U.S. Army aviators in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun removing the Longbow radars from their AH-64D Apache helicopters. Which is funny, since the radar is pretty much the point of the $10-billion Longbow upgrade. 
The radar weighs 1,500 pounds and makes the Apache sluggish in hot and high-altitude environments — really the only places the Army fights anymore. Aviators are cool with flying without their radars since the things were designed for taking out Soviet tanks. “It was designed for a different fight than we’re finding ourselves in now,” Lt. Col. Mark Patterson told Defense News. He added that the A-model Apache (dating from 1983) is better suited to today’s fights.
This is old news. In Balad, Iraq, in February, Sgt. Erik Morrow told me that the M-1A1 Abrams tank was better for Iraq than the newer M-1A2 since the A1 tank is more reliable and starts up quicker. Earlier, the Marine Corps aviators of All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332, deployed to Al Asad in western Iraq, had told me their old $40-million F/A-18D Hornets equipped with sensor pods are better-suited to counter-insurgency combat than $130-million F-22A Raptors, which don’t even have hardpoints for pods. See my Flickr for pics.
The major impetus for the constant development of new and more high-tech weapons was the arms race with the Soviet Union and the need to counter massed tank armies with much smaller forces. Those things no longer apply, and now critics across the services are calling for a different way of doing things — namely, sticking with weapons that work, even if they’re old. In some cases, the Defense Department has listened, which is why we’re seeing M-14 rifles and Light Antitank Weapons pulled out of storage for troops in Iraq.
But old stuff doesn’t keep the defense industry flush with cash. And Pierre Sprey, one of the designers of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and an F-22 critic, told me that’s the point of most new weapons. More on that later.
P.S. — The excellent Daniel Robert Epstein interviewed me for Suicidegirls.com. Check it out.
UPDATE 06/27/06 8:44 AM: Eric Umansky looked at the Apache’s woes all the way back in ‘99.
New is not always good….old is not always bad.
It never ends, the miltary wants new toys, but their old toys are the ones that last.
The F-16
The M-14
M-2 50 cal [Ma duce]
1911 .45 pistol
shot guns
The best of all The ancient B-52 Doesn’t break, doesn’t need air condtioned hangers like the B-2. aand is 2/3 cheaper to fly than the B-1 and B-2.
Cain’t put down drugged up baby killers with the M-16 22 caliber bullet? Check the ware houses, Bet you can find enough Bar’s and Tompsons to equipt two or three marine Brigades. Lets see them keep fighting after Mr Browing or general Thompason introduce themselves to their torso?
And while your at it…if the army really wants to make an impression on some one dying to collect his 72 virgins. may I sugest using a old fashion flame thrower to get him there. I am willing to bet that he won’t be so happy to be sent to pardise that way!
Speaking of older versus newer, I would say that there are many places where the new technology would work just fine (like IT), but in many places as the DOD has found, older designs work better, perhaps with some improvements.
For instance, there is a fascinating story behind the Army’s search for a new common battlefield weapon. They have spent years and many, many millions looking at various designs from Heckler & Koch with the XM8 and other companies with their designs and have realized that with a few modifications (moving to a short stroke gas piston design instead of the M4/M16 direct gas blowback system), things work pretty well. And from a training perspective, other weapon calibers based on the same design that function and undergo maintenance with the same manual are the most efficient way to go.
It is a story I would love to see you guys cover here on defense tech from a variety of perspectives. Logistics, development, funding, performance, etc…etc…etc…
Hey Dave, how do the Marines know that the F/A 18 is better than the F-22, since, you know, the Marines don’t FLY the F-22? What’s next, interviewing an Army Ranger about the pros and cons of the new DDX?
Insurgents aren’t the only groups we could theoretically fight. We need to keep upgrading our forces to maintain our advantage over real militaries.
Brian,
Read more carefully next time. David quoted the Corps aviators as saying their F/A-18s have *hardpoints* that allow them to be configured for a variety of missions whereas the F-22s do *not* have hardpoints. While the F-22 *can* perform air to ground ops, they are optimized for air to air ops whereas the F/A-18 was designed and built from the ground up to be much more modular in the number and types of stores it can carry and deploy.
One does not have to be an Air Force aviator to understand or appreciate the issues associated with mission specific requirements.
Bryan
Bryan, Dave said:
“(Marines) had told me their old $40-million F/A-18D Hornets equipped with sensor pods are better-suited to counter-insurgency combat than $130-million F-22A Raptors, which don’t even have hardpoints for pods.”
He quoted this as if the marines had experience with both systems. The fact that the F-22 does not have hardpoints for pods does not mean jack squat about its performance. Have any of the marines ever flown an F-22? Nope.
That argument aside, this entire article is full of political spin.
“Oh, they’re taking off the longbow radar! Why are we paying 10 billion dollars to upgrade it when we aren’t even using what we have?” Maybe because the longbow radar is designed to destroy enemy tanks, and insurgents don’t have tanks.
“‘Oh, the F/A 18 is better at this sort of work than the F-22,’ said a couple of pilots who will never get to fly the new jet.” Regardless, that’s like saying that an F-150 is better than a Ferrari because it has more towing capacity. The Ferrari ain’t designed for towing capacity. The F-22 isn’t replacing the F/A 18 anyway.
Finally, we have the comment on the M1-A2 Abrams. That tank has a lot of new electronics built in, most of them NOT designed to fight insurgents. So the fact that the older version is easier to use when fighting a bunch of jackasses in turbans is not really newsworthy.
The point of the article is “Hey, all this new stuff is a waste of money.” I can sum it up in 3 sentences:
1) “Apache anti-tank radar useless when insurgents have no tanks.”
2) “New jet designed for air-to-air combat not as good at hunting guys on ground, says pilot who has never laid eyes on it.”
3) “Advanced electronics designed to link dozens of tanks together in massed combat not useful when using only one tank.”
Sadly, these sound like headlines from The Onion.
What some folks are missing, I think, is that we’re still fielding Cold War-style weapons when the fight we’re in now … and the mostly likely future fight … demands simpler, cheaper and more robust weapons. It’s not that an F-22 ain’t good at air-to-air (although Sprey would say it isn’t). The point is that the F-22 is pretty much useless when Iraq represents the present and future of armed conflict. Now, if you disagree with THAT, you might be right to say we need F-22s and M-1A2s and AH-64Ds.
Cheers.
Its funny that the plethora of equipment showing ability to do things they weren’t designed to origionally has instilled a mindset in some that ALL equipment should be able to do ALL things. An M9 and a M249 are both guns, but neither will do the other’s mission very well. Does that mean they’re bad equipment?
Sprey’s off the reservation, he’s painting the Raptor with shortcomings it doesn’t have, and attempting to cull worship in the infallibility of his own pet projects. I love the A-10 and F-16 as much as anyone, but any serious air-to-air threat force is going to be fielding contemporary designs. Against this our force-reduced, recruitment-trouble airforce isn’t going to be able to overwhlem with numbers, we need superior training equipment and, unlike the Me-262, to not have them bombed on the ground or kept out of the war by Hitler (don’t imagine that second one will be as much of a problem).
If you believe there will never be a conflict between the US and a developed military again, the Raptor seems like a tremendous waste. But, if you believe as I do that we might be mixing it up with Sukhois at some point, having the Raptor will be a welcome bit of foresight.
Just sticking with old designs becuase they get the job done isn’t an answer, even the Long War model demands adaption, he who doesn’t innovate is dead. Sure, the M14 is cheap and there’s backstock lying around. But put it and a Mk. 17 into a troopers hands and which would he rather have? Given a choice of an M113 and a Stryker, which does he want to roll through the Triangle in?
If we do get into a real war and by that I mean a two or three year conflict with millions of men and thousands of planes what good will 200 f-22 be?
In such a conflict we can not aford to wait three to six months for each new jet fighter. Rapidly all those moth balled fighters sitting in the desert will be used up and we will have to start building planes in mass.
That mens a far more primative less capable aircraft. Simplier, stronger much quicker to build. Think of a line of sub sonic fighters with improved electronics.
Since dog fights don’t happen at super sonic speed, imagine a suped up F-86 with, missiles and computers, being pushed out by the thousands.
Even today, if conflict erupts, can 50 or so f-22’s hope to cope with 500 chinese F-7’s? Or will those F-22’s have to be backed up with a few hundred F-16 and f-15’s?
So what will happen if one day we no longer have all those f-16’s and 15’s and our whole air defence depends on 2 or 3 hundred F-22’s?
what’s the old Russian proverb “Quanity has a quality all it’s own!”
I’m sure the pilots of all those F-86s will wonder how they’d fare if they too had radar-guided missiles. If quantity were the ultimate factor then Sparta would have never made anyone’s history books. Rome would have beena pretentious city in the Latin league, and we’d have taken 20-30% casualties minimum in both Gulf Wars. The Raptor is the continuation of this doctrime: superior weapons and training used intelligently will defeat numbers.
Pierre Sprey, one of the designers of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and an F-22 critic, told me that’s the point of most new weapons.â€
(sarcasm on) Noo, your kidding, you mean a designer of a fighter that is outdated, but desperately wants more sold is saying the newer and better jet is worst. Wow, I never would have thought he would say such a thing. (sarcasm off)
To: David Axe, What about the future potential threats…like China? As for the more realistic threat…Iran & NK, Iran has a decent AF…We want to wipe the floor with them…not go toe 2 toe.
To: Davids, honestly I don’t think the US will ever go to war with China…we both have nukes, so I think at most it would be like the cold war with Russia. But the difference today is that we have much stronger economical ties to China then we ever did with Russia. The F-22 can be used for a variety of missions…its latest test was successful with it dropping a jdam at 50,000ft while supersonic…nuff said. It’s an over-all killer platform.
I am as big a fan of using simple and robust tools for simple jobs as the next guy or gal, but I think that dismissing weapons that don’t get used as useless might just be missing the point. Were China to make a move gainst Taiwan for instance, it would be based on most likely a careful cost benfit analysis. If there were no F22’s and the SU 30 type jets would be contesting air dominance over the Taiwan start with F15’s, the Chicoms have a hand worth playing. It would be a tough fight – but it is proabbly winnable. And in the Taiwan strait Air superiority would probably be the end of the fight one way or the other, who ever gets it probably has won the fight. The existence of the F22 makes the prospect of attaining Air Dominance so chancy, that it would probably not be attempted.
My point is that the overmatch that programs like the F22 or m1-a2 or B2 provide make the prospect of convetional warfare against the US so dangerous and probably disastrous that few organised states would consider running the risk. If those programs did not exist the calculus would change – so th success of programs of the F22 might in part be measured against the very fact that do never fire a shot in anger, their overmatch successfully deters major state vs state conflict of a conventioanl nature.
In unconventional war like geurilla fights the US is superiior on the battlefeild – but the overmatch is not enough to totally deter thsi kind of warfare. Intelligence and Technology as well as political circumstances are required to win that style of war – and there does not appear to be the near prospect of magic bullets that would deter it entirely.
David,
Of course we don’t need Apache Longbows in Iraq. The Longbows already did their job. We achieved air superiority over Iraq back in ‘91, making most of the Raptor’s advanced capabilities moot. We don’t need them… in Iraq. The real question is, will we need these weapons against an enemy that DIDN’T have the majority of their forces cornholed 15 years ago.
Again, anti-tank weapons ARE useless, if the enemy has no tanks. Air to air fighters are useless, if the enemy has no fighters. And armored tanks are useless if the enemy has no guns. But unless our next war comes against Mrs. Jensen’s Special Ed class, I’d suggest we not throw away powerful new military equipment.
Really, this article was beneath you.
Johan W: “Were China to make a move gainst Taiwan for instance, it would be based on most likely a careful cost benfit analysis.”
I’m sorry, but “careful” and “analysis” are not words that I would ever use in describing scenarios in China/Taiwan. IMO, all it would take for a full-scale shooting war to erupt between the two countries would be one successful vote in Taiwan for independence. The mainland Chinese will not allow that loss of face, cost-benefit be damned.
I’m not sure we’ll ever go to war with China, either, but for different reasons. I’m pretty certain that the U.S., faced with the choice of going to war with a genuine world power and a major trading parter who is holding most of our debt or watching that trading partner steamroller over one of the few reasonably functional democracies in the region, will make a few condemnatory speeches and then go get the popcorn.
Murc: “Noo, your kidding, you mean a designer of a fighter that is outdated, but desperately wants more sold is saying the newer and better jet is worst.”
Sprey doesn’t get a dime from any more F-16s sold. Why would he have any vested interest in selling more of them?
On the other hand, he and the fighter mafia had to fight to get the F-16 and the A-10 on the agenda in the first place because both planes were designed to do one thing better than any other plane on the battlefield rather than create an extremely lucrative flying brick like the F-111. As awesome as the F-22 is, the process that produced it looks a lot more like the F-111 than the F-15 or F-16.
I also say that a plane that is capable of doing the work of 10 also needs to be at least 10 times more reliable than the older jets. The magnification effect you get from being technically superior cuts both ways, because the impact of one grounded advanced jet becomes equivalent to grounding 10 or more of the less advanced ones.
I agree war with China is Highly unlikely. First of all they really would not want to piss off their best customer. Second China’s biggest weakness is food! They never had all that much good farm land and are ruining more and more of what little they do have. and Third It’s true that china has over 300 million middle class or better citizens, even more that us. But that still leaves over a Billion dirt poor hungry peansants that are begining to ask, “Were is mine?”
As for trying to fight a war with less than 200 F-22’s it is possible. If the F-22 is the point of the spear and like any spear point it is only effective if it is backed up with a long strong shaft. That means the F-22 must be backed up a relative large numbers of cheap, dependable but still effective realtive low cost fighter. Easy to build and maintane. We just could do with less if the F-22 is all it is claimed to be!
Anti-tank systems are good for other things besides tanks, like bunkers.
Also heat sensors can also pick up warm truck engines when not looking for tanks