range all-weather low-observable strike aircraft which could take off in a carrier and strike targets as far as modern defense mechanisms with cruise-range missiles, with an internal bay to hold weapons, replacing the A-6 Intruder, and was conceived as part of the Advanced Tactical Aircraft program in the early 1980s. Its triangular flying-wing, tailless design soon to be known as a “Flying Dorito”, offered a smaller radar image than previously used attack jets, and a design that would be stealth-shaped by design.
Paper-wise, the program was gigantic. Discussed plans included a purchase in the hundreds, and at one point the Navy was attached to a goal of 620 aircraft following downsizing, and previous projections of even greater amounts in the larger defense ecosystem. The contract structure was also audacious: a fixed-price development contract of up to $4.8 billion that was meant to ensure the government did not get run over by costs and industry was pushed to perform.
Then the engineering started to retaliate. The A-12 main technical bluff heavy dependence on the high-technology composites and radar-absorbing designs became the burden of the program. Later, the authorities indicated the challenge of developing and introducing high levels of composite material into a stealth aircraft and simultaneously address the harsh reality of carriers. The jet was eventually called 8000 pounds overweight and approximately 18 months late, a combination that is distinctly poisonous to a design that had to sustain catapult launches and emergency landings at close ranges.
The choreography in manufacturing and industry caused friction at every stage. The production plan divided the work between the facilities in Fort Worth and St. Louis where the final assembly was done and the tooling and parts flow was not able to keep up. Reports mentioned missed target dates, poor tooling and stop work orders occasioned by engineering issues. Even the contractor relationship, behind the curtain, was counterproductive to the challenge of integration: one Pentagon analyst explained that conflicting interests inhibited technology sharing since the teams were competing in other significant fighter programs as well.
Program control and management were not mere spectators. Investigations subsequently outlined a culture of shielding the program instead of digging out problems at the initial stages with secrecy and unofficial reporting lowering the typical pressure-testing that big aircraft projects involve. An investigation at the Navy established that there were escalating cost and schedule variances, which were identified by the contractors, but they failed to warn the Navy promptly. In the meantime, the fixed-price model, which is helpful when the requirements are stable and the technology is fully developed, proved to be fragile as the stealth materials, weight, and integration risks continued to change. The acquisition fraternity has remained contentious on the role of the A-12 fueled examination of the firm-fixed-price development agreements on the development of complex programs.
By January 1991, A-12 was a spoilt word and no longer a salvage project. Cheney refused a bail out and terminated funding and finished a programme that had swallowed years of effort and failed to produce a flying prototype. Their aftereffects experienced beyond the Navy strike deficit, and the future carrier-aviation programs focused on growth margins, producibility and maintainability rather than revolutions in single leaps.
The message of the A-12 lives due to its being engineering rather than mythology, the ability to attract attention in a very short period of time, but the suitability of the carrier, the science of materials and industrial implementation pays the collective debt at the receiver end of the production line long before the maiden flight.
