Tag Air-to-air combat

Air Combat And Technology

Any model of air combat needs to address the effect of weapons on the opposing forces.  In the Dupuy Air Combat Model (DACM), this was rifled bullets fired from machine guns, as well as small caliber cannon in the 20-30 millimeter (mm) class.  Such was the state of air combat in World War II.  This page is an excellent, in-depth analysis of the fighter guns and cannon.  Of course, technology has effects beyond firepower.  One of the most notable technologies to go into active use during World War II was radar, contributing to the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force (RAF), successfully holding off the Wehrmacht’s Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.

Since that time, driven by “great power competition”, technology continues to advance the art of warfare in the air.  This happened in several notable stages during the Cold War, and was on display in subsequent contemporary conflicts when client or proxy states fought on behalf of the great powers.  Examples include well-known conflicts, such as the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, but also the conflicts between the Arabs and Israelis.  In the Korean War, archives now illustrate than Russian pilots secretly flew alongside North Korean and Chinese pilots against the allied forces.

Stages in technology are often characterized by generation.  Many of the features that are associated with the generations are driven by the Cold War arms race, and the back and forth development cycles and innovation cycles by the aircraft designers.  This was evident in comments by Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, remarking that the Jas-39 Grippen is actually a sixth generation fighter, based upon the alternative focus on maintainability, operability from short runways / austere airbases (or roadways!), the focus on cost reduction, but most importantly, software: “The reason that the JAS 39E may earn a Gen 6 tag is that it has been designed with these issues in mind. Software comes first: The new hardware runs Mission System 21 software, the latest roughly biennial release in the series that started with the JAS 39A/B.”

Upon close inspection of the DACM parameters, we can observe a few important data elements and metadata definitions: avionics (aka software & hardware), and sensor performance.  Those two are about data and information.  A concise method to assign values to these parameters is needed.  The U.S. Air Force (USAF) Air Combat Command (ACC) has used the generation of fighters as a proxy for this in the past, at least at a notional level:

[Source: 5th Generation Fighters, Lt Gen Hawk Carlisle, USAF ACC]

The Fleet Series game that has been reviewed in previous posts has a different method.  The Air-to-Air Combat Resolution Table does not seem to resonate well, as the damage effects are imposed against either one side or the other.  This does not jive with the stated concerns of the USAF, which has been worried about an exchange in which both Red and Blue forces are destroyed or eliminated in a mutual fashion, with a more or less one-for-one exchange ratio.

The Beyond Visual Range (BVR) version, named Long Range Air-to-Air (LRAA) combat in Asian Fleet, is a better model of this, in which each side rolls a die to determine the effect of long range missiles, and each side may take losses on non-stealthy units, as the stealthy units are immune to damage at BVR.

One important factor that the Fleet Series combat process does resolve is a solid determination of which side “holds” the airspace, and this is capable of using other support aircraft, such as AWACS, tankers, reconnaissance, etc.  Part of this determination is the relative morale of the opposing forces.  These effects have been clearly evident in air campaigns such as the strategic bombing campaign on Germany and Japan in the latter portion of World War II.

Dealing with this conundrum, I decided to relax by watching some dogfight videos on YouTube, Dogfights Greatest Air Battles, and this was rather entertaining, it included a series of engagements in aerial combat, taken from the exploits of American aces over the course of major wars:

  1. Eddie Rickenbacker, flying a Spad 13 in World War I,
  2. Clarence Emil “Bud” Anderson, flying a P-51B “Old Crow” in European skies during World War II, flying 67 missions in P-51Ds, 35 missions in F-80s and 121 missions in F-86s. He wrote “No Guts, No Glory,” a how to manual with lots of graphics of named maneuvers like the “Scissors.”
  3. Frederick Corbin “Boots” Blesse, flying a F-86 Sabre in “MiG Alley” in North Korea close to the Chinese border,
  4. Several engagements and interviews of aces from the Vietnam War:
    1. Steve Ritchie, who said “Surprise is a key element.” Previously discussed.
    2. Robin Olds – a triple ace in both WWII (P-38 and P-51) and Vietnam (F-4), and the mastermind of Operation Bolo, a fantastic application of deception.
    3. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and William P “Irish” Discol, flying an F-4 Phantom, “Showtime 100”, and up against North Vietnamese MiG-17s.

An interesting paraphrase by Cunningham of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron’s statement: “When he sees the enemy, he attacks and kills, everything else is rubbish.”  What Richthofen said (according to skygod.com), was “The duty of the fighter pilot is to patrol his area of the sky, and shoot down any enemy fighters in that area. Anything else is rubbish.” Richtofen would not let members of his Staffel strafe troops in the trenches.

The list above is a great reference, and it got me to consider an alternative form of generation, including the earlier wars, and the experiences gained in those wars.  Indeed, we can press on in time to include the combat performance of the US and Allied militaries in the first Gulf War, 1990, as previously discussed.

There was a reference to the principles of aerial combat, such as the Dicta Boelcke:

  1. Secure the benefits of aerial combat (speed, altitude, numerical superiority, position) before attacking. Always attack from the sun.
  2. If you start the attack, bring it to an end.
  3. Fire the machine gun up close and only if you are sure to target your opponent.
  4. Do not lose sight of the enemy.
  5. In any form of attack, an approach to the opponent from behind is required.
  6. If the enemy attacks you in a dive, do not try to dodge the attack, but turn to the attacker.
  7. If you are above the enemy lines, always keep your own retreat in mind.
  8. For squadrons: In principle attack only in groups of four to six. If the fight breaks up in noisy single battles, make sure that not many comrades pounce on an opponent.

Appendix A – my own attempt to classify the generations of jet aircraft, in an attempt to rationalize the numerous schemes … until I decided that it was a fool’s errand:

  • Generation Zero:
    • World War II, 1948 Arab Israeli conflict
    • Blue: Spitfire, P-51 Mustang,
    • Red: Bf-109, FW-190, Mitsubishi Zero/George
    • Propeller engines, machine guns & cannons
  • First Generation:
    • Korean War, China & Taiwan conflicts
    • Blue: F-86 Sabre,
    • Red: MiG-15, Me-262?
    • Jet engines, swept wings, machine guns & cannons, early air-to-air missiles
  • Second Generation –
    • 1967 and Cuban Missile Crisis
    • Blue: F-100, F-102, F-104, F-5, F-8
    • Grey: Mirage III, Mirage F1
    • Red: MiG-19, MiG-21
    • Multi-mach speeds, improved air-to-air missiles, but largely within-visual range (WVR), early radar warning receivers (RWR), early countermeasures.
  • Third Generation:
    • 1973 Arab Israeli Wars, Vietnam War
    • Blue: F-4 Phantom, F-111 Ardvark, F-106?
    • Grey: Mirage III
    • Red: MiG-23, MiG-25, Su-15
    • Look-down/Shoot-down capability, radar-guided missiles, Beyond Visual Range (BVR), Identification Friend or Foe (IFF), all-aspect infrared missiles.
  • Fourth Generation:
    • 1980’s Cold War, 1990 Gulf War, 1982 Lebanon, 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War
    • Blue: F-15 Eagle, F-16 Viper, F-14 Tomcat, F/A-18 Hornet
    • Grey: Mirage 2000
    • Red: MiG-29, MiG-31, Su-27/30
  • Fourth Plus Generation:
    • 2003 Gulf War, 2011 Libiya
    • Blue: F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, F-15 improved (F-15E, F-15I, F-15SG, F-15SK…)
    • Grey: Eurofighter Typhoon, Rafale
    • Red: Su-35S
  • Fifth Generation:
    • Marketing term used by aircraft producers
    • Blue: Adanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) = F-22 Raptor, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) = F-35 Lightening II
    • Grey: Grippen?
    • Red: PAK-FA Su-57, J-20
  • Sixth Generation – the current frontier
    • Blue: Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, UAS ?
    • Red: ?
    • Grey: Two seat, Twin tail “drone-herder”?

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

[The article below is reprinted from the April 1997 edition of The International TNDM Newsletter. A description of the TDI Air Model Historical Data Study can be found here.]

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model
by Col. Joseph A. Bulger, Jr., USAF, Ret.

The Dupuy Institute, as part of the DACM [Dupuy Air Campaign Model], created a draft model in a spreadsheet format to show how such a model would calculate attrition. Below are the actual printouts of the “interim methodology demonstration,” which shows the types of inputs, outputs, and equations used for the DACM. The spreadsheet was created by Col. Bulger, while many of the formulae were the work of Robert Shaw.

The Dupuy Institute Air Model Historical Data Study

British Air Ministry aerial combat diagram that sought to explain how the RAF had fought off the Luftwaffe. [World War II Today]

[The article below is reprinted from the April 1997 edition of The International TNDM Newsletter.]

Air Model Historical Data Study
by Col. Joseph A. Bulger, Jr., USAF, Ret

The Air Model Historical Study (AMHS) was designed to lead to the development of an air campaign model for use by the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC). This model, never completed, became known as the Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM). It was a team effort led by Trevor N. Dupuy and included the active participation of Lt. Col. Joseph Bulger, Gen. Nicholas Krawciw, Chris Lawrence, Dave Bongard, Robert Schmaltz, Robert Shaw, Dr. James Taylor, John Kettelle, Dr. George Daoust and Louis Zocchi, among others. After Dupuy’s death, I took over as the project manager.

At the first meeting of the team Dupuy assembled for the study, it became clear that this effort would be a serious challenge. In his own style, Dupuy was careful to provide essential guidance while, at the same time, cultivating a broad investigative approach to the unique demands of modeling for air combat. It would have been no surprise if the initial guidance established a focus on the analytical approach, level of aggregation, and overall philosophy of the QJM [Quantified Judgement Model] and TNDM [Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model]. It was clear that Trevor had no intention of steering the study into an air combat modeling methodology based directly on QJM/TNDM. To the contrary, he insisted on a rigorous derivation of the factors that would permit the final choice of model methodology.

At the time of Dupuy’s death in June 1995, the Air Model Historical Data Study had reached a point where a major decision was needed. The early months of the study had been devoted to developing a consensus among the TDI team members with respect to the factors that needed to be included in the model. The discussions tended to highlight three areas of particular interest—factors that had been included in models currently in use, the limitations of these models, and the need for new factors (and relationships) peculiar to the properties and dynamics of the air campaign. Team members formulated a family of relationships and factors, but the model architecture itself was not investigated beyond the surface considerations.

Despite substantial contributions from team members, including analytical demonstrations of selected factors and air combat relationships, no consensus had been achieved. On the contrary, there was a growing sense of need to abandon traditional modeling approaches in favor of a new application of the “Dupuy Method” based on a solid body of air combat data from WWII.

The Dupuy approach to modeling land combat relied heavily on the ratio of force strengths (largely determined by firepower as modified by other factors). After almost a year of investigations by the AMHDS team, it was beginning to appear that air combat differed in a fundamental way from ground combat. The essence of the difference is that in air combat, the outcome of the maneuver battle for platform position must be determined before the firepower relationships may be brought to bear on the battle outcome.

At the time of Dupuy’s death, it was apparent that if the study contract was to yield a meaningful product, an immediate choice of analysis thrust was required. Shortly prior to Dupuy’s death, I and other members of the TDI team recommended that we adopt the overall approach, level of aggregation, and analytical complexity that had characterized Dupuy’s models of land combat. We also agreed on the time-sequenced predominance of the maneuver phase of air combat. When I was asked to take the analytical lead for the contact in Dupuy’s absence, I was reasonably confident that there was overall agreement.

In view of the time available to prepare a deliverable product, it was decided to prepare a model using the air combat data we had been evaluating up to that point—June 1995. Fortunately, Robert Shaw had developed a set of preliminary analysis relationships that could be used in an initial assessment of the maneuver/firepower relationship. In view of the analytical, logistic, contractual, and time factors discussed, we decided to complete the contract effort based on the following analytical thrust:

  1. The contract deliverable would be based on the maneuver/firepower analysis approach as currently formulated in Robert Shaw’s performance equations;
  2. A spreadsheet formulation of outcomes for selected (Battle of Britain) engagements would be presented to the customer in August 1995;
  3. To the extent practical, a working model would be provided to the customer with suggestions for further development.

During the following six weeks, the demonstration model was constructed. The model (programmed for a Lotus 1-2-3 style spreadsheet formulation) was developed, mechanized, and demonstrated to ACSC in August 1995. The final report was delivered in September of 1995.

The working model demonstrated to ACSC in August 1995 suggests the following observations:

  • A substantial contribution to the understanding of air combat modeling has been achieved.
  • While relationships developed in the Dupuy Air Combat Model (DACM) are not fully mature, they are analytically significant.
  • The approach embodied in DACM derives its authenticity from the famous “Dupuy Method” thus ensuring its strong correlations with actual combat data.
  • Although demonstrated only for air combat in the Battle of Britain, the methodology is fully capable of incorporating modem technology contributions to sensor, command and control, and firepower performance.
  • The knowledge base, fundamental performance relationships, and methodology contributions embodied in DACM are worthy of further exploration. They await only the expression of interest and a relatively modest investment to extend the analysis methodology into modem air combat and the engagements anticipated for the 21st Century.

One final observation seems appropriate. The DACM demonstration provided to ACSC in August 1995 should not be dismissed as a perhaps interesting, but largely simplistic approach to air combat modeling. It is a significant contribution to the understanding of air combat relationships that will prevail in the 21st Century. The Dupuy Institute is convinced that further development of DACM makes eminent good sense. An exploitation of the maneuver and firepower relationships already demonstrated in DACM will provide a valid basis for modeling air combat with modern technology sensors, control mechanisms, and weapons. It is appropriate to include the Dupuy name in the title of this latest in a series of distinguished combat models. Trevor would be pleased.

Drones And The U.S. Navy

An X-47 Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) drone lands on the USS Theodore Roosevelt during a test in 2014. [Breaking Defense]

Preamble & Warning (P&W): Please forgive me, this is an acronym heavy post.

In May 2013, the U.S. Navy (USN) reached milestones by having a “drone,” or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) land and take-off from an aircraft carrier. This was a significant achievement in aviation, and heralded an era of combat UAVs (UCAV) being integrated into carrier air wings (CVW). This vehicle, the X-47B, was built by Northrup Grumman, under the concept of a carrier-based stealthy strike vehicle.

Ultimately, after almost three years, their decision was announced:

On 1 February 2016, after many delays over whether the [Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike] UCLASS would specialize in strike or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) roles, it was reported that a significant portion of the UCLASS effort would be directed to produce a Super Hornet-sized carrier-based aerial refueling tanker as the Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System (CBARS), with ‘a little ISR’ and some capabilities for communications relay, and strike capabilities put off to a future version of the aircraft. In July 2016, it was officially named ‘MQ-25A Stingray’.

The USN, who had just proven that they can add a stealthy UCAV to carrier flight deck operations, decided to put this new capability on the shelf, and instead refocus the efforts of the aerospace defense industry on a brand new requirement, namely …

For mission tanking, the threshold requirement is offloading 14,000 lb. of fuel to aviation assets at 500 nm from the ship, thereby greatly extending the range of the carrier air wing, including the Lockheed Martin F-35C and Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet. The UAV must also be able to integrate with the Nimitz-class carriers, being able to safely launch and recover and not take up more space than is allocated for storage, maintenance and repairs.

Boeing has fashioned part of St. Louis Lambert International Airport into an aircraft carrier deck, complete with a mock catapult system. [Boeing]

Why did they do this?

The Pentagon apparently made this program change in order to address the Navy’s expected fighter shortfall by directing funds to buy additional F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and accelerate purchases and development of the F-35C. Having the CBARS as the first carrier-based UAV provides a less complex bridge to the future F/A-XX, should it be an autonomous strike platform. It also addresses the carriers’ need for an organic refueling aircraft, proposed as a mission for the UCLASS since 2014, freeing up the 20–30 percent of Super Hornets performing the mission in a more capable and cost effective manner than modifying the F-35, V-22 Osprey, and E-2D Hawkeye, or bringing the retired S-3 Viking back into service.

Notice within this quote the supposition that the F/A-XX would be an autonomous strike platform. This program was originally a USN-specific program to build a next-generation platform to perform both strike and air superiority missions, much like the F/A-18 aircraft are “swing role.” The US Air Force (USAF) had a separate program for a next generation air superiority aircraft called the F-X. These programs were combined by the Department of Defense (DoD) into the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. We can tell from the name of this program that it is clearly focused on the air superiority mission, as compared to the balance of strike and superiority, implicit in the USN program.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), wrote a letter to then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, on 2015-03-24, stating, “I strongly believe that the Navy’s first operational unmanned combat aircraft must be capable of performing a broad range of missions in contested environments as part of the carrier air wing, including precision strike as well as [ISR].” This is effectively an endorsement of the X-47B, and quite unlike the MQ-25.

I’m in agreement with Senator McCain on this. I think that a great deal of experience could have been gained by continuing the development and test of the X-47B, and possibly deploying the vehicle to the fleet.

The Navy hinted at the possibility of using the UCLASS in air-to-air engagements as a ‘flying missile magazine’ to supplement the F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-35C Lightning II as a type of ‘robotic wingman.’ Its weapons bay could be filled with AIM-120 AMRAAMs and be remotely operated by an E-2D Hawkeye or F-35C flight leader, using their own sensors and human judgment to detect, track, and direct the UAV to engage an enemy aircraft. The Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) concept gives a common picture of the battle space to multiple air platforms through data-links, where any aircraft could fire on a target in their range that is being tracked by any sensor, so the forward deployed UCLASS would have its missiles targeted by another controller. With manned-unmanned teaming for air combat, a dedicated unmanned supersonic fighter may not be developed, as the greater cost of high-thrust propulsion and an airframe of similar size to a manned fighter would deliver a platform with comparable operating costs and still without an ability to engage on its own.

Indeed, the German Luftwaffe has completed an air combat concept study, stating that the fighter of the 2040’s will be a “stealthy drone herder”:

Interestingly the twin-engine, twin-tail stealth design would be a twin-seat design, according to Alberto Gutierrez, Head of Eurofighter Programme, Airbus DS. The second crewmember may be especially important for the FCAS concept of operations, which would see it operate in a wider battle network, potentially as a command and control asset or UCAV/UAV mission commander.

Instead, the USN has decided to banish the drones into the tanker and light ISR roles, to focus on having more Super Hornets available, and move towards integrating the F-35C into the CVW. I believe that this is a missed opportunity to move ahead to get direct front line experience in operating UCAVs as part of combat carrier operations.

Aerial Combined Arms

In a previous post, I quoted Jules Hurst’s comparison between the medieval knights of old and modern day fighter pilots. His point was that the future of aerial combat will feature more combined arms. This I agree with; the degree of specialization that will be seen in the future will increase, although our ability to predict what this will be is uncertain. Hurst’s second point, that today’s aerial combat is akin to jousting and jovial knights looking to independently take down foes, I do not agree with at all.

Last night, I watched the History Channel documentary “Dogfights of Desert Storm,” a wonderful summary of several selected dogfights from the first Gulf War (1991, US and coalition vs Iraq), which included:

1. A furball between an unarmed EF-111 and a Mirage F1. Eventually, an F-15C came to the rescue, but the EF-111 crew was apparently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for its actions that day. Ultimately, the F1 hit the ground, and the F-15C got the credit.

2. A complex dogfight between a flight of two F-15Cs against 2 Mig-25s and 2 Mig-29s. This was a hairy affair, with lots of maneuver. The MiG-25s were able to decoy many heat-seeking AIM-9’s, so the AIM-7 radar guided missiles needed to be used to shoot them down.

[As previously reported, an F/A-18F had problems trying to down a Syrian Su-22 Fitter with an AIM-9 missile due to the effectiveness of Russian-made flares and had to resort to an AIM-120 radar-guided missile. Also a strategy from Soviet days, the preference to carry more than one type of seeker types seems to be quite good advice. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has traditionally adhered to the concept of a beyond visual range (BVR) medium range, radar guided missile, the AIM-7 and the AIM-120 successor. This coupled with the short range AIM-9 infrared missile. The gap that this leaves is the long range, infrared guided missile.]

3. A well-run dogfight pitting a flight of four F-15Cs vs. a flight of four F-1s. Of the F-1s, one turned back to base, either for fear, prudence, or mechanical difficulty, it is difficult to say. The three other F-1s were all downed by AIM-7 missiles, fired at beyond visual range. What was noted about this engagement was the patience of the USAF flight leader, who did not immediately lock-on to the F-1s, in order to avoid triggering their radar warning receivers (RWR), and giving up the element of surprise by notifying them of the impending attack.

The statistic given was that 60% of the aerial victories in the entire conflict were from BVR.

The coalition’s triumph was an emphatic boost for current air war strategy. Multiple aircraft with specific roles working on concert to achieve victory. Air war in 1990, as it is today, is a team sport.” Multiple weapons disrupted the Iraqi capability to deal with it. It was information overload. They could not deal with the multiple successive strikes, and the fact that their radars went offline, and their command and control was shut down … jamming … deception – it was like having essentially a ‘war nervous breakdown’. (emphasis added).

Larry Pitts, a USAF F-15C Eagle pilot (retired), said

aerial victory against an enemy airplane was a career highlight for me. It’s something that I’ll never be able to beat, but you know in my mind, I did what any fighter pilot would have done if any enemy fighter had been put in front of him. I relied on my training, I engaged the airplane, protected my wingman as he protected me, and came out of it alive.

One key element in all of the combat recounted by the USAF pilots was the presence of airborne early warning aircraft, at the time the E-3C Sentry. Indeed, this form of combined arms—which is effectively an augmentation of a fighter pilot’s sensors—has been around for a surprisingly long time.

  • In February 1944, the United States Navy (USN), under Project Cadillac, equipped a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber with an airborne radar, and the resulting TBM-3W entered service with the Airborne Early Warning (AEW) mission.
  • In June 1949, a joint program with the USN and USAF resulted in the EC-121 Warning Star, a conversion of a Lockheed L1094 Super Constellation airliner. This aircraft entered service to reinforce the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, across the Arctic in Canada and Alaska to detect and defend against Soviet Air Force bombers flying over the pole. This was also the plane that played the “AWACS” role in Vietnam.
  • In January 1964, the E-2 Hawkeye was introduced into service with the USN, which required a carrier-based AWACS platform.
  • In March 1977, the first E-3 Sentry was delivered to the USAF by Boeing.

Indeed, the chart below illustrates the wide variety of roles and platforms flown by the USAF, in their combined arms operations.

[Source: Command: Modern Air & Naval Operations]

In addition, the USAF just released its FY2019 budget, fresh from budget action in Congress. This had a few surprises, including the planned retirement of both the B-1B and the B-2A in favor of the upcoming B-21 Raider, and continuing to enhance and improve the B-52. This is a very old platform, having been introduced in 1955. This does match a shift in thinking by the USAF, from stating that all of the fourth generation aircraft (non-stealthy) are entirely obsolete, to one in which they continue to play a role, as a follow-up force, perhaps in role of a “distant archer” with stand-off weapons. I previously discussed the Talon Hate pod enabling network communications between the F-22 and F-15C systems.

More on this to come!

TDI Friday Read: U.S. Airpower

[Image by Geopol Intelligence]

This weekend’s edition of TDI’s Friday Read is a collection of posts on the current state of U.S. airpower by guest contributor Geoffery Clark. The same factors changing the character of land warfare are changing the way conflict will be waged in the air. Clark’s posts highlight some of the way these changes are influencing current and future U.S. airpower plans and concepts.

F-22 vs. F-35: Thoughts On Fifth Generation Fighters

The F-35 Is Not A Fighter

U.S. Armed Forces Vision For Future Air Warfare

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Debate Future Air Superiority

U.S. Marine Corps Concepts of Operation with the F-35B

The State of U.S. Air Force Air Power

Fifth Generation Deterrence

 

Fifth Generation Deterrence

“Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy… the FEAR to attack. And so, … the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand… and completely credible and convincing.” – Dr. Strangelove.

In a previous post, we looked at some aspects of the nuclear balance of power. In this Stpost, we will consider some aspects of conventional deterrence. Ironically, Chris Lawrence was cleaning out a box in his office (posted in this blog), which contained an important article for this debate, “The Case for More Effective, Less Expensive Weapons Systems: What ‘Quality Versus Quantity’ Issue?” by none other than Pierre M. Sprey, available here, published in 1982.

In comparing the F-15 and F-16, Sprey identifies four principal effectiveness characteristics that contribute to victory in air-to-air combat:

  1. Achieving surprise bounces and avoiding being surprised;
  2. Out-numbering the enemy in the air;
  3. Out-maneuvering the enemy to reach firing position (when surprise fails);
  4. Achieving reliable kills within the brief firing opportunities presented by combat.

“Surprise is the first because, in every air war since WWI, somewhere between 65% and 85% of all fighters shot down were unaware of their attacker.” Sprey mentions that the F-16 is superior to the F-15 due to the smaller size, and that fact that it smokes much less, both aspects that are clearly Within-Visual Range (WVR) combat considerations. Further, his discussion of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat is dismissive.

The F-15 has an apparently advantage inasmuch as it carries the Sparrow radar missile. On closer examination, this proves to be little or no advantage: in Vietnam, the Sparrow had a kill rate of .08 to .10, less that one third that of the AIM-9D/G — and the new models of the Sparrow do not appear to have corrected the major reasons for this disappointing performance; even worse, locking-on with the Sparrow destroys surprise because of the distinctive and powerful radar signature involved.

Sprey was right to criticize the performance of the early radar-guided missiles.  From “Trends in Air-to-Air Combat: Implications for Future Air Superiority,” page 10

From 1965 through 1968, during Operation Rolling Thunder, AIM-7 Sparrow missiles succeeded in downing their targets only 8 percent of the time and AIM-9 Sidewinders only 15 percent of the time. Pre-conflict testing indicated expected success rates of 71 and 65 percent respectively. Despite these problems, AAMs offered advantages over guns and accounted for the vast majority of U.S. air-to-air victories throughout the war.

Sprey seemed to miss out of the fact that the radar guided missile that supported BVR air combat was not something in the far distant future, but an evolution of radar and missile technology. Even in the 1980’s, the share of air-to-air combat victories by BVR missiles was on the rise, and since the 1990’s, it has become the most common way to shoot down an enemy aircraft.

In an Aviation Week podcast in July of this year, retired Marine Lt. Col. David Berke (also previously quoted in this blog), and Pierre Sprey debated the F-35. Therein, Sprey offers a formulaic definition of air power, as created by force and effectiveness, with force being a function of cost, reliability, and how often it can fly per day (sortie generation rate?). “To create air power, you have to put a bunch of airplanes in the sky over the enemy. You can’t do it with a tiny hand full, even if they are like unbelievably good. If you send six aircraft to China, they could care less what they are … F-22 deployments are now six aircraft.”

Berke counters with the ideas that he expressed before in his initial conversation with Aviation week (as analyzed in this blog), that information and situational awareness are by far the most important factor in aerial warfare. This stems from the advantage of surprise, which was Sprey’s first criteria in 1982, and remains a critical factor is warfare to this day. This reminds me a bit of Disraeli’s truism of “lies, damn lies and statistics” — pick the metrics that tell your story, rather than objectively look at the data.

Critics beyond Mr. Sprey have said that high technology weapons like the F-22 and the F-35 are irrelevant for America’s wars; “the [F-22] was not relevant to the military’s operations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya — at least according to then-secretary of defense Robert Gates.” Indeed, according to the Washington Post, “Gates called the $65 billion fleet a ‘niche silver-bullet solution’ to a major aerial war threat that remains distant. … and has promised to urge President Obama to veto the military spending bill if the full Senate retains F-22 funding.”

The current conflict in Syria against ISIS, after the Russian deployment resulted in crowded and contested airspace, as evidenced by a NATO Turkish F-16 shoot down of a Russian Air Force Su-24 (wikipedia), and as reported on this blog. Indeed, ironically for Mr. Sprey’s analysis of the relative values of the AIM-9 vs the AIM-7 missiles, as again reported by this blog,

[T]he U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet locked onto a Su-22 Fitter at a range of 1.5 miles. It fired an AIM-9X heat-seeking Sidewinder missile at it. The Syrian pilot was able to send off flares to draw the missile away from the Su-22. The AIM-9X is not supposed to be so easily distracted. They had to shoot down the Su-22 with a radar guided AMRAAM missile.

For the record the AIM-7 was a direct technical predecessor of the AIM-120 AMRAAM. We can perhaps conclude that having more that one type of weapon is useful, especially as other air power nations are always trying to improve their counter measures, and this incident shows that they can do so effectively. Of course, more observations are necessary for statistical proof, but since air combat is so rare since the end of the Cold War, the opportunity to learn the lesson and improve the AIM-9X should not be squandered.

USAF Air Combat Dominance as Deterrent

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. – Sun Tzu

The admonition to win without fighting is indeed a timeless principle of warfare, and it is clearly illustrated through this report on the performance of the F-22 in the war against ISIS, over the crowded airspace in Syria, from Aviation Week on June 4th, 2017.  I’ve quoted at length, and applied emphasis.

Shell, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and Raptor squadron commander who spoke on the condition that Aviation Week identify him only by his call sign, and his squadron of stealth F-22 Lockheed Martin Raptors had a critical job to do: de-conflict coalition operations over Syria with an irate Russia.

… one of the most critical missions the F-22 conducts in the skies over Syria, particularly in the weeks following the April 6 Tomahawk strike, is de-confliction between coalition and non-coalition aircraft, says Shell. … the stealth F-22’s ability to evade detection gives it a unique advantage in getting non-coalition players to cooperate, says Shell. 

‘It is easier to bring air dominance to bear if you know where the other aircraft are that you are trying to influence, and they don’t know where you are,’ says Shell. ‘When other airplanes don’t know where you are, their sense of comfort goes down, so they have a tendency to comply more.‘

… U.S. and non-coalition aircraft were still communicating directly, over an internationally recognized, unsecure frequency often used for emergencies known as ‘Guard,’  says Shell. His F-22s acted as a kind of quarterback, using high-fidelity sensors to determine the positions of all the actors on the battlefield, directing non-coalition aircraft where to fly and asking them over the Guard frequency to move out of the way. 

The Raptors were able to fly in contested areas, in range of surface-to-air missile systems and fighters, without the non-coalition players knowing their exact positions, Shell says. This allowed them to establish air superiority—giving coalition forces freedom of movement in the air and on the ground—and a credible deterrent.

Far from being a silver bullet solution for a distant aerial war, America’s stealth fighters are providing credible deterrence on the front lines today. They have achieved in some cases, the ultimate goal of winning without fighting, by exploiting the advantage of surprise. The right question might be, how many are required for this mission, given the enormous costs of fifth generation fighters? (more on this later).  As a quarterback, the F-22 can support many allied units, as part of a larger team.

Giving credit where it is due, Mr. Sprey has rightly stated in his Aviation Week interview, “cost is part of the force you can bring to bear upon the enemy.”  His mechanism to compute air power in 2017, however, seems to ignore the most important aspect of air power since it first emerged in World War I, surprise.  His dogmatic focus on the lightweight, single purpose air-to-air fighter, which seems to shun even available, proven technology seems clear.

U.S. Armed Forces Vision For Future Air Warfare

[Source: Naval Air Vision 2014-2025]

I’ve been reviewing the U.S. armed forces vision for how to fight and win with the F-35. It plays a pretty central role in each services’ vision documents, meaning that they have all adapted to the “top-down” strategic guidance given by the Department of Defense (DOD). But the interesting part is the differences between the services’ documents and statements.

How The Services View Their F-35s

Below are the U.S. armed forces I’ve focused on, and their current and future plans for the F-35. The table is from the FlightGlobal World Air Forces 2017 report.

Given the large numbers of aircraft going to training units, we can see that all forces are building their new pilot numbers, and according to Lt Col Berke (via an Aviation Week interview), they will put new pilots into F-35s, so they simply learn a fifth generation mindset from scratch, rather than having to “un-learn” the fourth generation mindset.

We can also see the U.S. Marine Corps building active combat units, in their relative haste to declare Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in July 2015, and in support of their first F-35B overseas deployment to Iwakuni Airbase, Japan in January 2017. This deployment location is a good way to support both possible confrontation sites in Korea and the East China Sea.

[Source: Forbes]

Another viewpoint exists on the U.S. military force posture in Asia that is essentially militaristic. The map image above is from a Forbes article, calling other US media “blind to the militarism of its own mentality and approach, as well as to the essential militarism of the U.S. alliance system in Asia, with its “cornerstone” of U.S. bases, including the headquarters and the Seventh Fleet, and some 100,000 force personnel in Japan and South Korea.” The Marine Corps is apparently quite keen to replace their ageing AV-8B and early model F/A-18A/B/C/D aircraft (as they have skipped out on the Super Hornet F/A-18E/F).

Meanwhile the U.S. Navy has articulated their vision in a document from Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) entitled Naval Aviation Vision 2016-2025. They state:

The supersonic, multi-role, multi-service F-35 Lightning II represents a quantum leap in air superiority capability. Combining the next-generation fighter characteristics of radar-evading stealth, supersonic speed and fighter agility with the most powerful and comprehensive integrated sensor package of any fighter aircraft in history, the F-35 delivers unprecedented lethality and survivability to Naval Aviation [emphasis added].

Their characterization of the F-35 as an instrument of air superiority is perhaps a bit too optimistic, or stretches the F-35 capability a bit too much. In an assessment from the U.S. Naval War College of “Chinese Air Superiority in the Near Seas”, the F-35 does not stand out from the pack of Chinese and American fourth generation fighters, in the same way that the F-22 clearly does:

Indeed, while the U.S. Air Force has big plans for the F-35, it also offers some cautionary words about the force design and balance that the F-22 brings to the fight. According to Chief of U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command Gen. Michael Hostage in a February 2014 interview:

Dealing with the Joint Strike Fighter, Hostage says he is ‘going to fight to the death to protect the F-35’ since the only way to keep up with the adversaries, which ‘are building fleets that will overmatch our legacy fleet’, is by employing a sufficient fleet of 1,763 (‘not one less’) F-35s. You can update and upgrade the F-15 and F-16 fleets, but they would still become obsolete in the next decade.  But, the F-22 Raptor will have to support the F-35. And here comes another problem. When the Raptor was produced it was flying ‘with computers that were already so out of date you would not find them in a kid’s game console in somebody’s home gaming system.’ Still, the U.S. Air Force was forced to use the stealth fighter plane as it was, because that was the way the spec was written. But now, the F-22 must be upgraded through a costly service life extension plan and modernization program because, ‘If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22,” says Hostage to Air Force Times.’ [emphasis added].

F-22 + F-35 = Air Superiority

[Source: 5th Generation Fighters, Lt Gen Hawk Carlisle, USAF ACC]

So, is the F-35 a capable air superiority platform, or not? General Hodges in 2014:

[E]xamine [the] Raptor versus the Lightning. A Raptor at 50-plus thousand feet at Mach 2 with its RCS has a different level of invulnerability than a Lightning at 35,000 at Mach .9 and it’s RCS.  The altitude, speed, and stealth combined in the two platforms, they give the airplanes two completely different levels of capability. The plan is to normalize the Lightning’s capability relative to the Raptor by marrying it up with six, or seven or eight other Lightening’s. The advanced fusion of the F-35 versus the F-22 means those airplanes have an equal level or better level of invulnerability than the Raptors have, but it takes multiple airplanes to do it because of the synergistic fused attacks of their weapon systems.  That’s the magic of the fifth-gen F-35, but it takes numbers of F-35s to get that effect. That’s why I’ve been so strident on getting the full buy. Because if they whittle it down to a little tiny fleet like the Raptor, it’s not going to be compelling.

In a separate interview in 2015, “Re-norming of Airpower in Practice: An F-22 enabled Air Combat Force,” General Hawk Carlisle made the point that

[T]he F-22 was a key enabler for the air combat force currently, and had led to a re-norming of airpower in practice … It’s not just that the F-22s are so good, it’s that they make every other plane better. They change the dynamic with respect to what the other airplanes are able to do because of what they can do with regard to speed, range, and flexibility. It’s their stealth quality. It’s their sensor fusion. It’s their deep penetration capability. It is the situational awareness they provide for the entire fleet which raises the level of the entire combat fleet to make everybody better.  The F-22s make the Eagles better, and the A-10s better, and the F-16s better. They make the bombers better. They provide information. They enable the entire fight. And its information dominance, its sensor fusion capability, it’s a situational awareness that they can provide to the entire package which raises the level of our capabilities in the entire fight. This is not about some distant future; it is about the current fight.

This point is nicely illustrated with the kind of cross domain information-sharing capability which embodies “joint-ness” and is demonstrated by F-22’s providing targeting data to submarines (SSGN) for land-attack cruise missiles.

General Carlisle also announced that “[t]he exercise coming up at Langley in December 2015 will feature the F-22 flying with the Typhoon (XI Squadron from the RAF) and the Rafales from the French Air Force. What these three aircraft have in come is that they all are about 10 years old in terms of combat experience and life.”

Perhaps these exercises were engineered to test improvements to the F-22’s combat capabilities, especially Within-Visual-Range (WVR), aptly named since the Mark 1 human eyeball becomes a sensor that stealth cannot fool. In May of 2015, the Raptor fired its first AIM-9X sidewinder, latest generation dogfight missiles. Along with a helmet-mounted sight, this capability was fielded by the Soviet Union in 1984, when the R-73 (AA-11 “Archer”) was mated to the MiG-29 Fulcrum. According to Lt. Col. Fred “Spanky” Clifton, who is one of the most experienced aggressor pilots ever, having flown the F-15, F-5, F-16 and the notorious MiG-29,  “[i]n the WVR (within visual range) arena, a skilled MiG-29 pilot can give and Eagle or Viper driver all he/she wants.”

The experience at Red Flag Alaska in 2012, a training exercise which saw the F-22 go up against Typhoons of the German Luftwaffe, was perhaps humbling for the Air Force to some degree, as the German pilots reported they had “Raptor salad for lunch,” and subsequently painted F-22 kills on their aircraft. This may have provided some impetus to deploy better capabilities; this year, Raptor pilots were happy to see the incremental update 3.2, which fielded the AIM-9X capability.

The 9X Block 1 version of the dual-use, infrared missile is “a dramatic leap within visual range missile capabilities,” said Lt. Col. Daniel, an F-22 pilot of the 95th Fighter Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. … with the AIM-9M ‘Mike’ we kind of went out there going, ‘We have six missiles,” Daniel joked, referring to the increased effort required to make the weapon effective in modern combat operations. ‘With AIM-9X, we step out the door going, ‘We got eight missiles on the jet.’

The helmet-mounted sight is due by 2020 for the F-22.

The Future of Air Superiority: BVR or WVR?

This seems clear, the F-22 dominates the fight from Beyond Visual Range (BVR), where its stealth and radar provide it the initiative and the ability to use the element of surprise in its favor. An analysis by Aviation Week, using publicly available data from system manufacturers, illustrates this quantitatively and graphically.

Large ‘fourth-generation’ fighters such as the F-15, Su-27 and Tornado have radar cross-sections (RCS) of 10-15 m2. The F-16 and “Gen-4.5” fighters—Typhoon, Rafale, Su-35 and Super Hornet—are believed to be in the 1-3-m2 range. The F-35 and F-22 RCSs are said to equal a golf ball and marble, respectively. Based on Sukhoi’s claims that its Su-35 can detect 3-m2 targets at 400 km in a narrow-angle, maximum-power search, Aviation Week estimated how far away it can detect these fighters. Note the detection range in a standard search is half as much. [Credit: Colin Throm/AW&ST]
Almaz-Antey says the S-400’s 92N6E “Gravestone” fire-control radar can detect a 4-m2 radar-cross-section target at 250 km. Based on this figure, Aviation Week estimated its detection range against modern fighter aircraft. [Credit: Colin Throm/AW&ST]

The F-35 should be able to use these same tactics, as it has those capabilities as well.  Once the fight devolves into WVR, even the Raptor, designed as an air superiority platform, finds challenges with capable fourth generation opponents. Should we expect the F-35 to fare better or worse than the F-22 in the same situation?

It seems this is one of the key questions in air-to-air combat modeling or war-gaming: how often are engagements taking place at BVR, and how often are they WVR? This is all the more challenging since “visual range” is a highly dynamic and situational.