Dominant Logistics
The Future of Tactical Fighter Aviation
Of all the areas of the military, arguably the biggest current mess exists in the tactical fighter communities. The end of the Cold War seems to have brought an end to functioning brain cells amongst many personnel in these areas. Consequently, all involved branches of services appear bound and determined to throw away literally hundreds of billions of dollars in some misguided attempt to win a war long past. It is critical that these efforts be redirected in a proper fashion, and the sooner the better.
The posterchild of this special form of insanity is the Joint Strike Fighter, or as I refer to it, the "How to Build a Fighter for Twice the Cost of any Existing Fighter and Still Pass It Off As Cheap and Affordable" program. Not a single prototype has even been built and costs per unit are already knocking on $80 million per aircraft with a planned purchase of over 2500. Not only can we not afford this program, I have yet to hear a single legitimate case ever made for even considering it. With the exception of stealth which is of little use in an aircraft of this type, the JSF offers virtually no advantages over what is available in current aircraft like the F-16 and the F-18.
Much of this insanity appears to be the result of a concept derived by military bean counters to justify wasting billions of tax dollars. This concept is referred to as the "Hi-Lo" concept and involves purchasing a given quantity of very high performance aircraft and rounding out the fighter fleets with aircraft of lower capabilities. No matter how widely embraced this concept is, it fails to acknowledge the most critical aspect of its entire basis - namely, how many true fighter aircraft are needed to meet our defense needs.
In a world where no other nation possesses a significant long-range bombing capability and no other nation possesses a significantly large quantity of modern fighters, where is the need for a projected total fleet of nearly 4000 of the most advanced fighters in the world? Is there another nation capable of assembling even 1000 modern fighters in a serviceable form? The bottom line is that the only nation that could even dream of a fleet half this size is Russia but given its economy and other military needs, this is only a dream. Plus there's always those little details about Russia no longer being our enemy and the whole massive nuclear arsenal thing. Simply put, when our government spending is well beyond its revenues collected, should we really be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tactical fighters while ignoring more pressing concerns?
The unfortunate answer to this is both yes and no. Our fighter fleets are aging and there are significant gaps in our capabilities that must be addressed in the near term. Our electronic warfare systems are in desperate need of upgrading, our SEAD systems have proven incapable of performing their missions, and our existing systems are too expensive to operate effectively. So let's see how we can address these problems in an effective way to meet our future defense needs.
Fixing the "Hi" Side
Our most severe problems are in our highest performance aircraft. The bottom line with these is that they have aged beyond their serviceability. They remain extremely capable but they are also the oldest fighters in the fleet and maintenance is becoming a growing problem. Short of outright remanufacture (which is not cost effective at this point), these aircraft must be replaced. But we also need to recognize that fewer are required to meet modern defense needs.
The Air Force side of this equation involves the F/A-22 Raptor. While I personally am a fan of this aircraft, I must concede that things are not looking well for it. Costs have exploded but more critical is that computer issues are crippling the program. In a recent announcement, it has been declared in the House that unless the Raptor program is back on track within the next year, the Congress plans to kill the program. Realistically, this result is almost inevitable at this point. Over the long term, a replacement will need to be defined but in the interim, we should seriously look at the purchase of modernized F-15E Strike Eagles. All told, we will need about 500 of these fighters.
Upgrades to the Strike Eagle should include wing improvements to match the Raptor's outboard payload (two 5000lb hardpoints per wing) and the engines and thrust vectoring systems from the Raptor as well. The radar should be upgraded to an AESA system. Existing systems like LANTIRN should be integrated into the fuselage and the computers and data systems modernized. Efforts to reduce radar cross section should also be made as well as boosting cruise speed (Eurofighter includes conformal hardpoints to reduce drag). These improvements should allow the Strike Eagle to expand its roles to include SEAD, electronic warfare, and reconnaissance in addition to its existing strike and air dominance roles.
Ideally, the problems with the Raptor can be fixed allowing it to become useable. Another potential option is to allow for mixed fleets, where we purchase limited quantities of extremely capable aircraft that collectively form the Hi side of the fighter mix. An example of this might be to use 300 Raptors along with 200 upgraded F-15Es to meet our total need of 500 air dominance aircraft. Yet another possibility might be to use 200 F-15Es along with 150 Raptors and 150 of the FB-22 design being reviewed by the Pentagon. We could also consider a mix of Raptors, FB-22s, and VTOL F-35s as well.
On the Navy side of the equation, we should reorganize the JSF program to focus solely on the VTOL version of the aircraft. We need to redefine this aircraft to serve as the Navy's equivalent to the modernized F-15E Strike Eagle as well as the stealth strike role. Key here is to increase the external payload options of the F-35 to give it the necessary capacities to handle the expanded roles. As with the Strike Eagle, 500 fighters should be more than sufficient.
This would give us a total of 1000 of the most advanced fighters in the world. This far exceeds the capabilities of any other nation and is a reasonably affordable plan given the size of our defense budgets. What is most important is that we limit our use of ultra high technologies to this end of the tactical aviation spectrum. We don't need, nor can we afford, 4000 ultra high tech stealth fighters especially considering the ever increasing need for various ground attack capabilities.
Creating a Real "Lo" Side
In the past, the "Lo" side of the "Hi-Lo" concept has meant a lower performance aircraft to accompany the higher performance craft. I prefer to think of this concept in terms of altitude. We need high flyers securing the airspace but we also need low flyers to support forces on the ground. Historically, close air support roles have been nothing more than a glorified afterthought to the Air Force but I believe the time is ripe to change this around.
As has been the case, our aircraft of choice for the Lo mission is the A-10 Warthog. It is proven and more than capable for everything in this role. The only thing lacking from the Hog is the naval variant to fill in the other half of the Lo side. The Navy in particular needs this aircraft for defense against small boats where its long loiter times can be extremely beneficial. It is also an ideal system to support amphibious assault missions and for escorting helicopters. Each branch should be operating 250 of these versatile aircraft.
Filling in the Middle
So we have a Hi and a Lo but we also now have a serious problem - namely a distinct lack of quantity of aircraft. Quality is never a bad thing but sometimes, it just takes pure numbers to get the job done. But this again poses a serious problem.
No jet aircraft is cheap, either to purchase or to operate. For all the hype about inexpensive fighters, we need to realize that this is a relative concept - we're still talking billions to purchase and tens of millions to operate a significant fleet of modern fighters. This is especially the case with high performance fighters and this fact points us in a direction that may offer a potential answer to the cost problem.
We have a tendency to define performance purely in terms of speed but by any realistic analysis, performance should be a much more diverse measure. In the Cold War, a case could be made that speed was the most critical factor in fighter design but whether or not this remains the case is highly debateable.
By some estimates, the typical operating speeds during a dogfight are between 500 and 550 knots, which is not very fast at all by modern measures. Even the Air Force has de-emphasized pure speed in the design of the F/A-22 Raptor by intentionally limiting its maximum speed to improve stealth. The Air Force currently places stealth above all other factors in future aircraft designs and this means limiting speed as high speeds increase all important signatures. Stealth is not as critical to other air forces but it is a factor for nearly all of them.
Other nations place their highest emphasis on manueverability. Every new fighter design from Russia and Europe is emphasizing manueverability over all other factors. And this is pretty understandable given that the greatest threat to modern fighters is advanced surface-to-air missiles that can no longer be outrun. So what if we were to create a design that emphasized manueverability and signature reduction that could still operate at speeds sufficient for historical trends in dogfighting?
To keep development issues to a minimum, we should start with a canard/delta configuration. This is the shape used by the current Eurofighter, Rafale, and Grippen. It is a highly unstable design that gives excellent manueverability at most speeds while also offering good fuel storage and payload options. It allows us to build a small fighter that can still meet a wide range of needs. For radar, we should go with an AESA design similar to that developed for the F-35 to give us a very basic system that can meet nearly all of our needs in this area. Sensor fusion would be nice but it isn't necessarily required as we're going to keep our sensors to a minimum. Where things get a little interesting is the engines.
The Saab Grippen is a single engine fighter with Mach 2 capability but it only uses a single 18,000lb thrust engine. Incidentally, the engines of the A-10 Warthog happen to produce a little over 18,000lbs of thrust but they are much more efficient high-bypass turbofans. What if we put the engines from the A-10 in this fighter design? It won't be Mach 2 capable, but it should be more than sufficient to meet the normal combat needs for this fighter. It would also greatly improve the range and loiter characteristics of the aircraft while also reducing noise and heat output significantly. This would also decrease pilot workload as all that would be required in a combat situation is give it full throttle and leave it there - fuel consumption will remain modest while the pilot can focus his efforts on manuevering. Since we're locating these engines inside the fuselage, we can still use a thrust vectoring system like that used on the Raptor to enhance manueverability even further.
So what we are doing is taking the avionics systems that already exist from the Hi aircraft, adding the mechanicals from the Lo aircraft, and throwing them together in a lightweight, highly manueverable airframe. Design and development costs should be quite low and operating costs should be among the lowest of any fighter in years as its fuel consumption will be a fraction of the norm. It should work well whether at medium to high altitude dogfighting or at low level ground attack. It will be ideal for escorting turboprops and rotorcraft as well as for general patrolling purposes. I wouldn't want to square it off against a Super Flanker or Rafale but why would we? Most of our enemies don't even HAVE air forces and if we end up going against someone who does, we have the Hi aircraft to address those issues.
This type of a design is what should ultimately replace the F-16 and F-18. While underpowered by current U.S. standards, this design is consistent with many very effective fighters, including the F-4 Phantom, Mirage 2000, and Mig-21 as well as attack aircraft like the A-4 and A-7. But it will also feature much greater manueverability and efficiency along with improved avionics and reductions in major signatures. It will probably take some work to get the airflow issues resolved with the high-bypass engines in an airframe with this level of manueverability but these shouldn't be that difficult. And with it's lower costs and higher efficiencies, we can afford to purchase about 1500 of these for the Air Force and another 500 for the Navy/Marine Corps to give us a total of 2500 true attack aircraft which is what we need for expected future conflicts since nobody else is crazy enough to field a large dogfighting Air Force anymore.