Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
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.
The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Debate Future Air Superiority
The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command has released a revised draft version of its Multi-Domain Battle operating concept, titled “Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century, 2025-2040.” Clearly a work in progress, the document is listed as version 1.0, dated October 2017, and as a draft and not for implementation. Sydney J. Freeberg, Jr. has an excellent run-down on the revision at Breaking Defense.
The update is the result of the initial round of work between the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force to redefine the scope of the multi-domain battlespace for the Joint Force. More work will be needed to refine the concept, but it shows remarkable cooperation in forging a common warfighting perspective between services long-noted for their independent thinking.
On a related note, Albert Palazzo, an Australian defense thinker and one of the early contributors to the Multi-Domain Battle concept, has published the first of a series of articles at The Strategy Bridge offering constructive criticism of the U.S. military’s approach to defining the concept. Palazzo warns that the U.S. may be over-emphasizing countering potential Russian and Chinese capabilities in its efforts and not enough on the broad general implications of long-range fires with global reach.
What difference can it make if those designing Multi-Domain Battle are acting on possibly the wrong threat diagnosis? Designing a solution for a misdiagnosed problem can result in the inculcation of a way of war unsuited for the wars of the future. One is reminded of the French Army during the interwar period. No one can accuse the French of not thinking seriously about war during these years, but, in the doctrine of the methodical battle, they got it wrong and misread the opportunities presented by mechanisation. There were many factors contributing to France’s defeat, but at their core was a misinterpretation of the art of the possible and a singular focus on a particular way of war. Shaping Multi-Domain Battle for the wrong problem may see the United States similarly sow the seeds for a military disaster that is avoidable.
He suggests that it would be wise for U.S. doctrine writers to take a more considered look at potential implications before venturing too far ahead with specific solutions.
In an article published by the Association of the U.S. Army last November that I missed on the first go around, U.S. Army Colonel Eric E. Aslakson and Lieutenant Colonel Richard T. Brown, (ret.) make the argument that “Staff colonels are the Army’s innovation center of gravity.”
The U.S. defense community has settled upon innovation as one of the key methods for overcoming the challenges posed by new technologies and strategies adapted by potential adversaries, as articulated in the Third Offset Strategy developed by the late Obama administration. It is becoming clear however, that a desire to innovate is not the same as actual innovation. Aslakson and Brown make the point that innovation is not simply technological development and identify what they believe is a crucial institutional component of military innovation in the U.S. Army.
Innovation is differentiated from other forms of change such as improvisation and adaptation by the scale, scope and impact of that value creation. Innovation is not about a new widget or process, but the decisive value created and the competitive advantage gained when that new widget or process is applied throughout the Army or joint force…
However, none of these inventions or activities can rise to the level of innovation unless there are skilled professionals within the Army who can convert these ideas into competitive advantage across the enterprise. That is the role of a colonel serving in a major command staff leadership assignment…
These leaders do not typically create the change. But they have the necessary institutional and operational expertise and experience, contacts, resources and risk tolerance to manage processes across the entire framework of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities, converting invention into competitive advantage.
In his seminal book, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1980), Trevor Dupuy noted a pattern in the historical relationship between development of weapons of increasing lethality and their incorporation in warfare. He too noted that the crucial factor was not the technology itself, but the organizational approach to using it.
When a radically new weapon appears and is first adopted, it is inherently incongruous with existing weapons and doctrine. This is reflected in a number of ways; uncertainty and hesitation in coordination of the new weapon with earlier ones; inability to use it consistently, effectively, and flexibly in offensive action, which often leads to tactical stalemate; vulnerability of the weapon and of its users to hostile countermeasures; heavy losses incident to the employment of the new weapon, or in attempting to oppose it in combat. From this it is possible to establish the following criteria of assimilation:
Based on his assessment of this historical pattern, Dupuy derived a set of preconditions necessary for a successful assimilation of new technology into warfare.
Does the U.S. defense establishment’s organizational and institutional approach to innovation meet these preconditions? Good question.
Over at The Daily Beast, Clive Irving has a neat piece about the venerable U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress and it’s little brother, the KC-135 Stratotanker. The B-52, which turns 65 years old this year, and the KC-135 were both designed by Boeing aeronautical engineers Ed Wells and George Schairer.
Wells and Schairer came up with the basic design for the B-52 over one weekend in 1948, drawing upon advanced concepts developed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The first prototype flew in 1952.
Six days after that first B-52 flight, the two pitched an idea to the Boeing board for a jet-powered passenger aircraft, which they would get the U.S. government pay to develop by marketing it as a military tanker for the B-52. This program would yield the KC-135 and the civilian Boeing 707 airliner. The first KC-135 flew in 1956.
Although seeking replacements, the Air Force is planning on keeping both the B-52 and KC-135 in service past 2050, when both airframes will be over 100 years old. Boeing won a contract to replace the KC-135 in 2011, but its new tanker is woefully late and over budget.
The 76 B-52s have a 70% readiness rate due to their relative simplicity to maintain and the Air Force is about to approve $4 billion in new engines to keep them flying.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has fielded a formidable force, demonstrating air dominance in conflicts fought, as well as those threatened, across the globe for decades through the Cold War (1945-1991); think Strategic Air Command (SAC) under Gen Curtis LeMay. Pax Americana has been further extended to the present. A “pax” (Latin for peace) being a period of relative peace due to a preponderance of power. The French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine famously defined the U.S. as a “hyperpower”, or “a country that is dominant or predominant in all categories” (NY Times, 1999-02-05). The ability to project power by the U.S. military, especially by the USAF, is and was unparalleled.
According to Gen David Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff, “We’re everywhere. Air power has become the oxygen the joint team breathes. Have it, you don’t even think about [it]. Don’t have it, it’s all you think about. Air superiority, ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance], space, lift [airlift, or transport services] are just a few examples.”
Indeed, “Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas to facilitate air and naval forces. This is exact opposite of what we have done for the last 70 years, where air and naval forces have enabled ground forces,” according to General Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. War on the Rocks claims “there is no end in sight to the [U.S.] Army’s dependence on airpower.”
The USAF Fights as a Joint Force
The photo above illustrates a joint team across U.S. and allied forces, by combining assets from the USAF, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), as well as the Royal Air Force (RAF), and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) into a single fighting force. But it also demonstrates this preponderance of power by the USAF, which provided almost all of the aircraft used by the operation. Pictured aircraft include (clockwise from left):
Thus, I’d assert, we have seen some strong evidence of great plans, and more importantly a planning capability by the U.S. military, including and especially the USAF.
The USAF Faces Some Significant Challenges
According to a RAND study on the USAF pilot shortage, the real issue is experience levels in “Operational Units (i.e., those with combat responsibilities) are the only assignment options for newly trained pilots while they mature and develop their mission knowledge. Thus, these units require enough experienced pilots to supervise the development of the new pilots. As the proportion of experienced pilots in a unit drops, each one must fly more to provide essential supervision to an increasing number of new pilots. If the unit’s flying capacity cannot increase, new pilots each fly less, extending the time they need to become experienced themselves.”
Given that the career path from military pilot to airlines pilot has been in operation since the 1940’s, why should this be a critical issue now? Because the difference in pay has changed. “The Air Force believes much of the problem comes from commercial airlines that have been hiring at increased rates and can offer bigger paychecks.” All major U.S. Airlines, however, must report not only pilot quantities and salaries, but many other financial details to the Office of Airline Information (OAI), which provides this data to the public for free. Does the USAF not have the capability to analyze and manage the economics of pilot demand and supply? It seems they have been caught reacting, rather than proactively managing their most critical resource, trained human pilots.
“Drone pilots suffer a high rate of burnout, as they work 12 to 13 hour days, performing mainly intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, but also some strikes where mistakes caused by tired eyes can cost lives.” Given the autopilot capabilities of commercial airliners, why are Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) aircrews working so much? Why has autonomy not been granted to a machine for the long, boring and tedious tasks of loiter, and then a human alerted when required to make decisions? Perhaps because the RPA concept is not developed enough to allow for man-machine teaming, perhaps because military leaders do not trust technology to deliver the right alerts.
As fighter pilots seem to be more likely to leave the USAF, these issues seem to be related. As “drones” (more properly RPA) became the star of the global war on terrorism since 2001, many USAF fighter pilots who were formerly physically flying USAF aircraft such as the F-16 were tasked with sitting in a cargo container and staring at a screen, while their inputs to controls were beamed across the world at the speed of light to the controlled drone, which was often loitering for hours over a target area that required persistent ISR. Several Hollywood movies (such as Good Kill (2014)) have been made about this twofold life of USAF pilots. Did the USAF not know that these circumstances would erode morale? Do they know why pilots sign up for service, and why they stay?
How About Battlefield Networking?
In previous posts in this blog, we’ve seen that information is a critical resource. The ability to share information on a battlefield network is the defining capability about how we will win future wars, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. Most units in the USAF (as well as most NATO units) have the Link 16 network (depicted in blue above). This was conceived in 1967 by MITRE, demonstrated in 1973 by MITRE, and developed as the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) in 1981 by what is now BAE Systems. “Fielding proceeded slowly throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s with rapid expansion (following 9/11) in preparation for Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Not all units are equipped with Link 16 capability, especially the new stealth fighters, since broadcasting over this network gives away a units position. Instead, the F-22 was equipped with the In-Flight Data Link (IFDL), the red lines in diagram above. Since only the F-22 was equipped with this type of data link, legacy fighters like the F-15C could not communicate easily with F-22 units. Similarly, the F-35 program is being deployed with its own, the Multi-Function Advanced Data Link (MADL), which likewise preserves stealth, but also impedes communications with units not so equipped.
The difficulty and complexity of fielding a battlefield network which allows aircraft to communicate without compromising their stealth is tough, which is why Lt Col Berke stated that “these networks have yet to be created.” The Talon HATE pod is a stopgap capability, requested by the Pacific Air Forces, prototyped and deployed by Boeing Phantom Works. “With the stealthy F-22 buy truncated at 183 aircraft and F-35s being introduced into service far more slowly than planned, the Air Force is being forced to devise a connectivity regimen among these platforms to maximize their capabilities in battle.” The Talon HATE pod also includes an IRST, which the USAF has learned is effective at detecting stealth fighters.
Indeed, as reported by Aviation Week, the USAF is still in the process to rolling out Link 16 to its older tankers the KC-135, which are among the oldest aircraft still flown by the USAF. Perhaps this is a reaction to the Chinese operationalized stealth fighter, the J-20. It has recently been photographed carrying four external fuel tanks, which may give it the range to attack potentially vulnerable targets, such as tankers.
The U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Air Force (USAF) are concerned about the ability to achieve and retain air superiority in future conflicts. In 2008, with the F-35 program underway, the USN issued a new requirement for an air superiority platform, the F/A-XX. The USAF, looking at its small fleet of F-22 Raptors–187 total, 125 combat-ready–and the status of the F-35 program, kicked off its own F-X program or Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) in 2012.
In 2015, Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s “acquisition czar” combined these two programs into Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) to be run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This means that some basic requirements will need to be agreed upon, such as stealth or low-observable characteristics. The USN and USAF have some differing viewpoints on this particular topic.
USAF Air Combat Command (ACC) chief Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle says stealth will be “incredibly important” for the F-X aircraft that the USAF is pursuing as an eventual F-22 replacement. This viewpoint is reinforced by statements that the USAF’s fourth-generation fighters, F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18, are “obsolete” even after upgrade, and “they simply will not survive” against the threats of the future, such as anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities.
Meanwhile, USN Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, has said that “stealth may be over-rated.” In a speech at the Office of Naval Research Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo in Washington, D.C., Greenert said “I don’t want to necessarily say that it’s over, but let’s face it, if something moves fast through the air and disrupts molecules in the air and puts out heat–I don’t care how cool the engine can be–it’s going to be detectable.”
Aviation Week detailed these advances in counter-stealth capability, including both radars and Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST):
U.S. Air Force is the latest convert to the capabilities of IRST. The U.S. Navy’s IRST for the Super Hornet, installed in a modified centerline fuel tank, was approved for low-rate initial production in February, following 2014 tests of an engineering development model system, and the Block I version is due to reach initial operational capability in fiscal 2018. Block I uses the same Lockheed Martin infrared receiver—optics and front end—as is used on F-15Ks in Korea and F-15SGs in Singapore. This subsystem is, in turn, derived from the IRST that was designed in the 1980s for the F-14D.
While the Pentagon’s director of operational test and engineering criticized the Navy system’s track quality, it has clearly impressed the Air Force enough to overcome its long lack of interest in IRST. The Air Force has also gained experience via its F-16 Aggressor units, which have been flying with IRST pods since 2013. The Navy plans to acquire only 60 Block I sensors, followed by 110 Block II systems with a new front end.
The bulk of Western IRST experience is held by Selex-ES, which is the lead contractor on the Typhoon’s Pirate IRST and the supplier of the Skyward-G for Gripen. In the past year, Selex has claimed openly that its IRSTs have been able to detect and track low-RCS targets at subsonic speeds, due to skin friction, heat radiating through the skin from the engine, and the exhaust plume.
Are Fourth and Fifth Generation Fighters Comparable?
Then on 21 December 2016, in the middle of this ongoing debate, president-elect Donald Trump tweeted: “Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!”
Many have asked, can an upgrade to a “legacy” fighter like the Super Hornet be comparable to a fifth-generation fighter like the F-35? Some have said that an advanced Super Hornet is an “Impossible Magic Fantasy Jet.” Others flatly state “No, Mr. Trump, You Can’t Replace F-35 With A ‘Comparable’ F-18.” More eloquently stated: “In this modern era of stealth combat, there are two kinds of fighters. Stealth fighters and targets.”
The manufacturers of the two aircraft mentioned in Trump’s tweet have been debating this topic over the past few years. In 2014, Boeing questioned the relative capabilities of the F-35C and the E/F-18G “Growler”, an electronic attack variant of the Super Hornet. “Stealth is perishable; only a Growler provides full spectrum protection.”
Indeed, that same year, Boeing developed an Advanced Super Hornet. The idea was basically to enclose the weapons that current Super Hornets sling beneath their wings into a low-observable pod and thus bring the overall radar cross section (RCS) i.e. the main metric of stealth, down to a level that would provide some of the penetration capability that a fifth generation fighter enjoys.
The current version of the advanced Super Hornet has “matured” after additional conversation with their primary customer, and low-observability has taken a less important role than range, payload, and battle-network capability. Indeed, Mr. Trump responded “We are looking seriously at a big order.”
For the USN, the F-35 seems to have evolved from a strike fighter into a platform for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (C4ISR). This is an important role to play, undoubtedly, but it may mean fewer F-35Cs on carrier decks, which puts more money back into the pocket of the USN for other purposes.
Of course, Lockheed is not resting still – they’ve recently demonstrated a manned and unmanned teaming capability, working with the Air Force Research Laboratory.
What both companies and both services state publicly must be taken in the context of politics and business, as they are in constant competition, both with each other and potential opponents. This is a natural way to come up with good concepts, good options, and a good price.
More on autonomous capabilities to follow.
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.
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
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.
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.