Boyd (36 page)

In order not to be stigmatized as the chief of staff who lost the CAS mission, the Air Force chief had to develop a CAS airplane
and it had to be cheaper than the Cheyenne. The idea of a dedicated CAS aircraft was anathema to all senior Air Force officers
below the chief of staff. Blue Suiters would fight the chief tooth and claw, but the fight would not be out in the open. The
chief knew that his subordinates would pledge their support but then, in the bureaucratic warrens that are the refuge of the
careerist, would wage a sub-rosa war to sabotage the project.

Thus, whoever directed the CAS program must be strong enough to stand against the generals. He would have to be smart and
supremely focused, with the self-confidence of a buccaneer and the armor of a dinosaur. The chief thought he knew such a man.
He sent an emissary to Pierre Sprey with the question, “Were you serious about what you wrote in your interdiction study about
the need for close air support?”

The question rankled Sprey. He would not have worked seven days a week for a year on something he was not serious about. “Of
course.”

“Then you have another job if you want it.”

The big problem was that Sprey’s involvement could not be made public. He was still Public Enemy Number One to the Air Force.
People who cared about their careers were not seen entering his office. Few people spoke to him in the halls. If his role
in the CAS project became public, the long knives would come out. No, Pierre Sprey would have to stay in the background.

So Sprey’s new job was a night job. He worked in Systems Analysis for the secretary of defense during the day and then about
5:00
P
.
M
.

began his unofficial job for the Air Force on an airplane now designated the A-X. He led the technical design team working
for Colonel Avery Kay, an Air Force hero who had been lead bombardier on the Schweinfurt raid in World War II. Sprey wrote
the specifications for the A-X; it was his responsibility, his airplane.

The A-X was one of the more bizarre acquisition projects in the history of the Air Force in that it was developed solely for
bureaucratic reasons. The Air Force usually takes a deep proprietary interest in its new airplanes. They are touted as the
best of the species and another example of how the U.S. Air Force is the best air force in the world. But the A-X was the
most unpopular airplane the Air Force ever built. Because it was unpopular, TAC and Wright-Pat and the Systems Command and
all the people who gold-plated the F-15 did not want their fingerprints on it. The A-X was a leprous project led by a pariah.

Usually there are no cost constraints on an aircraft-design program. Politically there are often many reasons to maximize
costs. In all the history of the Air Force, the A-X was the single exception. It
had
to be cheap. It
had
to cost less than the Cheyenne.

Few men are as methodical as Sprey. He began by wanting to know what functions were needed in a CAS airplane. To find out
he sought out A-1 pilots who flew CAS missions in Vietnam. These young officers were energized by the chance to have their
recent combat experience considered in designing the first designated CAS airplane the Air Force ever had. None of this “one
pass, haul ass” stuff for these guys—to protect troops on the ground they needed loiter
time over a target. They needed an airplane, they said, with long legs. Much of the time hard-to-see targets and the smoke
and haze of the battlefield means a CAS pilot must work low and tight and slow, so they wanted maneuverability at slow speeds.
When friendly forces are in dire straits, they need an airplane that can wreak hell, death, and destruction, an airplane the
very sight of which will turn an enemy soldier’s bowels to water, so they wanted lethal weapons, preferably cannon. Working
low and tight as a good CAS pilot must do means the “gomers” will shoot at them with everything from rifles to AAA to missiles,
so they wanted an airplane that could take hits and still bring its pilot home. They wanted survivability.

Survivability was an issue that particularly resonated with Sprey. In doing research for his interdiction study, he read how
more than 85 percent of all aircraft losses in World War II and Korea were from fire or loss of control. Several bullets in
the right place and crucial aircraft systems were burned or destroyed. It was almost impossible to get out of the airplanes
once they were damaged or on fire. Thousands of good men had died because of bad design, and Sprey was determined not to let
that happen on the A-X.

Sprey was fascinated by Hans Rudel, the legendary tank-killing German pilot of World War II who still is considered the greatest
CAS pilot of all time. Sprey insisted that everyone on the A-X project read
Stuka Pilot,
Rudel’s wartime biography that told how he flew 2,530 missions and destroyed 511 tanks.

Because maneuverability is so important in CAS, Sprey used Boyd’s E-M Theory and ideas about trade-offs. Time after time,
Sprey was now the one who took the charts and diagrams to Boyd and said, “Hey, John, check out what I’m doing.” Boyd had the
vision to understand the importance of CAS, although, like most fighter pilots, he had little personal interest in the mission.
He glanced at the paperwork, slapped Sprey on the back, and said, “Good work, Tiger. Keep it up.”

The colonel who was Boyd’s boss detested everything about the A-X and openly criticized the project. As the man in charge
of fighter requirements, his was a respected voice. Then one day the colonel from the chief of staff’s office dropped by Boyd’s
office and invited him for a cup of coffee. The two men sat in a corner of the cafeteria and the colonel said in effect, “Your
boss’s comments about the A-X N
and his obstruction of the project have reached the chief. Tell your boss this criticism has to end. The A-X project is about
saving a mission for the Air Force.”

Boyd went to his boss, shut the door, and said, “There are high-ranking officers in the Building who want you to lay off the
A-X. The senior leadership is behind it.” He emphasized the “high ranking” and the “senior leadership.” The colonel ignored
the message and continued his bitter denunciation of the airplane. A few weeks later he was summarily fired and given twenty-four
hours to clean out his desk.

Sprey exercised on the A-X perhaps the tightest design discipline that has ever existed on an Air Force project. He worked
in a strange confluence of serendipitous forces. Sprey had an iron will and passionate belief about what would make a great
CAS airplane, and all those Air Force decision makers who could have gold-plated the airplane had a fervent desire to keep
their distance. Tactical Air Command and Wright-Pat didn’t even attend A-X meetings. Sprey pushed through an austere design
in which he got everything he wanted—almost.

He lost two significant battles. He wanted a single-engine airplane, while the Air Force insisted on two engines. And he wanted
a small maneuverable aircraft, while the Air Force wanted a much bigger airplane. In the end the airplane was bigger than
necessary and its maneuvering performance was degraded by the insistence on carrying too many bombs.

Once the A-X concept formulation package was finished, the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of defense approved
the design. Congress appropriated the initial R&D money, and a request for proposal (RFP) was sent out. In the RFP, Sprey
told the contractors they could not respond with the usual two-foot-tall stack of documents. The response had to be limited
to thirty pages and confined to pure design—no smoke and mirrors. Even more unprecedented, airplanes from two contractors
would be picked and the Air Force would supervise a combat-type fly-off between two flying prototypes. Specifications demanded
that the fuel and the engine be in separate parts of the aircraft. Fuel tanks had to be explosion-proof. To make sure this
was done, sections of the wing and fuselage would be fired at with Soviet weapons. And, oh yes, this must be done under simulated
flight conditions with wind blowing over the prototypes being fired upon. Wright-Pat said no facility existed for such tests
and that the resulting explosions would be too dangerous. Sprey told them to take the propeller engine off a World War II
B-50, attach it firmly to a solid stand, run up the engine, and let the prop wash go over the fuselage and wings. They did
and several years later proudly took credit for what they termed the world’s first ballistic wind tunnel.

Rather than having flammable and vulnerable hydraulic controls, the A-X would have mechanical cables and push rods—redundant
dual cables—to control the flight surfaces. Sprey insisted that the AX must be able to maintain flight even with half the
control surfaces shot away. As for armament, the A-X was built around a radical new cannon that fired banana-sized depleted
uranium bullets. To protect the pilot, the cockpit was surrounded by a titanium bathtub.

The Air Force loathed everything about the A-X, which soon would be known as the A-10. Jokes were made that it was so slow
that it suffered bird strikes—from the rear—and that instead of carrying a clock, the cockpit had a calendar. The aircraft
was so ugly it was called the “Warthog.” Many in the Air Force said no airplane could perform or survive in combat as this
airplane was supposed to perform. It would be almost twenty years before the A-10 had the chance to demonstrate just how wrong
its detractors were.

It was in 1969 that Boyd laid the cornerstone for one of his greatest bureaucratic victories.

Two players crucial to the victory, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, moved onstage
early in the year. But the drama was not yet ready to be played out. One character was missing.

He was a full colonel, a volatile, hand-waving test pilot and fighter pilot named Everest Riccioni. Riccioni took over the
Development Planning Office, part of the department where Boyd worked in early 1969. Boyd and Sprey briefed Riccioni on their
early work with the F-X and found a receptive audience. Riccioni had long favored the idea of a lightweight, high thrust-to-weight
fighter similar in some respects to what Boyd and Sprey wanted.

Riccioni is a curious fellow. He is a professional Italian in whom both tears and laughter are always near the surface. He
is so sensitive N
that his feelings can be hurt with a harsh look, and he has an unending need for recognition. Riccioni flew P-38s and P-51s
in World War II and then got an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering and a masters degree in applied mathematics
before going to MIT to work on a doctorate in astronautical engineering (he did the course work but dropped out without writing
a thesis). He was an instructor at the Air Force Academy, where he taught Astronautics 551—a course dealing with the mathematical
physics of space motion, perhaps the most advanced course at the Academy. Both Riccioni’s brilliance and naïveté were manifested
at the Academy when he wrote a book called
Tigers Airborne,
a book on aerial tactics. In the book Riccioni said Air Force tactics not only were stupid, but could get pilots killed in
combat. He said it in such a harsh and unequivocal fashion that the Air Force had to respond: he was not allowed to publish
the manuscript, and, unbeknownst to him, his superiors sent the manuscript to Boyd for comments. Boyd then was stationed at
Eglin and did not know Riccioni, but he sensed that the Air Force was looking for a reason to end the man’s career. And he
knew that if he—as author of the “Aerial Attack Study” and the man whom the Air Force acknowledged as its supreme aerial tactician—criticized
the manuscript, Riccioni’s career would be over. He read the manuscript and said he disagreed with Riccioni’s conclusions
but that only by being exposed to a wide variety of thought on aerial tactics could American fighter pilots remain the best-trained
pilots in the world. His refusal to pan the manuscript and his strong recommendation not to fire the author saved Riccioni’s
career.

It was one of those curious twists of fate that Riccioni now became the spark plug that helped Boyd resurrect the glory that
could have been the F-15. Riccioni was in a Pentagon R&D job where he could contract for research studies. Boyd and Sprey
told Riccioni how their idealized lightweight fighter had been gold-plated and was becoming heavier by the day. Boyd said
he was certain the F-15 would not perform as predicted and that many of the onboard high-tech gizmos would not perform as
advertised. And when that happened the Air Force would not be able to justify the ever-escalating costs, and the airplane
would again be in jeopardy. The Navy could once more go to Congress and try to scuttle the F-15 and force the F-14 on the
Air Force.

Boyd said the Air Force needed an alternative, a backup airplane in case the F-15 project failed. Riccioni had the vision
to see that a great fighter could be built by wrapping a small airplane around the F-15 engine. Sprey was pessimistic about
using the F-15 engine; he thought it wasn’t good enough to make a great fighter. For his part, Boyd wasn’t optimistic, but
thought no harm could come from Riccioni’s proceeding.

The new lightweight fighter would be the airplane of the future, a small, highly maneuverable, deadly little wasp of an airplane.
Since the Air Force did not know it needed a backup airplane, Boyd’s plan had to remain a secret. The Air Force would view
any backup airplane as a threat to the F-15. And Congress would never fund another fighter, not when the F-15 was in production.

Then Boyd’s uncanny ability to look ahead and plan move and countermove gave him another thought. If high-tech equipment was
not going to work on the F-15 and if performance criteria were not going to be met, wasn’t it possible that the Navy’s F-14
was facing the same problems? And if so, might not the Navy be thinking of an alternative to the F-14?

Riccioni drafted a memo to a general in charge of Research and Development and dangled the threat of a small, high-performance
Navy aircraft. Nothing galvanized an Air Force general more than being told the Navy was on his six. The general told Riccioni
to press on.