“If the United States is to maintain air dominance, it needs the [Lockheed Martin] F-22 [Raptor],” 1st Fighter Wing Captain Elizabeth Kreft said point-blank at the end of our Aug. 10 meeting.
The threat, Raptor advocates contend, is a dual one: the latest Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker derivate fighters and “double-digit” surface-to-air missile systems such as the S-300.
Users include:
S-300: Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, Hungary, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovakia, Syria, Ukraine and Vietnam
Su-27/30/33: Angola, Armenia, Belarus, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuala (rumored) and Vietnam
Critics including fighter designer Pierre Sprey say the earlier generation of U.S. fighters such as the Lockheed Martin F-16 Viper and Boeing F-15 Eagle are adequate to defeat Flankers. Raptor friends point to exercises such as the infamous (and perhaps rigged) Cope India as evidence that the Viper and Eagle can be bested.
My own take: Sure, the F-15 and F-16 might be equal or even slightly superior (when pilot training, weapons and joint and industry support are considered). But for how long, in light of continued Flanker development? And since when is parity enough? Don’t our pilots deserve better?
As for those S-300s … The U.S. military has perhaps become accustomed to operating in permissive air defense environment such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Granted, helicopter pilots might not agree that these places are all that permissive. But there certainly is no real threat to the fast-movers and high-fliers that haul the cargo, spot targets and come to the rescue of pinned-down Marines. In this context, the Air Force has spent a decade mostly running down its Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses force; the Raptor promises to revitalize the capability and ensure global access for legacy aircraft and the future Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning.
Speaking of which, some critics ask, why can’t we cut the expensive Raptor in favor of the cheaper Lightning? While a fine bomb-hauler and (one hopes) a good multi-service airframe, the F-35 is a mediocre performer. Said 1st Fighter Wing commander Brigadier General Burton Field, “The problem with the F-35 … is speed. It doesn’t have the capability to supercruise. Speed lets us get inside the decision cycle of the bad guy.”
For the most dangerous air battles and attack missions, F-35 squadrons will rely on F-22s for support. That’s an unavoidable state of affairs when you design an airframe to replace slow- and low-flying Lockheed Martin A-10 Warthogs and Boeing AV-8B Harriers as well as light and flexible F-16s and Boeing F/A-18 Hornets. The F-35 is a compromise. Potentially a very successful compromise, but still …
We’ve already sunk $25 billion into Raptor development. That money is irrecoverable. Further jets cost only around $115 million (perhaps twice as much as a new F-16) and will get even cheaper. We should get a good return on our investment. A good return, in my estimation, means a full fleet of at least 381 Raptors in 10 or more full-strength squadrons. That should guarantee air dominance for another 30 years or more.
There’s no such thing like a guarantee, especially not for decades.
Every technology can be countered and in military affairs, it will be countered if it’s important to you and if you are important at all.
There are so many things that can deny air superiority.
Surface-to-air lasers (yes, sounds Sci-Fi but is possible), high attrition rates through radar-independent SAM systems, quantity production for cheap air combat drones, infiltration commandoes against airfields, anti-airfield ballistic missiles cheaper than ABM’s…
And last but not least – modern fighters might become completely irrelevant in air combat if thousands of swarming small drones became the means of air attack. How would you hunt them down with Raptors? Sens an AMRAAM worth mroe than five attack drones after them? Use the Vulcan at 150ft altitude on targets as small as 2m span width?
Basically, 40mm AAA might become primary means of anti-air warfare in this extreme scenario.
No guarantee for Raptors…
… and as recent events in Lebanon and Iraq have so clearly pointed out, air superiority has little effect on next generation warfare. We absolutely rule the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan to no effect. The same applied to the IDF in Lebanon. How would some even more expensive hardware help?
This is a fools errand, subsidized by taxpayers to support endless war for profit.
No guaruntee. But the US likes to be able to fight any war, ranging from space invaders to insurgencies. So having the best kit available is key.
Frankly, we know several things: Mainly the threat outlook for many years to come.
SAMs will still make up the primary means of defense. Enemy aircraft will have improved sensors and even AWACS.
Sure, one day there *may* be a magic radar that can detect stealth at a reasonable range. But there is a physical component behind it, as well as software. You need power, you need control, and you need the tools to analyze the data.
Something the Europeans havent even caught up on yet.
Even so, stealth is still a major advantage.
Wanna take something on? The real crooks in defense industries are the US Gov’t.
Mainly because they gestate development.
The F-22A in no way shouldve costed $28bil to develop. But it did.
Its quite evident: LockMart and Boeing make more money from development than actually producing the aircraft.
In fact, in their ideal world, production is to be avoided at all costs, and development is to take as long as possible.
Its sick and pervasive.
“in my estimation, means a full fleet of at least 381 Raptors in 10 or more full-strength squadronsâ€
Man and just days after rethinking the whole data minning effectiveness thing.
Mr. Axe Welcome to the dark side. Be careful with that kind of talk thou keeping an open mind may get you sucked into the whole knight of the long knives mentality that seems to be going around for those not in lock step in some circles these days.
“This is a fool’s errand, subsidized by taxpayers to support endless war for profit.â€huh Noah??
Is that the Noah of this site? I didn’t know you were one of those military industrial complex conspiracy theory nut bags?
I owe you an apology, Mr. Axe.
I was skeptical of your reporting on this particular subject. You have come across as a vocal critic of the Raptor, and I doubted your ability to report with a lack of bias on this subject. I have enjoyed each part of your report on the Raptor and feel you have given it a fair shake. Good job.
Nah, it’s not Noah of this site. I thought so at first, too. It’s just some kook.
Noah from this site would have a link in his name.
Where are the swarms of drones? Where are the sensors and wepons small enough to fit on these but still sophisticated enough to brong down a Raptor? Where are the ground troops volunteering to waltz into land under a Sukhoi-filled airspace?
No, the F-22 can’t win the war on its own. No, it can’t deal with every threat we can possibly imagine. No, it’s not cheap. But for the next 30 years or so the world’s air-to-air threat’s going to advance, and we need a plane that stands head and shoulders above the pack. 108-0? Sounds like a good start.
I would check your list of S-300 users… Several countries are mere speculation (and in other cases such speculation has been proven false). Furthermore, some of thee countries posses older versions of S-300 (which is not that dangerous) and not S-300PMU1 and above. Furthermore, effectivness of any air defense system is as good as its user. Probably most would even run out of its missiles shooting at decoys.
The whole Raptor project shows very backward thinking: it is very much an extension of existing air combat systems. The idea that if just just make it a bit faster, stealthier and more manueuvrable then you have a winner.
But at root it’s just more of the same, a very big, expensive and hence very rare and valuable manned plane.
This is simply not going to cut it in a world where new paradigms are going to be coming out the woodwork. Network-centric systems, drone swarms, laser and other directed energy weapons, hypersonic systems, ultra-agile UCAVs and all the other good stuff we read about in DefenseTech makes this look very old indeed.
[This sudden insistence on supercruise is quite amusing - we've been doing pretty well without it for the last 50 years, and now suddenly it's become essential? Gimme a break...]
David,
You want to talk about the Raptor being expensive, and you list off hypersonic network-centric scramjet drones with laser weapons? Get real.
The Raptor works, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not a piece of theoretical crap. It ACTUALLY flies, as opposed to scramjets that have stayed in the air a grand total of about 30 seconds. It can actually evade radar, as opposed to drones that must maintain a constant, easy to follow communications link with a ground unit. And it has weapons that actually work, as opposed to laser beams that shoot twice and can barely fit on a 747.
Yeah, I’m sure the Raptor looks like crap when you compare it to an X-Wing. But we can actually build a Raptor. Get back to the comic convention, geeks.
Well, it’s nice to see that the Air Force still knows how to fight the kind of war that it grooms its generals for — the endless campaign for its hefty chunk of the federal budget. We can expect the dubious sunk cost argument advanced by this last ‘Raptor Watch’ installment to be a centerpiece of the propaganda for the program.
Once again, we see the two classic pillars of “successful” weapons systems development: 1) Generously spread the subcontracting money among lots of Congressional districts, and 2) piss as much appropriated money away as possible up front, early on. It’s important to have a phalanx of political “leaders” who are skilled at looking sincere when they fret about what a shame it would be to waste all the money that’s been “invested” in the program to date.
Do all this in the name of “freedom”, of course. And avoid unpleasant, impolite references to things like, oh, the deja vu quality of weapons procurement. Because we all know that the ONLY threats to our democracy are external. Broken federal budgets, luxury weapons, and crony capitalism — these are positive blessings for a healthy democracy! This is just what Madison and Jefferson dreamed of!
The Cyprus Republic is not a user of the Russian-made S-300 PMU1 surface-to-air missile system. Thanks to the political pressure of the U.S. Clinton Administration that was always eager to serve Turkish national security interests, the S-300 missile batteries that were purchased by the Cyprus Republic were never installed on the island of Cyprus. These missile batteries are currently part of the Hellenic Air Force (Greece)air-defense system and were part of the protective umbrella over the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Greece is both a NATO and an EU member, and a major buyer of defense equipment from the U.S.
Thanks for clearing that up guys. Apologies to Noah for the accusation.
I think the F-22 will be a very useful tool in the tool box for the future.
For you guys claiming the F-22 is for a yesterday fight and cant fight terrorist with an IED and AK blah blah blah. I would just like to remind you guys you don’t get to fight a gorilla insurgency until you defeat their conventional forces.
You guys screaming we don’t need such overtly dominating advantage in the conventional stage forget your history that conventional warfare losses are and can be vastly more than even a bad day of in a gorilla insurgency fight can dream of. See WW2 were single ships were sunk resulting in more dead than we currently have seen in 3yrs of gorilla warfare in Iraq or see battle of budge were entire units were surrounded and eliminated by blitz. Don’t put the cart before the horse guys.
One more thing is that don’t forget the F-22 is still classified on alot if not most of its abilities. As time goes on and the next major engagment I am sure will leak some pretty interesting unconfirmed or even spoken until then advantages.
Brian,
DE, hypersonics, network centric systems and drone swarms are all separate items, I’m not suggesting that they could all be put together (not unless you wanted somethign more expensive than the Raptor).
But they are all real and either present or likely to be when the Raptor sees action.
Even if it works – and so far all we’ve seen so far is a lot of heavily stage-managed flag-waving – it’s still an old-style man-in-the-cockpit fighter. Very comforting to the conservatives who never like to see anything too challenging, but it’s going to be horribly outperformed by some cheap electronic gizmos when it comes to the crunch.
Just how capable is the Raptor compared to a swarm of small UCAVs, even the sort that are around now? You really think dogfighting is going to win the day?
Our fighter pilots do deserve “the best” – and to go into combat knowing the odds of coming home are much higher than the odds of dying.
The point of the naysayers is….our soldiers deserve “the best” too. And at this expense what are we losing?
How many unarmored or lightly armored vehicles are still out there?
How many helicopters are getting shot down?
Soliders personal armor?
Comm gear?
Unmanned scout vehicles?
Networks of sensors to detect ground enemies?
The military should look at the big picture – China to Grenada – and make sure they can do the job.
But they should develop a factor of expected deaths and where $$ could reduce deaths based on a mix of historical info and projections from regional wars to the big one. If they spent $135M doing R&D on Humvee survivability and another $135M on personel armor protection and another $135M on new first aid gear to stop the bleeding (the new superbandages still aren’t out). We would lose 3 planes and save how many lives?
My dad was Air Force, I grew up in pilot communities, but even in the bad days of Korea/Vietnam/Gulf War I and II the pilots believed they were coming home while the grunts were flinching when a branch broke. The last time our pilots went out there with fatalistic thoughts (on a day in day out basis) we were doing low level bombing of oil factories over Ploesti.
So go buy the weapons for the war that most likely won’t be fought.
Against “UCAVs that we have today”? Well today the only operational UCAVs are Predators or similar prop-driven UAV conversions. They wist in very low numbers and operte medium altitude to fire missiles. An F-22’s sidewinders would make short work of one.
Yes, it’s a Fighter with a man in the cockpit. Just like an Abrams is a Tank with a 120mm gun and the CH-53K is a conventional whirly with one big rotor. Innovation that refines or enhances is no less useful than innovation that creates something totally new. The F-22 may be “just a fighter with a man in the cockpit” but its the best dman fighter with a man in the cockpit EVER. We know it works, we know what to use it for, and when the chips are down we’ll be damn glad we have it.
“But they should develop a factor of expected deaths and where $$ could reduce deaths based on a mix of historical info and projections from regional wars to the big one. If they spent $135M doing R&D on Humvee survivability and another $135M on personel armor protection and another $135M on new first aid gear to stop the bleeding (the new superbandages still aren’t out). We would lose 3 planes and save how many lives?”
There ya go again, injecting reality and a wider perspective into the discussion. When I go to the local air show, is your new first aid gear gonna trail red, white and blue smoke? I doubt it. Dammit, the F-22 is just, you know, cool! And as C-Low points out, it may have even cooler mystical superpowers that only the Elect know about.
David Dickerson,
Hey, good idea. They should develop a calculation that tells them exactly how much X program is going to save how many lives.
So, who do you trust to do that?
Are you going to trust the Army? The Air Force? Some policywonk guys? Donald Rumsfeld?
Where are you getting the data to put into this program? Are we calculating that a new fighter will save X number of lives because it keeps enemy bombers away, or does it only save the life of the guy in the cockpit.
Are we talking about likely scenarios, or possible ones? If it’s possible scenarios multiplied by the number of casualties, then we should put all our funds into ballistic missile defense.
The unfortunate thing is there’s absolutely ZERO way to be sure on any of this. How many lives will an up-armored Humvee save? Well, we won’t know how effective the armor is until we build a production version and test it out. Even then, in Iraq we’ve seen insurgents using larger bombs to get through the extra armor. How do you calculate the effectivity then?
Do you take into account deterrent value? Improved body armor on a soldier doesn’t scare China. But an invisible stealth battleship that can fly through the air and travel under the water will. If they decide not to go to war with us because we’ll send Voltron over to stomp their asses, is it worth it to spend $50 billion on the giant robot?
Anyone who makes the calculations will use their own criteria and assign their own values to the data. There’s no cosmic constant that tells us how many lives fast-setting bandages will save.
How about some perspective? Maybe I missed all the great air to air battles (only a handful) the US Air force and the rest of the world’s air forces have been involved in since the end of the Vietnam conflict. So why exactly are wasting billions of dollars on a small number of Cold War derived air to air fighters that will never shoot down anything because there are no technological (2-3GW) enemy forces to fight?(China-too interconnected. Iran, Syria? Sorry “big war” crowd, never going to happen! North Korea? Unlikely, but F15’s will do just in case.)
We need hundreds of networked real-time UCAV’s, and a few heavy bombers for killing Jihadists, and then some close air support aircraft for the troops on the ground. Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, COTW, which is the present/future (4GW, Post-conflict stability). The F22 Raptor is useless for all of this.
I began a couple of years ago with the belief that the F-22 was a very expensive mistake, and the F-35 an example of how it should be done. But I’ve kept my mind open… and my conclusions have largely flipped around.
The F-22 is not an incremental aircraft, with “a little more” of speed, stealth, etc. It’s a major step that combines full-on stealth with supersonic performance – an especially useful proposition in the Asian theater and in the future mideast.
Consider the overall threat spectrum, because David missed a couple of important ones:
* Proliferation of S-300/S-400 class anti-aircraft missile systems, with Moore’s law driving radar upgrades as well for earlier systems. Conclusion: significant escalation in the threat environment, door-kickers required with stealth to narrow the detection zone. Speed would also help, by increasing the range of fired bombs and missiles and narrowing detection/reaction time. The other way to go is ‘flood the zone’ dispensibility, or some combination of stealth and numbers. UAV/UCAVs may evolve to that stage at some point, and Israel’s Harpy suggests what may come, but the timeline and confidence are both uncertain at this point. Which requires a more conventional Plan B option.
* SU-30 family, and European exports of 4th generation fighters, plus MiG-29OVT/MiG-35 with improved radar, thrust-vectoring, etc. Conclusion: redoing the F-16s and F-15s not gonna cut it as a parity option, even with enhancements. F/A-18 Super Hornet is either a model stopgap program or the Brewster Buffalo of its era – and until it’s really tested in serious air-air combat, we won’t know.
* The thrust vectoring and canards in 4th generation competitors are especially important due to high-off-boresight short range air-air missiles, which have much wider “seek cones” these days, can be fired from any angle, and have sharply improved guidance and maneuverability to shrink the escape zones. This maximizes the tactical importance of “point and shoot” at short ranges. Conclusion: more advanced design with thrust-vectoring and/or control surfaces that allow unconventional maneuvers required.
* At the same time, medium range air-air missiles are also becoming much more deadly due to the effects of Moore’s Law and improvements in control technologies; the Israelis will tell you that some of their missiles have more computing power than the planes carrying them, and since missiles are easier and cheaper to upgrade that will continue. The Russians, of course, have the R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMski’ and can export it with modern aircraft.
Different conclusions have been drawn from this fact. The Europeans, who had fighters with 1990s tech (and hence limited stealth), have reacted by designing a very long range missile (the Meteor) with ramjet propulsion, to stay out of enemy range while launching. The USA reacted instead by building stealth into its next generation of fighters so they would become much harder to see at medium range – and supersonic supercruise ups the AMRAAM missile’s range by about 50%, too, even as it makes it easier to do the air-air equivalent of “drive by shootings” because you leave so quickly. The intent in both cases is to be able to launch attacks before an opponent is aware of you and stay out of their danger zones, something that was proven out as a huge advantage and intimidator in the Iran-Iraq war (Iraqi planes would actually stop flights wen US radar data said an F-14 Tomcat was in an area). As David notes, stealth also turned out to have big plusses when engaging advanced and often mobile ground-air missiles.
The third option is to conclude it’s the missiles, not the plane, and look for solutions like India’s very cheap upgraded MiG-21 ‘Bisons,’ carrying R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMskis’ and R-73/AA-11 ‘Archers’ for short-range work. The problem is, that mantra has been sung before and been wrong – which makes air forces cautious of relying on it. Problem for USA: if it turns out to be true, the mid-high end F-35 is the wrong solution.
* The USA is no longer the only entity with a serious AWACS force, and that’s known to be a huge effectiveness multiplier. Conclusion: AWACS-killers required. Stealth plus good medium-long missile capabilities = AWACS-killer that’s extremely hard to defend against. Russian approach instead: build a very large missile designed to kill AWACS planes, with a 300km range. Counter strategy to that is either disperse AWACS somehow, radically increase their radar range, or field aircraft with long-range radars of their own to extend the protection zone, ideally with stealth as well to keep attackers guessing at the escort coverage and complicate planning.
* Proliferation of ballistic missiles with short-medium ranges, and more accurate warheads. Conclusion: close bases are vulnerable, but aircraft that have to fly a longer way lose a lot of time over target. Unresolvable without options like supersonic cruise + tankers to maximize time over target a longer standoff ranges, and improve number of planes in the air per day over disputed zones. Supercruise speed of Mach 1.5 can almost double the “effective number of planes” in these situations.
Put these trends together, and the argument for the F-22 becomes quite convincing. While the F-35 Lightning II’s case becomes a lot blurrier, as a “middle way” that may not excel enough to break these dilemmas, but costs a lot compared to a true low-end option.
Hey, WarNerd,
No, there haven’t been too many great air-to-air battles. The closest we had (to my knowledge) was when we absolutely blew Saddam’s air force out of the sky in Gulf War I.
That does not mean, however, that those weapons are useless. Read your Sun Tsu. If you frighten an enemy so that he does not attack you, then you have won. I’ve got a buddy who is 6′5″ and weighs about 350 lbs. He’s been in a grand total of one fight in his entire life. Is his size wasted? No, because no one dares anger him.
I’m glad you’re completely certain that we’ll never fight Iran, China, or Syria. Really, I am. It makes me feel good inside, honestly. Like with sunshine and butterflies and rainbows in my soul. I wish I could be so certain.
Thanks Brian for reading my comments. Yes, I am optimistic, mainly because I am an international businessman, so I am quite sure we will never engage in nation-state war with any modern, interconnected country, especially if they have nuclear weapons; no politician is that stupid. There are a few dictators that need to go, but as we see over and over again, the war doesn’t end after you remove the government. We can easily remove any government in matter of weeks, that’s easy, and then what do you do? Unfortunately, that is why we will not risk anymore experiments in the Middle East. It should be about useful and relevant weapon systems, not pork projects, which is why I say the F22 is a waste.
Anyway, to your Sun Tzu reference. I think you made my point. Why would anyone take on the USA military straight up? That’s suicide. That is why our enemies jump to 4GW (because accept for Spec Ops, we are not good at it.) We are not trained, equipped or structured for it. Why, because it is long, convoluted, dirty, and there is no military solution, that we know of. It requires more than just killing the enemy. We are too enamored with WW2, Desert Strom warfare. Obsolete.
I’m not done yet. I would be a little more receptive to the Raptor we had enough of them, so losing a few from modern SAM’s, accidents, etc, wasn’t so painful. Think about it, if you send 10 Raptors, and you lost a few for whatever reason, you just decreased your capability substantially. Israel’s armor and one ship just found out the hard way from Hezbollah’s modern ATGM’s and an ASM. The future of modern war, using any weapon system, should be using a more decentralized approach to the battlefield, because modern weapons are so damn affective, that you are guaranteed to lose many aircrafts, ships, tanks from guided missiles and IED’s. That is why I, and others like me, keep pressing for swarming attack type warfare; using large numbers of UCAV’s, small fast attack littoral ships, and even armed UGV’s, combined with special forces types for the initial combat phase. Then we send in a large number of troops whom specialize in “nation building†(non-kinetic) to keep the peace.
I understand you guys want to pour more money into fighting gorilla resistance war but in reality there is no technology fix to that type warfare. The only thing that really makes a difference in gorilla war is Heart (moral will to see a long bloody dirty ugly struggle through without shame) and numbers with some old school brutality weapons. There is no amount of money that will make WAR especially a Gorilla War clean, civilized, pretty, and nice, with no innocence lost, no civilians killed, no casualties on our side. The expectations of some are just impossible to achieve. Utopia will never exist on earth as long as Human Nature survives.
What the hell it’s late I will break open the hive.
Our biggest weaknesses in gorilla war right now is OURSELVES. See Iraq the current casualties in Iraq historically are minimal and could easily be sustained for decades if needed. See Iraq were we face a enemy that cant hit US so he kills his own brethren amass all because such acts can get 15seconds on our media and the worst is they know our media will play it as evidence of our failure and not of their weakness (can you imagine in WW2 the Japanese slaughter of Philippines, Chinese, or hell other Japanese during our advance as proof of our failure). See Iraq were there is no force that can force US out of the country (short ourselves) unless we let them. See Iraq were we are building a native force (slowly but steadily) to take over the “boots†part letting US fall back to what we do best the “shock†force to come in when the enemy masses (even further limiting our casualties). See Iraq were even with all the above the moral has been crippled by a constant harping of impossible expectations. See Iraq were historically by the numbers is one of the most successful wars is in risk of being lost because simply many of our pop simply don’t have the heart to rage a war. See Iraq were we beat ourselves over every little mistake endlessly. See Iraq were thousands of years of violence and hate was supposed to suddenly be cured by our arrival and not by a governmental foundation we help establish and leave to cure itself through generations of blood and education (change is never easy or without risk or troubles or sacrifice, and status quo while predictable is never changing).
By the way the best anti gorilla force ever seen as yet was the Roman Legions. Their numbers mixed with determination and the ability to without shame do horrifically brutal things to “resistance supporting groups†made gorillas nearly irrelevant in their day. The idea of using previous conquered armies as the “boots on the ground†while the legions operated as the shock forces sent in when the boots drew out a sizable force of gorillas was highly effective.
1. Taking on the US is only Suicide as long as we have superior training, support, and technology. If we allow our nation-fighting capacity to stagnate, eventually someone will overcome all those and opposing the US openly in large-scale conflict becomes an option.
2. The greatest threat from places like China and India, and the -stans is not from their sitting governemnts. Its their sitting governments’ instability. China looks fairly stable, but there’s enough unrest that a major economic depression or natural disaster could lead to a Balkanization of the entire country. On bad days India-Packistan makes Korea look downright stable.
3. “Suicidal” is a word that stops most nation-states in their tracks, but we’ve already seen plenty where it doesn’t. Are we so sure such a mentality won’t creep into power someplace more threatening?
4. If missiles, drones, and the like worked as advertized; the US would have been bogged down outside Bag for weeks, every tank and truck in the inventory would long since be dust, and Yugoslavia would have knocked NATO from the sky. Stealthy enough planes flown by smart, alert pilots (unlike a certain f-117) can run rings around an air defense.
No amount of technology is going to stop wars. As events in the Lebanon show, a guerilla force can take on the most sophisticated armies in existence.
UCAVs are the future, there is no doubt about that. I’ll be posting some items on recent developments in the near future. They’re not on the front line just yet (well, some of them are), but in the very near future they will be present in large numbers, and thet are a big challenge to people who like macho manned fighters.
As for future threats:
* S-300/400 = useless against numbers of UCAVs
* SU-30 family = likewise
* The thrust vectoring and canards = manned aircraft can’t compete in sharp turns – if it’s an issue.
* Medium range air-air missiles = again, impractical against large numbers of UCAVs
* Conclusion: AWACS-killers required = the sort of thing that number of stealthy UCAVs are good for.
* Proliferation of ballistic missiles with short-medium ranges = the target set for persistent UCAVs
More significantly, UCAVs can be extremely useful in insurgencies, while the F-22 is just an expensive way of delivering bombs.
You’re dramatically over-estimating the ability of UAVs to engage in combat roles. Period. Sure, they make a nice supplement. They’re handy to have.
But there are multiple technological problems that you can’t overcome.
UAVs will never outmaneuver manned fighters, for the same reason I can’t play Street Fighter II with X-Box Live. There’s lag time anytime you have to go through a network or transmit signals over great distances. Anything that requires precise timing and instant reactions is going to be affected severely by lag time. Now, for flying a UAV around, and moving a camera about, and then firing a Hellfire missile at a car, a UAV’s communication system does a fine job. But if a dedicated hard-wired cable system can’t transmit the button combination and timing needed to perform a dragon-punch when I’m playing some asian kid in Minnesota, what makes you think you can radio the signals for effective air combat in real time to a UAV operating in hostile territory against active jamming systems while an enemy pilot who does not have to worry about lag time fires a missile at you? How can you dogfight when every maneuver you make is 10 seconds behind?
You can’t.
How will UAVs defend you when an SU-30 comes screaming over your headquarters and bombs the hell out of your command structure? Yes, I know that you can pilot UAVs from your parents’ basement in Sandusky, Ohio, if you feel like it. But you still need boots on the ground wherever you’re fighting, and you still need someone to provide air superiority.
What do you do when your enemy manages to jam your communications? “Oh, crap. All our UAVs just fell out of the sky. I guess we’re completely F***ED!!!!”
Finally, a word on guerillas. Yes, they can take on modern armies. As long as the modern armies play nice. As long as Israel is concerned with civilian casualties, as long as they sincerely try to avoid hitting the hospitals, churches, and schools where guerillas stay.
Israel could wipe out Hezbollah today, if they were willing to engage in total war. It’s not a matter of technology. Whatever your miracle technology, fighting a guerilla war is simple. You’ve just got to be willing to kill a whole lot of people. We can do that. A few B-1s could level all of southern Lebanon. Iraq? We could end the insurgency nearly immediately, if we were willing to slaughter a few hundred thousand people. Insurgents in Tikrit? No more Tikrit, no more insurgency.
None of your UAVs, none of your proposed silver bullets will do any more than the stuff we have right now. You’ve got to break a people’s will to fight. That is the only way. And a shiny new unmanned drone with a better camera won’t do that. Only raw brutality will.
It’s good to see I have at least one person who agrees with me. Great discussion!
I have read all the comments, and am still waiting for someone to tell me how the F22 is worth all the money, either now, or in the future, and therefore resources should be reallocated to tackle un-conventional threats that we are engaged in for the next 30 years.
F22 used to kill terrorists, or insurgents, please. The F22 is not useful in Iraq and Afghanistan. Large numbers (or any numbers for that matter) of high tech fighters going at it in air-air combat, NEVER GOING HAPPEN! I admit UCAVS are not ready for air-air combat, but for stalking and assassinating a single person or small group, they work well now, and are only going to get better. Killing the correct target and minimizing collateral damage is a must for 4GW.
Like I stated earlier, our current capability can easily destroy any conventional battlefield threats we find (still looking). I am more interested finding ways to sustain ourselves for 4GW. WW2 mass bombings, mass occupation forces, is not politically acceptable anymore, so we have to find other ways to win (which is defined by long-term positive outcomes, not body counts). It’s all about managing scare resources effectively, which is why the F22 is not needed. Did I mention the Cold War ended, and is never coming back?
We have to tame our desires for short, clean, high-tech, easily definable wars, that we all love, and find creative ways of dealing with the crappy reality we find ourselves in now, and in the future, because, Americans have no appetite for bloody and sustained conflicts, which is must in order to defeat the barbarians in Africa and the Middle East.
The F-22 is an awesome machine. Built for complete air-surpemecy against an enemy force with fighters comparable to US legacy fighters. This scenario, while improbable, is NOT impossible. But as it is improbable, it should be procured in a fashion that reflects that. While it would/will be a great tool to the US Air Force’s toolbox it should not be the only tool or the main tool. It would be foolish not to have ANY of these fighters, but it would also be foolish to gamble everything on it. One feature of the F-22 that is often overlooked by both sides is the ability for a single F-22 to increase the effectiveness of other US legacy fighters operating with it, as seen in the recent wargames in Alaska. Ya dig?
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“and am still waiting for someone to tell me how the F22 is worth all the money, either now, or in the future”
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Because the money is already spent. Buying it now makes it cheaper to operate than the F-15C since it is already more advanced than the F-15C and has more growth space and processing capacity available for future upgrades.
Everyone here makes the same mistake assuming that the only war we will fight is against a bunch of terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assumptions like that will leave the US ill-prepared when dealing with a nation with a bit more… organization?
I’ll accept your financial logic; but if we have to buy Air-Superiority fighters to make Congress, and the paranoid anti-China crowd happy, then the JSF has to go (at least domestically), because we definitely don’t need both of these obsolete, expensive, and irrelevant projects.
Anyway, my strategic rationale stands, because unless you are a religious zealot or and environmentalists nut-job and think the world is going to hell and a hand basket, nation-state warfare is history. India/Pakistan, and Eritrea/Ethiopia are the last of the nation-states to either threaten or fight each other, but they’ve learned from their madness; so choose your resources wisely. Stop fighting the future, and fight the present.
Brian,
You are seriously underestimatng UCAVs. You seem to be assuming that they have to be piloted remotely, and that simply is not the case. With something like Air Dominator, all it needs a human for it to confirm the kill decision…cruise missiles don’t even need that. And if you think that other nations will be squeamish about allowing machines to decided who they kill, you are horribly wrong.
UCAVs will be at least as capable as human pilots of operating in an environment where communications have gone down. As you will have seen from my piece on Swarms, they are actually much, much better than humans at dealing with issues like collision avoidance and co-operation without overt communication.
When you smash the enemy’s HQ, their unmanned systems will not even blink.
As for your comment “We could end the insurgency nearly immediately, if we were willing to slaughter a few hundred thousand people. “
- I think you need to get with the 21st century, not the early 20th.
The US is simply not going to be in a situation where that is ever possible. This is why we need smaller, smarter, persistent systems capable of making a real difference in a guerilla war (as well as other types), not Cold War leftovers optimized for dogfights with non-existent MiGs.
We need the JSF, not particularly for the Air Force, but for the Navy and Marine variants. The JSF is also too important to kill because of the international ties.
Given those factors, we may as well purchase the A variant, as it’s projected to be cheaper to operate and service than our current generation fleet.
I’m not willing to write off state vs state conflicts just yet. I think fights vs Iran or Syria are still a definite possibility. Also, you need to maintain your capacity for fighting such operations as a deterrent. The primary reason state vs state warfare seems so unlikely today is because the US has such an overwhelming advantage. No one in the world can hope to triumph if the US of A weighs in on one side. It was only about 15 years ago when Iraq launched an invasion of Kuwait. It was only about a month ago when Israel invaded Lebanon (while ostensibly a fight against Hezbollah, the Lebanese military could have easily become involved–if they could grow a sack).
David,
Color me unconvinced. I have no doubt that other nations would have no problem with allowing machines to make decisions on who to kill. I do have doubts that UAVs will ever be able to distinguish a Humvee from a cow. Our servers just crashed this morning at work, so maybe I’m biased at the moment.
I know you’ve got images in your head of robot drones flying around like that scene in “Terminator”. I don’t buy it.
I’m not worried about destroying an enemy’s HQ and having their drones keep on fighting. I doubt any foreign power will muster a large enough or advanced enough force of UAVs to realistically fight the US. I’m worried about us using a force of UAVs and finding that they can’t stop enemy fighters. Even if our UAVs keep attacking, I don’t want our troops bombed from the air.
The truth is, we’ll need BOTH jet fighters and UAVs in the future. The UAV won’t replace manned jets, it will supplement them.
Also, the more capable you make a UAV, the more expensive it will be. If it has the abilities of an F-22, it will cost the same as an F-22.
Finally, I know we’re not going to go back to tactics like the fire-bombing of Dresden. However, my point was, that is the ONLY way to truly break an insurgency. New gizmos and widgets and toys won’t do it. No matter how many F-22s or UAVs we buy, they won’t end an insurgency. The only way to do it is boots on the ground and a willingness to shoot a lot of people. No, the F-22 won’t help. But neither will any other tech gadget.
David, RE:
“UCAVs are the future, there is no doubt about that. I’ll be posting some items on recent developments in the near future. They’re not on the front line just yet (well, some of them are), but in the very near future they will be present in large numbers, and thet are a big challenge to people who like macho manned fighters.”
UCAVs have been shown to be only about 20% less expensive than manned fighters for similar roles, and take a number of penalties that go with their advantages. One being significantly higher loss rates, which over time tend to erase the cost advantage.
They are valuable things to have… but PERSISTENCE is their greatest asset not cost. If you’re thinking of “massed UCAVs” that can take on enemy aircraft or air defenses, I think that’s a fantasy… if we can’t buy that many fighters now, we won’t be able to buy that many UCAVs either. And even against low-end MQ-9 Predator B UCAVs at $8-9 million each, SAMs are still cheaper. UCAVs will have a role in “Wild Weasel” SEAD missions, but your notion of them overlooks some important realities – as well as real-world lessons from places like Bosnia.
BOTH fighters and UAVs will be needed in future wars… and just as UCAVs may encroach upon manned aircraft missions, some of the jobs currently being done by UAVs will need manned aircraft to take those roles back in order to get the requisite effectiveness in the wars we face today.
UCAVs are a supplement. NOT a panacea. And that has nothing to do with testosterone, and everything to do with a sober assessment of the facts.
I believe we stand upon a very similar threshold that our grandparents did in the 1930’s. They also didn’t want to commit to upgrading the Air Force until Pearl Harbor.
This discussion just keeps just keeps on going, awesome.
We have an approximately 400 billion dollar defense budget (excluding supplemental), which as everyone knows is much larger than anybody else, even big bad China. This buys power projection and strategic options, not just typical self defense. No one is or will ever come close.
Yet, time and time again, we can’t even wipe out some guerilla/insurgent force. So I ask, what is the correct balance between our desire for cool, and useless weapons systems and the things we actually use and need to “win” the wars we have now? We can’t have it all.
High tech air superiority fighters, big expensive Cold War ships (excluding carriers) and submarines, ICBM’s, FCS, and Spy satellites (Russians, and Chinese of course); or better body armor, better small arms, better battlefield communications, real-time intelligence, more effective armored ground transportation, civil affairs/MP’s/Peacekeepers, UCAV’s, and IED/RPG/Sniper defense. Also, need more training for urban/asymmetric threats.
You tell me where the bulk of that $500 billion needs to go.
The problem with the insurgency is this. There are a few thousand insurgents. They look just like everybody else in Iraq. They smile and wave at our troops when we drive by. They go to work in the morning, come home at night. They go to the bar to drink beer, and play “kick the sherpa” on Saturdays. Indistinguishable. They also pick up explosives from Crazy Ackbar, the local used car dealer. Then they go and blow things up. Then they go right back to waving at our troops and going to work in the morning.
So how do you catch these guys? Oh, some of the locals have a good idea who they are. When Abdul doesn’t come home on Tuesday nights until after midnight, they know what he’s doing. But he’s “fighting the good fight”. He’s fighting the Americans, and some of them respect that. They’re not gonna squeal, even when some fellow Iraqis get killed.
That’s going to continue. It’s going to continue until someone clamps down HARD on it. In Saddam’s day, when something like this happened, he had everyone in the neighborhood shot. Neighbors become a whole lot less sympathetic when Abdul gets them all dead.
“Fear will keep the locals in line. Fear of this battlestation.”
The US is a warm and fuzzy military. We’re all happy and shiny and we don’t kill innocents. Sadly, you can’t describe many of the people in Iraq as “innocents”. They’re silently complicit.
Brian,
“I do have doubts that UAVs will ever be able to distinguish a Humvee from a cow.”
I think you’re a few generations behind in machine vision!
“Our servers just crashed this morning at work, so maybe I’m biased at the moment.”
That will hit complex systems like the F-22 at least as badly as UCAVs.
“I know you’ve got images in your head of robot drones flying around like that scene in Terminator.”
Big, awkward, vulnerable craft with limited sensors…no, nothing like that.
“I doubt any foreign power will muster a large enough or advanced enough force of UAVs to realistically fight the US.”
Insurgents could start using them against US forces tomorrow.
“The UAV won’t replace manned jets, it will supplement them.”
Dream on.
“Also, the more capable you make a UAV, the more expensive it will be. If it has the abilities of an F-22, it will cost the same as an F-22.”
No, for a lot of reasons. The simplest of which is man-rating: UCAVs simply don’t have to be as safe and reliable as manned craft.
And when is a human-piloted F-22 going to be able to fly 72-hour missions without blinking once?
“Finally, I know we’re not going to go back to tactics like the fire-bombing of Dresden. However, my point was, that is the ONLY way to truly break an insurgency”
Remember, appalling as it was, the fire-bombing of Dresden did not break German morale. Against guerillas, massive force did not work for the Soviets in Afghanistan, and it did not work in Chechnya. It also, most tellingly, did not work for Saddam Hussein: given external support, insurgents will go on fighting whatever you throw at them. And the more civilians you kill, the more popular their cause becomes.
Joe,
“UCAVs have been shown to be only about 20% less expensive than manned fighters for similar roles, “
That’s the problem – they’re trying to use them the same as old-style aircraft, not the sort of thing they are good at. If you built a robot F-22 it would have the same sort of limitations as the manned version.
“PERSISTENCE is their greatest asset not cost. “
Agreed it’s important, but it’s one of several. Expendability – the fact that is’s not a political problem if one goes down is also major.
“If you’re thinking of “massed UCAVs” that can take on enemy aircraft or air defenses, I think that’s a fantasy… if we can’t buy that many fighters now, we won’t be able to buy that many UCAVs either. And even against low-end MQ-9 Predator B UCAVs at $8-9 million each, “
I’m thinking of MUCH cheaper UCAVs, like the Boeing Air Dominator or the Northrop Killer Bee, where you’re talking less than $100k per unit.
The JITSA concept which I looked at a few months back – http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002309.html – envisages 600 of them being unleashed at a time.