This recent U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) report (PDF) is about the USAF response on what it thinks about the fighter roadmap for the service.
In the report, the USAF makes claims that are simply false. For instance, the USAF claims that the best path to follow is to have an all “5th generation fighter” force. Well, if that is the case, the U.S. will have to continue building more F-22s because the F-35 doesn’t qualify as a “fifth generation fighter”. And, the purpose of the term “fifth generation fighter” is conveniently used by the USAF in this report. It is a sad attempt to mislead someone that has never been near the fast-jet community. Shouldn’t the top leaders of the USAF, General Schwartz and Secretary of the USAF, Mr. Donley make sure their service is being honest with our elected officials?
There are other interesting things in this GAO report. The USAF doesn’t want to have jets that can only do one or a few things. This kind of thinking is admirable. One example used is that if you have an F-35, you can use it for big war as well as chasing off the errant Cessna at home. Admirable, but given the weak budget, a disastrous management of the F-35 program, an equally disastrous management and sustainment of the fighters we have, along with the galactically stupid effort to stop F-22 production; unrealistic.
Are there any fixes at this late stage? The answer seems to be; no. The only thing left are efforts that are imperfect attempts to fix things and hope we don’t have to use these solutions against a real enemy that can shoot back. One possibility? Start buying new-build F-15s to my idea of 20 fighter groups and get better results than the USAF’s path to self-destruction with the F-35. “Big war” scenarios (which involve mostly fixed targets in the first few nights of a war) could involve the F-15 carrying JASSM*. That combined with the F-22 doing JDAM and SDB, might carry the night. A new-build F-15 is ready for home defence and can carry more weapons up to 50 percent further than an F-35. It is also superior for things like close air support. When the F-15 shows ups with a lot more weapons (and a second crew-member to help out) the aircraft is preferred by the ground forward air controller (JTAC) because it can stick around a while and drop bombs until the troops are happy. And in comparison, the F-35 that shows up that day could be a B or a C and may have left the deck without its gun pod. All that, and an F-15, like the F-35, is not a “fifth-generation fighter”.
The USAF’s response to Congress is lazy because they state that they don’t have the data to predict life issues with the legacy F-16 fleet. What have they been doing all these years with our money? Did they downsize their engineering skills or something? Oh wait, yeah they did. The USAF is awash in maintenance metrics that it collects on every flight and every maintenance activity. And let us be clear. Thinking that you can take the F-16 past 8000 hours in life is just foolish. The USAF has been negligent at keeping their force structure up. A continuous low-rate buy of F-15s and F-16s since the end of the Cold War would have kept train-wrecks that we are currently experiencing from happening. Based on that, every sitting USAF boss since the end of the Cold War can be accused of gross-negligence.
The short answer is; the USAF does not know how to properly manage expensive aircraft that the taxpayer gives them. When the USAF can stand in the mirror and see the real problems which are a lack of leadership, management and honesty, then maybe we can expect them to act like the USAF America deserves. This recent GAO report is nothing more than an admission of USAF incompetence. It hurts to say that–because there are a lot of talented people in the USAF–but there you are.
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*=The JASSM program is under some trouble on cost and technology issues. It is in no way perfect but after the USAF and industry fix the fuse issues on the thousands we have in stock and explores the extended range models, it is better than having nothing for going into stiff defenses. After some fail and some are shot down, the probability of kill of this weapon could be lower than 50 percent. Yet if you shoot enough, you can still get some success without risking a pilot. In the end, while these warshots will be gold plated, they have some worth. With that, JASSM is yet another example of faulty program management and a lesson of how not to do things.
Perhaps the answer is, as some people have suggested, to abolish the USAF. The US Army to have its own integral air, as with the USN and USMC. The question would then remain how much air (including missiles of various sorts) is needed for “strategic” purposes and who does continental air defence (the Soviets had their own approach). But Lord Trenchard, Billy Mitchell and Walther Wever are long gone; their views should no longer determine ours.
Mark
Ottawa
…. my homemade force restructuring.
A-10.
All immediately retired. This plane isn’t going to be able to fight in modern war. The crew will be developed to “close air support” unit. Probably will be some sort of advance UAV)
B-1.
All immediately mothballed. There simply no more role for B-1. It will be stored, just in case we are in some scary nuclear war and need to drop thousands of nuke all at once. But upon completion of next generation ICBM and new bomber, the entire inventory will be scrapped.
B-2, remain as is.
B-52.
All retired, except one squadron, specifically to drop super heavy/extra large bomb. Come on guys, time to let go this plane. Average modern cargo plane can kick B-52 ass in term of speed, range, load, operational cost and handling. This plane was from horse buggy era. It’s expensive sentimentality.
New bomber program, IOC around mid ’20.
cargo and transport.
C-130, C-17, C-5 as is.
for peace time transport need, all will be handled using cargo plane. No more using C-17 just to transport fuel/small equipments/troop between military bases. It’s too expensive and not efficient. Anything that an be loaded onto pallet, will use cargo plane.
F-16
Immediately retired all but 600 planes. Then cut slowly to about 200 by ’18. No more up grade for existing F-16, only new aircraft will be produced. AF will receive new F-16, at about 40 planes/year rate, export included. each new F-16 will replace 2 old one.
F-15.
Immediately retire all but 240 fighters, no more upgrade. All remaining 240 will be slowly replaced with brand new planes at rate of 12 planes/year rate. (export included) F-15 & F-22 will be the primary strike/fighter until new F-XX is coming.
F-22
The line will be reopen. The total number of plane will slowly grow to about 300 by 2018. (approx. 20 planes a year)
F-22 economy. (maybe?)
10-20% more fuel, slower top speed, not as stealthy. As a stop gap measure to replace F-15.
F-XX
New front line fighter plane will be introduced by mid ’20. starting full production before the decade close.
air force will get a new class of air launched attack UAV.
New ballistic missiles.
F-35 ?
I simply can’t see why AF need the A model. B model? Expensive and the performance is too limited. F-16 is good enough for second line fighter.
Total manned fighters will be around 800, obviously it’s very top attack heavy. For short range defense, modified a supersonic trainer as light attack. It’s cheaper and just as effective.
Any approach talking about “USAF” and doesn’t treat tactical aviation in its entiety is a failure.
Here’s to Distiller, amen.
I wonder less about Gen-5 than Gen-6. All my data is dated but mid-2000s, F-15Es were at 19,000 dollars per flying hour and F-15C were around 10-12,000 dollars per flying hour, F/A-18s somewhere in-between (this was the height of the center-barrel and 4G restriction era). F-16s and upgraded A+/C A-10s were around 5,000 dollars per flying hour. And the MQ-1 Predator was at 600.
If we need 150 CAS orbits to lock down a nation and keep our ground troops safe, we will not achieve it with any of the teen series generation manned aircraft. I cannot imagine how we would think to try with Gen-5 and their 30,000 (F-35) and 100,000 (F-22) costs.
Between low-loiter and high CPFH, we just won’t compete with manned platforms.
I seriously believe that what will define the Sixth Generation will be affordability. And I worry that we will fail to acknowledge this until so late in the day that realistic trades of netcentric vulnerability (cyberattack) vs. achievable inventory and sortie numbers will be lost and we will be thrown ‘all one way’ or another until a mixed force of light CAS, manned systems (as combat area drone controllers as much as direct fires delivery platforms) with a supporting-player inventory of both A-UAVs, UCAVs and dedicated ABCCC platforms is no longer achievable.
Remember too, CAS is fine but you have to also be able to win the first day of war and that means penetrability and theater presence before the war gets so large that you are down to fighting it as an attrition metric.
Neither an F-15SE or F-16E will never land on a carrier hence they _will not be present_ in the biased 70% of wars which we are looking at, in Asia. They don’t have the range. They don’t have the secure base-in. They will take too long to deploy from existing locations.
Conversely, UCAVs, as now built, will not sanitize large volumes of airspace (supercruise) nor fight off threats capable of aggressive EM. They are not designed to. That means they -have to- rely on a cascading value tier of LO, Standoff and Secondary Cueing/Attack systems.
But what we do not seem to acknowledge is that _not all UCAVs need be built to the same standard_. Or even by the same company. So that monstrous O&S levers like LO coating maintenance ‘need not apply’ to every jet. Nor certainly _every jet on deck_ (keep the cherry jets down below, out of the salt spray…).
Here is where you will save the industrial base. Here is where you will generate a force mix that makes sense, for once the FDOW condition is met and you have an operational salient in enemy airspace, you can begin to trade first absolute signature for standoff metrics. And then absolute signature -type- (CAS = DIRCM + Tail, INT = full VLO) for weight of ordnance and cheapness of cost to saturate.
But only if they can come to battle to begin with. Only if they are riskable to high accuracy, terminal homing, ballistics. Whether on-ship or on-base. And increasingly (2030-2040) only if they are able to soak single-shot kills from DEWS and swarm hunting tuboweapons.
We cannot say USAF-alone and have the comprehensive answer to this. We cannot split missions between conventional ‘air defense as justification for air dominance’ or ‘interdiction as justification for CAS’. We have to look more closely at the interleave of missions as both vulnerability, cost, and presence.
This 150 CAS orbit capability could eventually come, once the infrastrucutre is developed. 50 some odd orbits will reportedly be budgeted and planned by FY15. So this trend and capability is growing.
FWIW, I was one of the guys back in 2003 (admiteddly, without full understanding of what was required, but nonetheless still) demanding that maximal armed UAVs were deployed to theater as the no-brainer in support of ground troops, convoys, etc.
But this still does not truly reflect the question being posed for debate, i.e.: what to spend USAF’s $4B combat aviation Procurement budget on, going-forward (in comparison to the expected and estimated $8B by FY16).
These are separate issues – the UAV procurement model and plan and Tacair recapitalization budget and plan over the next 2,5, 10 yrs.