Edit 1: More ARKQ buying today (~50k shares). Thank you everyone for the positive feedback and discussion!
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) or TL;DR for the non-military types:
LMT is a good target if you want to literally go to the moon, and my PT is $690.26 in two years (more than 2x from current levels). Justification and some possible trade ideas are listed below, just CTRL-F “Trade Ideas”. I hope you guys enjoy this work and would appreciate any discussion or feedback. I hope to catch you in the comments.
Team,
We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled short squeeze coverage to discuss a traditionally boring stock, LMT (Lockheed Martin), with significant upside potential. To be clear, this is NOT a short squeeze target like many reddit posts are keying on. I hope that this piece sparks discussion, but if you are just looking for short squeeze content, all I have to say is BUY, HOLD, and GODSPEED.
The source of inspiration for me writing this piece is threefold; first, retail investors are winning, and I believe that we will continue to win if we continue to identify opportunities in the market. In my view, the stock market has always been a place for the public to shine a light on areas of innovation that real Americans are excited about and proud to be a part of. Online communities have stolen the loudspeaker from hedge fund managers and returned it to decentralized online democracies that quickly and proudly shift their weight behind ideas they believe in. In GME’s case, it was a blatant smear campaign to destroy a struggling business. I think that we should continue this campaign by identifying opportunities in the market and running with them. It may sound overly idealistic, but if reddit can take on the hedge funds, I non-ironically believe that we can quite literally take good companies researching space technology to the moon. I think LMT may be one of several stocks to help get us there.
Second, a video where the Secretary of State of Massachusetts argues that internet boards are full of a bunch of unsophisticated, thoughtless traders really ticked me off. This piece is designed to show that ‘the little guy’ is ready to get into the weeds, understand business plans, and outpace analysts that think companies like Tesla are overvalued by comparing them to Toyota. That is a big reason that I settled on an old, large, slow growth company to do a deep-dive on, and try my best to show some of the abysmal predictive analysis major ‘research firms’ do on even some of the most heavily covered stocks. LMT is making moves, and the suits on wall street are 10 steps behind. At the time of writing this piece, Analyst Estimates range from 330-460 (what an insane range).
Third, and most importantly, I am in the US military, and I think that it is fun to go deep into the financials of the defense sector. I think that it helps me understand the long-term growth plans of the DoD, and I think that I attack these deep-dives with a perspective that a lot of these finance-from-day-one cats do not understand. Even if no one ever looks at this work, I think that taking the time to write pieces like this makes me a better Soldier, and I will continue to do it in my spare time when I am feeling inspired. I wrote a piece on Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX) 6 months ago, and I think it was well-received. I was most convicted about RTX in the defense sector, but I have since shifted to believing LMT is the leader in the defense space. I am long both, though. If this inspires anyone else to do similar research on other companies, or sparks discussion in the community, that is just a bonus. Special shout-out to the folks that read more than just the TL;DR, but if you do just read the TL;DR, I love you too!
Now let us get into it:
Leadership I generally like to invest in companies that are led by people that seem to have integrity. Jim Taiclet took the reins at LMT in June of last year. While on active duty, he served as a C-141B Starlifter pilot (a retired LMT Aircraft). After getting out he went to work for the American Tower Corporation (Ticker: AMT). His first day at American Tower was September 10, 2001. The following day, AMT lost 13 employees in the World Trade Center attack. He stayed with the company, despite it being decimated by market uncertainty in the wake of 9/11. He was appointed CEO of the very same company in 2004. Over a 16 year tenure as CEO of AMT the company market cap 20x’d. He left his position as CEO of AMT in March of last year, and the stock stagnated since his departure, currently trading at roughly the same market cap as to when he left.
Jim Taiclet was also appointed to be the chairman of the board this week, replacing the previous CEO. Why is it relevant that the CEO came from a massive telecommunications company?
Rightfully, Taiclet’s focus for LMT is bringing military technology into the modern era. He wants LMT to be a first mover in the military 5G space, military application of AI space, the… space space, and the hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) space. These areas are revolutionary for the boomer defense sector. We will discuss this in more detail later when we cover the company’s P/E multiple and why it is absolute nonsense.
It is not a surprise to me that they brought Taiclet on during the pandemic. He led AMT through adversity before, and LMT’s positioning during the pandemic is tremendous relative to the rest of the sector, thanks in large part to some strong strategic moves and good investments by current and past leadership. I think that Taiclet is the right CEO for the job.
In addition to the new CEO, the new Secretary of Defense, Secretary Lloyd Austin, has strong ties to the defense sector. He was formerly a board member for RTX. He is absolutely above reproach, and a true leader of character, but I bring this up not to suggest that he will inappropriately serve in the best interest of defense contractors, but to suggest that he speaks the language of these companies effectively. I do not anticipate that the current administration poses as significant of a risk to the defense sector as many analysts seem to believe. This will be expanded in the headwinds section below.
SPACE Cathie Wood and the ARK Invest team brought a lot of attention to the space sector when the ARKX, The ARK Space Exploration ETF, Form N-1A was officially filed through the SEC. More recently, ARK Invest published their Big Ideas 2021 Annual Report and dedicated an entire 7-page chapter to Orbital Aerospace, a new disruptive innovation platform that the ARK Team is investigating. This may have helped energize wall street to re-look their portfolios and their investments in space technology, but it was certainly not the first catalyst that pushed the defense industry in the direction of winning the
new space race.
In June 2018, then President Trump announced at the annual National Space Council that “it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space. So important. Therefore, I am hereby directing the Department of Defense (DoD) and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces". Historically, Department of Defense space assets were under the control of the Air Force. By creating a separate branch of service for the United States Space Force (USSF), the DoD would allocate a Chairman of Space Operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and clearly define the budget for space operations dedicated directly to the USSF. At present, this budget is funneled from the USAF’s budget. The process was formalized in December of 2019, and the DoD has appropriated ~$15B to the USSF in their first full year of existence according to the FY21 budget.
Among the 77 spacecraft that are controlled by the USSF, 29 of them are Lockheed Martin GPS satellites, 6 of them are Lockheed Martin Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS), and LMT had a hand in creating and/or manufacturing for several of the other USSF efforts. The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Missile Warning Satellites (also known as Next-Gen OPIR) were contracted out to both Northrup Grumman (Ticker: NOC) and LMT. LMT’s contract is currently set at $4.9B, NOC’s contract is set at $2.37B.
Tangentially related to the discussion of space is the discussion of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs). HGVs have exoatmospheric and atmospheric implications, but I think that their technology is extremely important to driving margins down for both space exploration and terrestrial point-to-point travel. LMT is leading the charge for military HGV research. They hold contracts with the Navy, Air Force, and Army to develop HGVs and hypersonic precision fires. The priority for HGV technology accelerated significantly when Russia launched their Avangard HGV in December of 2019. Improving the technology for HGVs is a critical next-step in maintaining US hegemony, but also maintaining leadership in both terrestrial and exoatmospheric travel.
LARGE SCALE COMBAT OPERATIONS (LSCO) The DoD transitioning to Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) as the military’s strategic focus. This is a move away from an emphasis on Counter-Insurgency operations. LSCO requires effective multi-domain operations (MDO), which means effective and integrated strategies regarding land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. To have effective MDO, the DoD is seeking systems that both expand capabilities against peer threats and increase the ability to track enemy units and communicate internally. This requires a modernizing military strategy that relies heavily on air, missile, and sensor modernization. Put simply, the DoD has decided to start preparing for peer or near-peer adversaries (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) rather than insurgencies. For this reason, I believe that increased Chinese and Russian tensions are, unfortunate as it may be, a boon to the defense industry. This is particularly true in the missiles/fires and space industry, as peer-to-peer conflicts are won by leveraging technological advantages.
There are too many projects to cover in detail, but some important military technologies that LMT is focusing on to support LSCO include directed energy weapons (lasers) to address enemy drone technology, machine learning / artificial intelligence (most applications fall under LMT’s classified budget, but it is easy to imagine the applications of AI in a military context), and 5G to increase battlefield connectivity. These projects are all nested within the DoD’s LSCO strategy, and position LMT as the leader in emergent military tech. NOC is the other major contractor making a heavy push in the modernization direction, but winners win, and I think a better CEO, balance sheet, and larger market cap make LMT the clear winner for aiding the DoD in a transition toward LSCO.
SECTOR COMPARISON (BACKLOG) The discussion of LSCO transitions well into the discussion of defense contractor backlogs. Massive defense contracts are not filled overnight, so examining order backlogs is a relatively reliable way to gauge the interest of the DoD in a defense contractor’s existing or emerging products. For my sector comparison, I am using the top 6 holdings of the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (Ticker: ITA). I hate this ETF, and ETFs like it (DFEN) because of their massively outsized exposure to aerospace, and undersized allocation to companies like LMT. LMT is only 18% smaller than Boeing (Ticker: BA) but is only 30.4% of the exposure of BA (18.46% of the fund is BA, only 5.62% of the fund is LMT). Funds of this category are just BA / RTX hacks. I suggest building your own pie on a site like M1 Finance (although they are implicated in the trade restriction BS… please be advised of that… hoping other brokerages that are above board will offer similar UIs like the pie design… just wanted to be clear there) if you are interested in the defense sector.
The top 6 holdings of ITA are:
Boeing Company (Ticker: BA, MKT CAP $110B) at 18.46%
Raytheon Technologies (Ticker: RTX, MKT CAP $101B) at 17.84%
Lockheed Martin (Ticker: LMT, MKT CAP $90B) at 5.62%
General Dynamics Corporation (Ticker: GD, MKT CAP $42B) 4.78%
Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (Ticker: TDY, MKT CAP $13B) at 4.74%
Northrop Grumman Corporation (Ticker: NOC, MKT CAP $48B) at 4.64%
As a brief aside, please look at the breakdowns of ETFs before buying them. The fact that ITA has more exposure to TDY than NOC and L3Harris is wild. Make sector ETFs balanced how you want them to be balanced and it will be more engaging, and you will likely outperform. I digress.
Backlogs for defense companies can easily be pulled from their quarterly reports. Here are the current backlogs in the same order as before, followed by a percentage of their backlog to their current market cap. All numbers are pulled from January earning reports unless otherwise noted with an * because they are still pending.
Boeing Company backlog (Commercial: $282B, Defense: $61B, Foreign Military Sales (FMS, categorized by BA as ‘Global’): 21B, Total Backlog 364B): BA’s backlog to market cap is a ratio of 3.32, which is strong, but most of that backlog comes from the commercial, not the defense side. Airlines have been getting decimated, I am personally not interested in having much of my backlog exposed to commercial pressures when trying to invest in a defense play. Without commercial exposure, their defense only backlog ratio is .748. This is extremely low. I understand that this does not do BA justice, but I am keying in on defense exposure, and I am left thoroughly unsatisfied by that ratio. Also, we have seen several canceled contracts already on the commercial side.
Raytheon Technologies backlog (Defense backlog for all 4 subdivisions: 67.3B): Raytheon only published a defense backlog in this quarter’s report. That is further evidence to me that the commercial aerospace side of the house is getting hammered. They have a relatively week backlog to market cap as well, putting them at a ratio of .664, worse off than the BA defense backlog.
Lockheed Martin backlog (Total Backlog: $147B): This backlog blows our first two defense backlogs out of the water with a current market cap to backlog ratio of 1.63.
General Dynamics Corporation backlog (Total Backlog: $89.5B, $11.6B is primarily business jets, but it is difficult to determine how much of their aerospace business is commercial): Solid 2.13 ratio, still great 1.85 if you do not consider their aerospace business. The curveball here for me is that GD published a consolidated operating profit of $4.1B including commercial aerospace, whereas LMT published a consolidated operating profit of $9.1B. This makes the LMT ratio of profit/market cap slightly in favor of LMT without accounting for the GD commercial aerospace exposure. This research surprised me; I may like GD more than I originally assumed I would. Still prefer LMT.
Teledyne Technologies Incorporated backlog (Found in the earnings transcript, $1.7B): This stock is not quite in the same league as the other major contractors. This is an odd curveball that a lot of the defense ETFs seem to have too much exposure to. They have a weak backlog, but they are a smaller growing company. I am not interested in this at all. It has a backlog ratio of .129.
Northrop Grumman Corporation backlog ($81B): Strong numbers here. I see NOC and LMT as the two front-runners in the defense sector. I like LMT more because I like their exposure to AI, 5G, and HGVs more than NOC, but I think this is a great alternative to LMT if you like the defense sector. Has a ratio of 1.69, slightly edging out LMT on this metric. LMT edges out NOC on margins by ~.9%, though, which has significant implications when considering the depth of the LMT backlog.
The winners here are LMT, GD, and NOC. BA is attractive if you think anyone will have enough money to buy new planes. BA and RTX are both getting hammered by commercial aerospace exposure right now and are much more positioned as recovery plays. That said, LMT and NOC both make money now, and will regardless of the impact of the pandemic. LMT is growing at a slightly faster rate than NOC. Both are profit machines, but I like LMT’s product portfolio and leadership a lot more.
FREE CASH FLOW Despite the pandemic, LMT had the free cash flow to be able to pay a $2.60 per share dividend. This maintains their ~3% yearly dividend rate. They had a free cash flow of $6.4B. They spent $3.9 of that in share repurchases and dividend payouts. That leaves 40% of that cash to continue to strengthen one of the most stalwart balance sheets outside of big tech on the street. Having this free cash flow allowed them to purchase Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.4B in December. They seem flexible and willing to expand and take advantage of their relative position during the pandemic. This is a stock that has little downside risk and significant upside potential. It is always reassuring to me to know that at the end of the day, a company is using its profit to continue to grow.
HEADWINDS New Administration – This is more of an unknown than a headwind. The Obama Administration was not light on military spending, and the newly appointed SecDef is unlikely to shy away from modernizing the force. Military defense budgets may get lost in the political shuffle, but nothing right now suggests that defense budgets are on the chopping block.
Macroeconomic pressure – The markets are tumultuous in the wake of GME. Hedgies are shaking in their boots, and scared money weighed on markets the past week. If scared money continues to exert pressure on the broader equity markets, all boomer stocks are likely weighed down by slumping markets.
Non-meme Status – The stocks that are impervious to macroeconomic pressures in the above paragraph are the stonks that we, the people, have decided to support. From GME to IPOE, there is a slew of stonks that are watching and laughing from the green zone as the broader markets slip deeper into the red zone. Unless sentiment about LMT changes, I see no evidence that LMT will remain unaffected by a broader economic downturn (despite showing growth YoY during a pandemic).
TAILWINDS Aerojet Rocketdyne to the Moon – Cathie Wood opened up a $39mil position in LMT a few weeks ago, and this was near the announcement of ARKX. The big ideas 2021 article focuses heavily on satellite technology, deep learning, and HGVs. I think that the AR acquisition suggests that vertical integration is a priority for LMT. They even fielded a question in their earnings call about whether they were concerned about being perceived as a monopoly. Their answer was spot on—the USFG and DoD have a vested interest in the success of defense companies. Why would they discourage a defense contractor from vertical integration to optimize margins?
International Tensions – SolarWinds has escalated US-Russia tensions. President Biden wants to look tough on China. LSCO is a DoD-wide priority.
5G.Mil – We still do not have a lot of fidelity on what this looks like, but the military would benefit in a lot of ways if we had world-wide access to the rapid transfer of encrypted data. Many units still rely on Vietnam-era technology signal technology with abysmal data rates. There are a lot of implications if the code can be cracked to win a DoD 5G contract.
TRADE IDEAS Price Target: LMT is currently at a P/E of ~14. Verizon has roughly the same. LMT’s 5-year P/E ratio average is ~17. NOC is currently at a P/E of ~20. TSLA has a P/E Ratio of 1339 (disappointingly not 1337). P/E is a useless metric because no one seems to care about it. My point is that LMT makes a lot of money, and other companies that are valued at much higher multiples do not make any money at all. LMT’s P/E ratio is that of a boomer stock that has no growth potential. LMT’s P/E is exactly in line with the Aerospace and Defense Industry P/E ratio standard. LMT’s new CEO is pushing the industry in a new direction. I will arbitrarily choose a P/E ratio of 30, because it is half of the software industry average, and it is a nice round number. Plus, stock values are speculative and nonsense anyway.
Share price today: $321.82
Share price based on LMT average 5-year P/E: $384.08 (I see this as a short term PT, reversion to the mean)
Share price with a P/E of 30: $690.26
Buy and Hold: Simple. Doesn’t take much thought. Come back in a year or two and be happy with your tendies (and a few dividends to boot).
LEAPS Call Debit Spread (Based on last trade prices): Buy $375 C 20 JAN 23 for $26.5, Sell $450 C 20 JAN 23 for $12. Total Cost $14.5 for a spread width of $75. Max gain 517% per spread. Higher risk strategy.
LEAPS: Buy $500 C 20 JAN 23 for $7.20. Very high-risk strat. If the price target is hit within two years, these would be in the money $183 per contract for a gain of 2500%. This is the casino strat.
SOURCES https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2020/james-taiclet-from-military-pilot-to-successful-ceo.html https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/in-response-to-senator-warrens-questions-secretary-of-defense-nominee-general-lloyd-austin-commits-to-recusing-himself-from-raytheon-decisions-for-four-years https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-08-30-Lockheed-Martins-Expertise-in-Hypersonic-Flight-Wins-New-Army-Work https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/hypersonics.html https://research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Download_Files_ARK-Invest/White_Papers/ARK%E2%80%93Invest_BigIdeas_2021.pdf?hsCtaTracking=4e1a031b-7ed7-4fb2-929c-072267eda5fc%7Cee55057a-bc7b-441e-8b96-452ec1efe34c https://www.deseret.com/2018/6/19/20647309/twitter-reacts-to-trump-s-call-for-a-space-force https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf https://www.airforcemag.com/lockheed-receives-up-to-4-9-billion-for-next-gen-opir-satellites/ https://spacenews.com/northrop-grumman-gets-2-3-billion-space-force-contract-to-develop-missile-warning-satellites/ https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/directed-energy/laser-weapon-systems.html https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/lockheed-martins-ai-applications-for-the-military/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/07/new-ceo-wants-lockheed-become-5g-playe167072/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/defense-firms-expect-higher-spending-11548783988 https://www.etf.com/ITA#efficiency https://s2.q4cdn.com/661678649/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/4Q20-Presentation.pdf https://investors.rtx.com/static-files/dfd94ff7-4cca-4540-bc4b-4e3ba92fc646 https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/static-files/64e5aa03-9023-423a-8908-2aae8c7015ac https://s22.q4cdn.com/891946778/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/GD_4Q20_Earnings_Highlights-Outlook-Final.pdf https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/teledyne-technologies-inc-tdy-q4-2020-earnings-cal/ https://investor.northropgrumman.com/static-files/6e6e117f-f656-4c68-ba7f-3dc53c2dd13a submitted by No. You don't frighten me, Mollari. If you try to go up against our forces, you'll lose. Yes, your ships are very impressive in the air, or in space--but at this moment, they are on the ground. Right--they're on the ground. But they can sense an approaching ship from miles away. So what are you going to do, Mollari, blow up the island? Actually--now that you mention it--[pulls detonator from pocket] No! [presses detonator] Babylon 5, explaining the vulnerability of aircraft to ground attack in typical hammy fashion Hello, and welcome to another episode of "
AmericanNewt8 explains the global military situation at present in a convenient,
possibly easy-to-read guide". Maybe I should make a YouTube channel or something. All the cool kids [and a lot of idiots who know nothing about military equipment] are doing it. Anyway, today we have the US Air [and, for the moment, Space Force--they haven't fully separated yet], and, surprisingly for once, a somewhat more positive message. I'm sorry this one took so long; I've been busy for the past month or so, but I figured I should get this one out I already had 80% done before talking about Turkey and the war in the Caucuses, which are likely to be shorter, more current, and arrive sometime in the next week if all goes as planned.
Current Effortposts In My Series: - What you [might] need to know about South Korea's ludicrous arms buildup
- We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches.... uh, what do we do after that again?: The Perilous Defensive Position of Taiwan
- "You've hit another cargo ship? The Problems with the US Navy: Not all of them begin with "Seven" and end with "th Fleet"."
- Will China's PLAN survive contact with the enemy?
- Biden's New START and modern nuclear war
- Boned: Problems (but not too many) in the US Air [and Space!] Force
- Erdogan Sallies Forth [inserted largely on account of the recent breakout of a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan]
- Begun, the Drone Wars Have: Why You Should Pay Attention To This "Tiny" War
- First And Last Stand Of The Tin Can Navies [ASEAN + Australia and the smaller adversaries China may contend with]
- --Unnamed-- effortpost on Japanese military matters, mostly about how weird the JSDF status is
- --Unnamed--effortpost on Indian military matters, and why they can't focus on China or buy anything that works
- --Unnamed--effortpost on the rest of the PLA, mostly the air force though
- --Unnamed--effortpost on the rest of the US Armed Forces, mostly talking about how the marines are changing and the Army's new love affair with INF-busting weapons
- Conclusion?
1. Our Pride And Joy
America's Navy may be its key instrument of power projection abroad and in some ways the most important service branch, but the one that is by far the greatest beneficiary of American skill, the apex of our capabilities, is without a doubt the US Space Force. From
Day 1 the US
has had a commanding lead in the field. Mind you, that's not saying that nobody's ever challenged or exceeded the US in limited areas for limited periods of time--the early 1950s were about the last time that happened though [aside for commercial launch vehicles from around 1980-2010]. In the modern era, it is very rare that buying something
other than an American-made aircraft or rocket makes any sort of economic or strategic sense [political is of course a different matter entirely]. The US Air Force has generally benefited from high, consistent levels of investment and has had relatively light burdens placed on it operationally [though in recent years post 9/11 this has changed to an extent], and it has developed into one of the best-trained and most doctrinally sophisticated forces in the world. More on that later. Anyway, the Air Force is probably the best-loved branch politically [Marines might be more respected but they get budgetary scraps], at least of the military as a whole, and it ends up with more funding, smarter people, and a much better QOL as a result. In fact Air Force personnel are usually treated to quite a bit of envy and ribbing about how much better their conditions are than their Army, Marine, or Navy counterparts.
2. Aging Equipment [again!]
Guess what? The same problem that seems to afflict most of the US military [and, for that matter, most European, Latin American, and non-East Asian militaries] is aging equipment from the Cold War finally wearing out. In the Air Force, this takes a number of different forms. Often, it's a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but even then airframes do wear out eventually and need replacement and a lot of them are getting to that point.
Logistics, Support, That Kind of Thing One of the least glamorous parts of the Air Force, logistical and support capabilities are rapidly aging. The primary airframe the Air Force uses for these is the.. wait for it...
Dash 80, as the
C-135 whose commercial variant is better known as the Boeing 707. It was a very impressive aircraft, but it was designed in the 1950s. Even though we've reengined the C-135 with more modern engines, and done some serious overhauls, they're getting pretty long in the tooth. Most notably we have the
398 KC-135 Stratotankers which make up the bulk of the US midair refueling fleet, which are joined by 31
E-3 Sentry AWACs, a number of specialized
RC-135 derivatives doing everything from SIGINT to hunting for nuclear weapons and 17
E-8 Joint STARS. While these were produced up until the early 1990s, the airframes are aging and they need replacements, and the sheer quantity of aircraft is likely to cause trouble. There are also other aircraft that have to be replaced in the mid-term [by the early 2040s] like the
C-5 Galaxy and the
KC-10 Extender, but these are somewhat less of an immediate concern. There are some
C-130 Hercules replacements also needed but those are largely being done with newer versions of the same aircraft.
Bombers The
B-1 Lancer is first on the chopping block, due to high maintenance costs and time [it generally takes 120 hours of maintenance for an hour of flight time]. That represents 60 bombers, on paper anyway, and a good chunk of the USAF's supersonic strike capability. However, cutting it should free up resources for new hardware, and in fact new USAF budget proposals suggest rapidly retiring the B-1. The
B-2 Spirit is also on the chopping block due to high price and high maintenance demands, but it can't really be replaced until the
B-21 Raider shows up. There is also a need to find a replacement for the B-52, but nobody is really sure what that looks like and it's much less urgent--the B-52 will soldier on for the indefinite future and may well hit a full century in operational service. Even if one runs into the "airplane of Thesus" the fact that you could well have fourth or fifth generation B-52 pilots flying on 90-year-old aircraft is, to be honest, kind of neat.
Fighters The F-15 and F-16 originally took flight in the 1970s and are still seeing interest today, though the modern F-15 and F-16 are very different beasts from their originals. However, the overall fleet is starting to age--primarily the F-15C fleet operated by the US Air National Guard which does air policing in the US. This is why the Guard is actually first in line for new F-15EX aircraft and has even received brand new F-35s [that, and the fact that the Air National Guard is actually pretty integrated with the Air Force]. F-16s are also starting to wear out; the USAF still operates over a thousand of the type. They are set to primarily be replaced with the F-35, though, with around 1500 aircraft on order. They will also replace the A-10 [along with drones, I suppose], and I'll take a moment to say that the A-10 is heavily overrated, there's a reason the USAF wants to dump it, and it's notorious for friendly fire incidents. Its job would be better done by drones or even aircraft like the Super Tucano.
Trainers These are, guess what, also wearing out. The USAF currently operates over 500
T-38 Talon trainers, but it already has a replacement lined up for this aircraft which was first flown in 1959. It just adds to the list of things that need replacing.
ICBMs Also should mention these, I suppose. The US is currently operating the
Minuteman-III) as its sole ground-based nuclear deterrent/ICBM, and these 1970s-era missiles have survived their replacement, the
LGM-118 Peacekeeper. They have to be replaced as well, and the USAF actually recently awarded a contract to do so to Northrop Grumman [though there are issues with that mentioned below].
Maintenance One side-effect of all this is that the Air Force has increasingly high demands for maintenance which are simply not met,
which combined with a shortage of maintainers [partially due to good outside pay but mostly because anecdotal reports suggest life as an Air Force maintainer is terrible] means that the Air Force has a poor readiness rate, especially because a lot of airframes aren't in good condition to begin with, having been worn out by decades of use.
3. Procurement Woes... fixed?
So, the Air Force has had a pretty troubled history with procurement in recent years. By far the most infamous one is the F-35. Well, yes, the F-35
was a procurement disaster. Another Redditor has done a great service by writing up the account Ash Carter [Secretary of Defense under Obama] gave of the program. It's long [
full version here] and probably doesn't give a full account as it is Carter's memoir--but I'll just pick out one of the most significant parts of it:
At one point of the meeting, after we'd made it abundantly clear that the grossly inflated price for the JSF jets was unacceptable, CEO Bob Stevens casually said to me, "Well, if you tell me how much money you have, I'll tell you how many planes you can buy."
I was taken aback. Rather than negotiating a fair price with us, Stevens was behaving as if his company were entitled to all the money the taxpayers could afford. And although he obviously had a per-plane price in mind, he didn't care to divulge it openly, nor would he agree to a fixed-price contract holding him to it. I found this cavalier attitude offensive. With deeper disrepute, the JSF program would go down the political drain, and we wouldn't be able to buy any of these needed aircraft.
With all this in mind, I let his question hang in the air unanswered for a moment. Then I replied, "How about none?" With that, I walked out of the room. "None" was a reasonable prediction in the political climate surrounding this out-of-control program.
However, the F-35 was a pretty uniquely messed up procurement program due to suffering from what I'd broadly call "jointness", where interservice procurement made things less efficient.
The Air Force on its own has had some pretty impressive procurement messups though. Look no further than
the KC-46 Pegasus, a tanker designed to replace the KC-135 [as mentioned above loads of these are getting retired in the next couple years]. The first sign of trouble probably should have been when the first program to replace the tankers with the KC-767 [now the KC-46] was cancelled on account of
a bribery scandal involving the CFO of Boeing offering the procurement official an executive position. The second sign probably should have been the whole bit where, unlike its competitor, the
A330 MRTT, the KC-767
didn't actually exist. And when the A330 won the contract bid, Boeing of course protested and, ultimately, got the contract evaluated
again, with [at least per Northrop Grumman's claims, who was running a joint bid with Airbus] requirements rigged for the KC-767, and, finally, almost a decade after the program started, Boeing won the bid.
Except there was the small problem that Boeing hadn't built the plane yet, which turned into a large one.
Ultimately the program was marred by years of delays and major technical problems. It only recently finally began delivering aircraft to the Air Force, years late and over-budget [though the USAF did manage to claw quite a bit of it back from Boeing].
However, there are some positive signs that future procurement will be better. Besides the F-35 being saved, there's the example of the T-X program, which is to replace the elderly T-38 Talon trainer. It invited foreign competition to the field, featured vigorous competition, and resulted in an actually effective aircraft--developed by both Boeing [of course] but also Saab--yes, the Swedes have a significant hand in the trainer jet likely to equip much of the world.
In particular, something very interesting the US Air Force is doing is diving heavily into computer design and open systems architecture. What this means, in short, is that they'll design new planes with a heavy emphasis on doing detailed computer design and simulation, only finally building an aircraft to demonstrate it works IRL--which of course cuts costs substantially--and they'll try to build common hardware and software that will work in any number of aircraft. The overall idea is to make aircraft inexpensive, easy to design, and modular. The Air Force even has a buzzword for this already, the "Digital Century Series", referring to the last time the Air Force very rapidly built a whole bunch of aircraft on a relatively common hardware platform. Whether this will bear fruit remains yet to be seen.
4. Fighting the Peer Conflict
The USAF, for the past thirty years, has not faced a peer competitor. Arguably it didn't even face one before that--the Soviet Air Force was no match for what the USAF could field, as was demonstrated quite well in a number of conflicts. The good news is that the USAF has had a long time to build up a lead, and is still far ahead of China or Russia, further ahead than the Army or Navy is by a long shot--Americans like their planes and electronics. For an illustrative example, China's
J-20 stealth fighter has been produced in a quantity of... 50; while the USAF has almost 200 F-22s and is ordering over a
thousand F-35s. The
Su-57 barely even flies and is nowhere near peer to what the United States can field despite whatever scary articles you might have read. The bad news is that only recently has the USAF actually begun preparing to fight a peer conflict, which will tax it in different ways.
The main vulnerabilities the Air Force has in a peer conflict are more logistical and operational than regarding the quality of its aircraft or pilots, which are moreless unmatched. The first problem is that readiness isn't fantastic thanks to the War on Terror burning through all the ancient Cold War aircraft that the USAF has operated, and yes, aircraft do wear out. In fact, large numbers of F-15Cs operated by the US Air National Guard have been grounded due to age and fatigue. The shortage of maintainers also plays a role here. There's also the problem that the US Air Force is
still quite vulnerable on the ground in any peer conflict; especially to precision strikes with ballistic and cruise missiles--the US Air Force has downsized considerably and now only has a handful of bases for both political and budgetary reasons, but that means that, when facing, for instance, China, the USAF must rely heavily on just
six airfields--Osan, Kunsan, Misawa, Yokota, Kadena and Andersen [maybe bring that to 9 by adding USMC and Navy installations, which field fewer and less capable aircraft].
Thus, the primary challenge that the USAF faces is a quiet one--ensuring that it can operate from dispersed locations, at high opstempo, and repair its facilities rapidly. This is really also the biggest question mark in terms of the USAF's performance, but there's some reason to be optimistic here--the USAF is aware of the threat and is actually working to solve it. However, ultimately only changes in the political environment [the addition of bases in the Philippines or Palau, or the development of readied airfields in Japan] will fix the basing problem. Better ballistic missile defense will probably also help here. Russia or China will probably have poor luck against the USAF in the air; seeking primarily to deny the USAF free reign and thus the ability to support ground offensives, but they could cause significant damage by hitting ground facilities, and everyone knows it.
There's also the question of surface-to-air missiles; which have driven quite a bit of concern the past few years as China and Russia field increasingly capable systems like the S-400 and HQ-9. It is feared that the sophistication of these weapons could create "A2/AD bubbles" where the USAF and USN are unable to operate. While the access bubble does still look quite real for the Navy, recent developments have seriously called the efficacy of surface-to-air missiles into question--particularly the fact that the Israelis and Turks seem to be able to almost ignore them, or at least their shorter-range counterparts. The destruction of Armenian S-300 launchers by Azerbaijan with Turkish drones is certainly an ominous signal for anyone thinking advanced air defenses would keep them safe. How good the full-scale systems are against conventional targets is still unknown, but my guess is much less effective than the marketing--and keep in mind that despite years of concerns, SAMs have only been successful from about 1960-1980, and even then relatively minor adjustments in strategy seemed to significantly mitigate damage--so it's unclear how concerned we should actually be about such technology.
There are also questions about whether or not the USAF is operating the right mix of aircraft for the job, and these are valid ones. The USAF is buying new F-15EX, which has literally been described as
not survivable after 2028 [though there is a case for the plane as a carrier of standoff weapons or a homeland defense fighter], and still operates the A-10 [an aircraft now mostly known for a number of notorious blue-on-blue (friendly fire) incidents] which, if used in a modern environment where the USAF didn't have total air supremacy, would simply not be able to survive. Yes, there's a reason the USAF wants to scrap the A-10, and no, the GAU-8 is cool but it doesn't even kill columns of modern main battle tanks. Unless you're primarily planning on fighting North Korea, the A-10 is close to useless(ly dangerous). The B-1 has also been highlighted as obsolete, largely due to high maintenance costs. However, the USAF is working hard to scrap these aircraft as fast as politically feasible.
5. New Technologies
The Air Force has always had a certain inclination towards adopting the newest, shiniest technologies, and at the moment there are a number of interesting concepts that it is exploring. I'll talk about two of the most significant ones [especially combined] here.
First, the Air Force is seeking to create future aircraft entirely virtually--using highly detailed computer models to design numerous types of specialist aircraft, and only building prototypes to test the results that simulations produce. Their latest trainer, the "eT-7", uses this methodology--the "e" is supposed to designate that it was designed this way. There's also a move towards using common avionics and software for a variety of different aircraft. Figures high up at the Pentagon have discussed a "Digital Century Series", modeled after a chain of fighters rapidly developed in the 1950s for a number of different roles, from the F-102 interceptor to the F-105 fighter-bomber. This could potentially create numerous new aircraft rapidly; a shift back towards the times before the 1990s where a single fighter project took the entire attention and budget of the Air Force. Nobody is really sure how this will pan out but it looks quite promising. In particular, the fact that the USAF was
able to take its new prototype fighter jet into the skies a year after it was originally envisioned is stunning--and suggests that this potential return to the old days of the 1940s and 1950s when new aircraft showed up every year is not just a pipe dream.
Second, the Air Force is investing in UCAVs [Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles], most notably in the
Skyborg concept. The goal is to develop a low-cost drone that can both deliver additional weapons to target while being accompanied by a manned fighter--a sort of drone wingman, which is cheap enough to be expendable [thus serving a secondary purpose, soaking up enemy air to air missiles]. Numerous companies have been awarded contracts to develop UCAVs and this program is looking quite promising, so expect to hear more of it in the future.
6. Drones
Drones are a rather interesting topic and one that I'll most likely get into more detail in on my next two posts specifically regarding Turkey. The US was one of the pioneers of UAVs, with the other big player in the field being Israel--in fact the US has bought Israeli drones from time to time, though of course China and Russia have also established a presence, without even mentioning Turkey. The US has a number of drones for different purposes--largely for reconnaissance of different types and precision-strike capability. It has the RQ-4 Global Hawk, for reconnaissance, the MQ-9A Reaper, for strike missions, and the RQ-170, which.... well, probably something involving reconnaissance, it's half-CIA so who knows. However, the US may not have kept up on the ongoing drone revolution, which is actually something I can't really blame them for since the 'revolution' only started in January. Yes. Last January.
This 'revolution' began on January 5, 2020, to be exact, and was led by an unlikely candidate: Turkey. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this was certainly the case for the Turkish drone program. After the US refused to sell Turkey drones on account of the fact that they might be used against Kurds [use of Turkish drones suggests they definitely
are used against Kurds], Turkey decided to make their own drone program with blackjack and hookers--or, well, just drones.
Their DIY effort didn't really garner much attention until sent to Libya,but investment in their program skyrocketed, largely for two reasons. First, Turkey has been largely barred from major hardware acquisitions from the US and, to an increasing extent, Europe. Second, Erdogan deeply distrusts the Turkish Air Force and has dramatically cut pilot numbers through his multiple purges of the service. Third, Turkey is competing out of its class, against Russia, the UAE, and other major regional powers.
Once it arrived in Libya, it suddenly became clear that the Turkish drone program was much more important than previously thought. In many ways it bore the primary responsibility for turning the war around from what looked to be almost certain defeat for the UN-recognized GNA into a state where whether or not Haftar could survive was in question. In particular,
it came as a great shock to most how easily Turkey defeated the very systems that were designed to shoot down UAVs--the Russian Pantsir in particular, which has been destroyed in great quantities with few Turkish casualties to show for it--and with the sticker price for a Turkish drone less than half of the Pantsir systems they kill, it could well revolutionize warfare. Experiences in Syria, and now in Armenia, where Turkish drones have destroyed
hundreds of main battle tanks and casually destroyed SAM systems from some distance above, continue to bring into question just how vast the drone revolution is going to be. I'll cover this in more explicit detail in my next two posts.
However, the USAF is watching and learning--its main difficulty with drones is more political than anything. Drones are often considered less important than manned aircraft by a leadership that largely flew manned aircraft [particularly fighters at that], and it is the bottom tier of officer recruits that fly drones [though, interestingly, some drones are actually flown by enlisted pilots] and even then
there's usually a shortage of RPA pilots--that's why a few are flown by enlisted in the first place. Whether or not they'll take these lessons to heart, only time will tell, but the history of the Air Force leaves me relatively optimistic on the matter--more than many other services, it's willing to embrace change.
7. Nukes
The US Air Force runs two legs of the nuclear triad--the air and ground portions. The first is dominated by, believe it or not, gravity bombs--mostly the B61. This weapon has been sitting around in the United States [and Europe under nuclear sharing, in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Turkey] for a while now, the first variants being made in 1968, and has recently been updated to the latest B61-12 variant, which offers high precision [as precise as JDAMs, not that it's likely to matter in most situations where nukes are being dropped] and flexibility--the bomb can be deployed from low altitudes at high speeds, and from within the internal weapons bay of the F-22 and F-35 [not to mention the B-2 and future B-21], so it's not as dumb as it might sound. Air-launched weapons also have useful features like the ability to recall them once launched, which isn't an option for missiles, along with fitting into doctrine for a tactical nuclear war. While I could go on about the lack of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles [which hopefully will be fixed by the end of the Intermediate Forces Treaty] it's not a big deal.
The main concern here [and perhaps a suggestion that procurement is still messed up] is the ground-based deterrent, which currently consists of a few hundred Minuteman III missiles buried in the northern central United States. These missiles, like much of the Air Force, date to the 1970s and have outlasted their supposed replacement--the MX Peacekeeper. These missiles are finally approaching end of life and are to be replaced by a new ICBM system. This process is... problematic. First off, it was a sole-source bid because Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK Systems, the primary American producer of solid-fuelled rockets and missiles, and this resulted in Boeing pulling out of the competition. Second, the cost seems rather high, at least in my view, with lifetime cost estimates of as much as $90 billion, with development alone amounting to
$13 billion at sticker price. It positions the cost of rebuilding the ground-based deterrent as comparable to the US Navy's program to replace the Ohio-class submarines with the Columbias. The ground-based deterrent has also lost substantial importance as sea-launched and air-launched weapons have become much more accurate and capable of fulfilling the ground-based counterforce mission [which arguably died with Peacekeeper], and it remains the most vulnerable portion of the triad. What good it does is largely as another independent nuclear deterrent and one that soaks up enemy warheads in the event of nuclear war that could be directed towards other targets. A disastrous procurement here could cause problems for the Air Force you will see in the future. My suggestion would be either to continue modernizing the Minuteman IIIs or aim to replace them with the cheapest option possible--something like, for instance, a land-based Trident missile [as if the Air Force would ever allow such a thing to be built]. All the ground-based deterrent needs to do is be there, be a credible threat, and soak up enemy fire. That's it.
8. Space Force
The Space Force is now its own service branch, but as it really hasn't emerged yet I'll cover it here. In fact, just recently,
the Space Force enlisted its first trainees. This is somewhat less in my area of expertise; but at the moment things look fairly promising. While the Space Force
sounds silly it's almost certainly the part of the military you interact with the most in your daily life on account of running the GPS network. They also operate a variety of communications satellites and the system for monitoring ballistic missile launches, among other pieces of hardware. Expect to hear more about these guys in the future, as space becomes a potential battlefield--we've seen the deployment of a space-based anti-satellite weapon by the Russians just recently, and numerous powers now field anti-satellite missiles along with jamming equipment that can blind reconnaissance satellites, so space is becoming much more militarily important. I don't have much more to say about these guys at the moment, though, other than noting that they're already talking about being even "less physical" than the Air Force--translation: Less mandatory exercise--and they're teaching classes about space law, which is neat I guess. The main downside of the Space Force is that it's going to be very small, around 20-30,000 people, which is half what even the Coast Guard fields, and that could lead to problems with maintaining personnel and inefficiencies with redundant missions, procurement, and the like.
9. Conclusion
The USAF has problems; particularly with aging equipment and manpower, but it seems to realize that most of them exist and is moving to address them. Political constraints mean that the USAF is stuck supporting a variety of obsolete platforms and investing its large budget poorly in new ICBMs and poorly managed tankers, and procurement continues to be a struggle for the USAF, though nowhere near as bad as with the US Navy. Drones have the potential to revolutionize warfare and the USAF is working to develop capabilities in that area, albeit maybe not as fast as some other players in the field, and digital design promises more aircraft designed and produced faster--much, much faster. The USAF faces logistical challenges in a peer conflict, but nothing insurmountable--though the work there is likely to be painful and sidelined because it's less interesting than buying shiny new toys. The Space Force seems to be going along well though they could face some problems in the medium term from losing access to the USAF's resources--political, financial, and of personnel--until/unless they develop into a larger, more influential service. On the whole, though, the outlook for the USAF, at least, looks quite bright--a hope spot, along with the Army and Marines, that the serious problems of the Navy will not cripple the entire military capability of the United States.
10. Citations
Uh, I mostly embedded them in the post, and I don't want to go back and hunt for what I used after a month, but here are some good longer-form ones:
RAND, Chinese Attacks on Air Bases in Asia on the ballistic missile threat
Ryan Snyder, The Future of the ICBM Force: Should the Least Valuable Leg of the Triad Be Replaced?
RAND, Creating a Separate Space Force mostly focusing on administrative difficulties and personnel issues
RAND, Drone-Era Warfare Shows the Operatoinal Limits of Air Defense Systems on drones and the conflicts in Libya and Syria [yes, it's all RAND, no Brookings Institute or such this time round]. It also explains why air defense systems are perhaps much more vulnerable than commonly thought, which I didn't really get into here.
Washington Post, Air Force seeks a radical shift in how jets, missiles, and satellites are designed with more detail on the shift to more computerized design the US Air Force wants to make
CSIS, The Air Force Digital Century Series: Beyond the Buzzwords taking apart the "Digital Century Series" push
submitted by SEJONG, Aug. 29 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Thursday proposed a record 513.5 trillion-won (US$423.7 billion) budget for 2020 to boost its slowing economy beset by a deepening U.S.-China trade row and more recently its own with Japan. North Korea lays out budget plans, personnel changes at parliamentary meeting Lawmakers agree to spend 47.8% of state budget on economy, 15.9% on national defense Colin Zwirko | Jeongmin Kim April 12, 2020 North Korea could be nervous about the South's growing military power. South Korea is one of the 10 most powerful militaries in the world in 2020, ranking No. 6 behind the United States, Russia After the Workers’ Party’s Eighth Congress, North Korea held a military parade to display its missiles, with an emphasis on SLBMs (and a curious absence of ICBMs). January 15, 2021 North Korea bolstered its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in 2020 using stolen funds, a violation of international sanctions, according to a confidential United Nations report seen by Reuters on Monday.The independent report concluded that North Korea stole some $300 million last year through cyber hacks.It added that Pyongyang has used the money to “Produce fissile material, maintain North Korea Military Strength (2021) For 2021, North Korea is ranked 28 of 139 out of the countries considered for the annual GFP review. It holds a PwrIndx* rating of 0.4673 (0.0000 considered 'perfect'). *Each nation is assessed on individual and collective values processed through an in-house formula to generate a 'PwrIndx' score. Some values are estimated when official numbers are not North Korea maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programs throughout 2020 in violation of international sanctions, helping fund them with some $300 million stolen through South Korea. The North's sworn enemies have 8,134,500 personnel - with 630,000 of those active, 7,500,000 reserve and 4,500 paramilitary. It's hard to know the North's exact military budget, but it's been estimated at around 20.8 per cent of its $40 billion (£33bn) - again estimated - Gross Domestic Product (GDP). NEW YORK (Reuters) - North Korea maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programs throughout 2020 in violation of international sanctions, helping fund them with some $300 NORTH KOREA spends more than 20 per cent of its annual GDP on the military despite millions of citizens suffering blackouts and a lack of adequate food.
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