Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Reader comments 5 Nov 14

Some enjoyable reading by M&S found in the comments section of a previous post.


"Hostage is selling the F-35 by not mentioning that a much smaller force could indeed be made to work by adding a filler UCAV. What's more, he is covering up the natural force -differentiation- into incompatible landing mode variants, that the JSF represents as the real reason for buying so many. When in fact the A-47 or a similar UCLASS could be made universally carrier/landbased compatible as a Gen-6 SLUF.

There is _always_ a cheaper, better, alternative. When you show no mercy in the bloodletting of those sacred cows."


M&S

Lacroix,
I appreciate the compliment, I hope it maybe encourages you to think of the time domain that is sortie generation vs. the risk one which is force protection. DMPIs win air wars. Dead Tankers lose them.
I'm tired so I didn't check for 'cogency' :-). Or spelling. If I sound like a drug addict five days off his methadone treatment plan...well.
Don't say you weren't warned.
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Thanks for your cogent response M&S. I am not privy to how the ADF wants to use their F-35s for defense. Recently an adoring Chela 'interviewed' the all things Guru of the F35. One of His Immensity's responses, expatiating on the fifth combat cloud was:
'the plan is to normalize the Lightning's capabilities relative to the Raptor by marrying it up with the six, seven, or eight other Lightnings'
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I recently read something on the EFOG-M which highlighted the reason why a nominally superior weapons system (equal shots onboard, lower cost platform, less exposure to the platform in ingress) was failed out of competition with the AH-64.
'Apparently', the AGM-114 has a flyout of 18-20km, not the 8 which we were told or the 10 which the FOG-M vehicle could supply. This, along with the speed of the Apache allowed 'lateration' of combat across multiple division frontages so that it could shoot at 5 times the threat coverage arc of moving Soviet formations with 1,440 weapons vs. the 500 or so of the surface to surface missile. Faster movement, = more dispersed operations, more reloads as sortie generation and
Do I believe it? No.
First, because it implies that the pre-Arrowhead TADS is all that and a 25km bag of chips to target with and...it isn't.
By a long about 19km (MQM-107 Aquila maybe?).
I also think range claims for the Longbow and especially Brimstone would have been updated to well past the 10-12km (from a fast mover no less) that I have heard. And JCM/JAGM would be 50km weapons if not more.
But it does show how a single parameter change in a weapons effect can alter everything.
Update this three decades with the AIM-120C7, having an 'enhanced autopilot' (GPS and 2-way datalink) that would, theoretically, allow it to be lofted at a target that one JSF teased into operation, 3DRK'd with it's Barracuda RFI suite, and another submarined from below the horizon and/or beyond effective range.
AMRAAM as powered JDAM in a SHARK mode.
In a manner similar to the AH-64 being able to shoot up armor formations with Hellfire which it couldn't tag, it's far more netcentric platform believable today than it was in the 1980s.
Of course there is the problem with the F-35 not being able to internally carry more than 2 AMRAAM class munitions either...
As for General Hostage, well...
1. (to counter what I said above), Gen 4 is expending because Gen 4 is the only one with appropriate ordnance for the standoff SEAD/DEAD mission. You don't send in Gen 4 to do hard kill, even with 'scouts' to geolocate threats and AGM-88E to milliwave seeker kill them, if you have a choice. That's backwards to what Stealth is supposed to enable.
2. OF COURSE all missions are 'single focussed'. The entire nature of warfare being what discriminates the mob from a military is one of timing and logistics to support attacks ONLY on the threats to your opplan. You don't waste effort killing non-t hreats. You stay focused and suffer less incidental attrition that way.
I remember an anecdotal Red Flag mission where a major running the primary on an AWACS had a late arrival F-111 driver, a full bird colonel from Canon no less, tell him he needed gas. And the major looked at his fuel use charts and said: "Nope. I feed you and I lose time on the EA-6B which is covering the whole-force and I'm not gonna do it. You're scrubbed." Feelings were hurt, words were exchanged unti a ref stepped in to take the _on scene commander's_ side. Later, in the mass debrief, it all came out and the Colonel was man enough to apologize.
This is just one illustration of the 'Do _your_ job, very well' mission condition by which you don't want someone larking about doing 'whatever' until needed while burning twice the fuel of an F100 powered aircraft with those supercruise engines.
Where the F-22 wins is it's COE ability to better pick and choose the fights it wants to have on the way to that MA condition, based on it's onboard weapons and known threats.
Here there is another example, from the 1982 PFG campaign timeframe, whereby the I sraelis (whom rumor insists had already lost a pair of F-15s to MiG-25 low level sweep) got tired of 'Foxbat Fever' whereby the Syrians would run a recce bird out to the Med, accelerate to double warp in a run down the coast and then cut back inland, taking pictures of the IDF movements up onto The Golan for further advance up the coast roads and through the Bekaa, 'adjusting fire accordingly'. The IDFAF could not make the cut off, even in the Eagle, however and so they tried something else: moving up, overnight, a HAWK battery onto the slopes of Mt. Hebron; they used the Baz to as brooms and sure enough, the Foxbat 'biased right' away from the snap up corridor and right overtop the HAWK site which, while it didn't kill the MiG-25 crippled it enough to send it limping home, never to return.
While this is not nominally a problem for the Raptor (over Syria) it could well become more of one over Taiwan or the Ukraine where you have multiple low-band cuers (Nebo/Vostock) providing handoff for big 40N6/48N6 missiles to whom a Mach 2 target at 50,000ft ain't no big thing.
Which is also where you start to see a single-mission capability edge arise when it comes to support missions dedicated to the penetration but also (theoretically) where chaos effect from 'don't look at my other hand' magician tricks could start to matter.
3. The extension of weapons technology will come after the surety of fleet inventories as commandable pilot core aviator counts are assured. This is a given ever since the AGM-86 rightfully kaiboshed the B-1 as a penetrating LRACA. Indeed, the '5Gen' weapon system is a hunting (turbine powered, hunting datalink enabled) missile which can dispense multiple target kills while networking with other, autonomous cruise weapons. Look at LOCAAS and then look at GBU-53 or even SPEAR-3 and ask which is better...
The AF, like any other service, will never willingly disenable itself from access to further power and money by automating a mission capability through the pointy end of a weapons capability when it can instead 'improve' the tactical end of things. This attitude is tri-service wide and is inherent in this document-
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Before the Army embarks on developing a new weapon system to counter a known or suspected threat, it must first go through a process known as requirements generation. This process continually assesses the capabilities of the current force structure to meet the projected threat. The output of this process, called the Mission Area Analy sis (MAA) (Me: USN: Mission Elements Needs Study, USAF: Tactical Operational Requirement Document), is a deficiency between the current capability and the threat. Once a deficiency is identified, the Army must then explore possible changes to it's organization, leadership, doctrine, tactics and training to determine if any of these non-material alternatives can counter the deficiency. These non-material changes are considered first because of their low cost and ease of implementation. If it is determined through a thorough analysis that the non-material alternatives are incapable of resolving the deficiency, then the Army must investigate a material solution such as the EFOG-M.
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Nominally, this sounds like the wise actions of a thrifty military service. Truthfully, it means that the Army always looks for a system which integrates within the manned solutions already in place rather than obsolescing them in-total and rescripting the entire warfighting methodology to generate something newer, ligher and more efficient altogeher.
It results in lump-sum, 'total force', effects, driven conglomerate where the mission is narrowed, not by the ta ctical dictates of the threat or theater opplan for victory but from the need to niche-in the new toy without debilitating the role of sacred cows all around.
One must _never_ forget that the Armed Forces are a Blue Collar Union and Gentleman's Club first and foremost and a capable defender of this nation's security only at a secondary, economic, (eventually we will out-procure the threat) level.
Obviously that condition will not continue with China as the new mirror threat.
Equally obviously, one must ask: To what -threat- was the F-35 spec'd. And does it meet it?
If the answer to the latter is "Duuh, I dunno..." My answer would be: Me Either.
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My previous comment was based on the following assumptions:
-APA is a severe critic of the F35. They think its a bad fit for the ADF.
-They are well aware that the 35 without the F22 is of questionable worth.
-That is, if the 35 ever were to meet design and enter service.
-APA is wondering like the rest of us, what the hell normalize means and how much is it going to cost?
-6 to 1 ratio but we wont sell you the 1? APA probably thinks LM is going to have to come up with a better cheat sheet of features and benefits than this.
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Let me introduce you to two other concepts from The Army Brain Trust-
Why WWII Generals Succeeded: A Culture Of Win Or Walk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Both are good videos but to summarize:
1. There are three types of warrior in the armed forces, equ ating to roughly the R&D/Procurement, the Combat/Operations side and the Leadership class. The gentleman in the first video describes them as the 'Guardian' technologists, the 'Hero' effectors and the 'Manager' class. Guardians believe all solutions lie within technical innovation and that doctrine should change to meet this different warfighter approach.
I am one of these because I look at war and notice that everytime an unexpected technology improvement occurs as an assymetric advantage, Loss Exchange Ratios go up and it is only the incorrect applications of these decisive attrition elements which determines whether or not they are war winning.
Hero's just wanna get down in the mud with the pig. They don't care if they come up slimey or if the pig loves it, they see warfare as the ultimate expression of will to win dominating all else. I'm one of these too, because I know that /proper/ wars are won tactically, not operationallity or strategically. But I draw the line at winning only if I get a solid, attainable, objective parameter and then a hand's off operational freedom in which to write my own aufstragstaktik (Mission Orders) with which to execute as I see fit, with whatever assets I care to commit.
And then there are the leaders-who-want-to-micromanage. Who believe that if they can just get the 'winning formula' as in-action force mix, they can carry the day against any threat because they are moving their mission platforms around and delivering effects like a conductor before his orchestra.
Which I am not.
Because, IMO, the nature of operational freedom must extend dowards through all the ranks not just laterally to own-level commanders. This 'Here the mission, you may accomplish the goal as you see fit but you must tell me if you change the operational play and you must not fail to support the primary objective.' has to be something that anyone considered capable of o perating a major weapons system in particular has the freedom to execute or it's all for nothing.
Operational Commanders who fail this test, who fail the "Let them be warriors and think about ten more steps down the road for your own plan..." are ineffective tacticians and strategists and they quickly lose track of operational tempo and force disposition changes in the Mission Order necessary to win.
However; if you look at General Hostage's view on war, it is almost certain that his 'Fused, 5Gen, Combat Cloud' mantra is _exactly_ this kind of capability. And hi s desire to make the cross talk happen 'both ways', irrespective of cyber vulnerabilities, irrespective of the on-scene expertise of his local platform operators and without regard to _Single Mission Focus_ is highly indicative of...someone who drank the coolaid on 'Transformation'.
Which brings us to Comment number 2.
2. Fire'em And Hire'em. The No Fault Plan.
We were firing and hiring brigadiers roughly every six weeks in WWII. Ike himself came within a hair's whisker of being outta there and was only saved because his recent promotion meant there wasn't anybody who could immediately step into his shoes.
We are NOT short of star ranks in today's military. And institutionalization of careerists leads to stagnation as realworld experience becomes dated before it becomes doctrinal.
Some of those incompetents left the field under armed escort as Colonels and came back later to end their career as 2-stars so it wasn't always a career ender but _winning wars_ mattered more than stability of the Officer's Clique.
And if someone is toeing a political line like 'Boots on the Ground is nice but it's not my purview, it's a political choice' _after just admitting_ that airborne ISR cannot provide all the detail fine resolution that is needed for targeting of micro-threats in places like Syria, then he is not making the kinds of choices which would allow a fully commited (to cross-service, singe-pipe, 'on demand' warfighter services) Transformationalist to achieve what need to be done. Specifically with regards to small forces which are too primitive to show up on large-grain ISR networks and are smart enough not to use high end commo systems to signal their sophistication when a runner system and traded cell phones will do just as nice.
This is obvious in Hostages bragging about 'back in the when as I was a lowly 3-star writing F-22 doctrine...' as the artifacting of old, dead, wood ideals by which, ideas learned as a Lieutenant somehow get remembered (thanks to a very poor counterfactualist 'but what if they don't play along' instruction in the present day War Colleges) as though they were new, great, ideas. Rather than repackaged dogma.
In this, thinking a short term checkout in the Raptor can replace years of _current_ operational experience with 'sudden understanding' is ridiculous.
I hate to say this but any 767 driver for UA could likely get a similar qualification checkout and fundamental aerodynamic understanding of the Raptor to take it off, fly it up to SSC height and bring it back.
With all that power and lift, it is seriously harder to screw up fundamentals of safe fighter flight than a C172 Skyhawk.
Indeed, even with some groundschool and simulator work, Hostage's 'experience' with the F-22 doesn't translate to competent weapons system employment skills as the author of doctrine on how something like the Raptor really should work. If he doesn't have that expertise, he can't vet young turks at the squadron level coming up with new ideas either.
And so you get the flashcard words: 'Cloud, Networking, 5Gen' etc. which sound alright, in context with the generic sentence structure, but are really just doublespeak as The Establishment Speaking For The Establishment through a self appointed 'expert'.
Who just happens to be retiring in a few weeks and will suffer no loss in pension for being dead wrong.
Some final comments on one paragraph of the BD article itself:
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We are fundamentally changing the tactical battlefield. How a tactical platform operates with the fusion of fifth gen. What the aviators do is fundamentally different in a fifth gen platform versus fourth gen in the tactical fight.
From an operational standpoint, there are some changes because there are now some things that we can do with fifth gen that I might not have been able to do before.
But the fundamental mechanism of producing air superiority, to enable ground operations, to enable deep strike, to enable all these other things; those fundamental things, those tasks are the same.
I have got the command embarked on a full-court press to get a fourth-to-fifth, fifth-to-fourth capability that will need a combat cloud to be fully empowered, but it will then allow us to fundamentally change how the fourth generation platforms fight in addition to the fifth gen.
Without that back and forth communication, machine-to-machine, the fourth gen’s going to have to do what they already do, they’ll just leverage some of the capability that fifth gen — the SA the fifth gen can provide.
If I can get that machine-to-machine, now the fourth-gen platform will begin to realize some of the benefits inherently at the tactical level that the fusion engines of the fifth generation aircraft provide.
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'Fusion' of the kind Hostage describes started happening the late 1960s with the F-4G. By the 1970s, there was a version of the Hawkeye (APS-125) which could command the analogue Phoenix midcourses from Link-11 handoff on the leading Tomcats to actually get better midcourse lofting performance. In the 1980s, the F/A-18A/C began using 'MSI' or Multi-Sensor Integration (HARM cues AAS-38 which gets single-ping fireontrol quality ranging from the APG-73).
F-22s have had BACN through a Challenger or RQ-4 for almost a decade now.
This is not new and it is not intrinsically about 'fusion engines' and 'up/down' generational chatter. Indeed, stealth platforms want nothing to do with compromised digital networks or extended datalink conversations outside their immediate IFDL 'circle'.
If you want to seriously talk fusion, you have to talk about how to push a 170MB radar datafile through a blade antenna receiver out of a 4-second APG-77 AESA without 'download failed' sparks and smoke.
And the achievement that you get from that kind of capabiltiy is NOT reflected in an 'everyone has radars because they are all F-35s' force structure condition.
The capability list you are looking for is exactly what General Hostage is forfending as the digitally enabled trying to coach the stupid 'and stealth'. Namely a UCAV bomber platform with minimal sensorization (spot SAR or low end optics, if that) and a 'big head' (Alienesque) CDL AE SA on a global coverage mount as commo suite can take instructions from a _microforce_ of forward deployed (transient) assets as SCARs. This provides both immediate reactivity to sudden threats without the middle man on the C4ISR standoff platform and a _certainty_ of point-to-point directional comms, invulnerable to intercept or jamming because the UCAV's "How high on the fly boss!?" doesn't begin within a self-positioning signal to a satellite (which may or may not be there) as a Here I Am enemy freebee. Instead, the loitering platform saves tanker taps for the fast SCAR which has the targeting gear but is limited in it's coverage time.
Whether the individual UCAVs are searchlighted and shot down by HQ-9 or J-11 doesn't matter because _in reacting_ to that distributed, micro, force, the threat poses long term illumination and transit exposure endangerment to a much more valuable asset.
In this, the UCAV is basically acting as a stealthed auxilliary weapons pylon. And while it might have variants or palletized options with more sensorization options for OCO/LIC operations like SWA. Even versions which are unstealthed, and thus much lower flying CPFH pricey, the reality remains that, vs. the high end manned systems they are viable force fill as persistent mission window extenders.
In this, it is indeed theoretically possible f or any standoff platform with a big AESA radar aperture to provide SAR patch coordinates on a radar map sufficient to target various threats.
But the converse is _not_ true. Because the cost of stealth+sensors+fighter mission platform capabiltiies is not only self defeating in terms of sucking exposed tankers dry to feed limited endurance manned platforms. But also CAIV sabotaging when you could just as easily (UCAVs have superior stealth planform alignments and no empennage) put varied capability in ONE platform (Persistence, Payload, LO) and another set of options in the other (Sensorization, High End Commo, The Ability to RUN from threats it can't beat and of course the sanity checker).
CONCLUSION:
Hostage is selling the F-35 by not mentioning that a much smaller force could indeed be made to work by adding a filler UCAV. What's more, he is covering up the natural force -differentiation- into incompatible landing mode variants, that the JSF represents as the real reason for buying so many. When in fact the A-47 or a similar UCLASS could be made universally carrier/landbased compatible as a Gen-6 SLUF.

There is _always_ a cheaper, better, alternative. When you show no mercy in the bloodletting of those sacred cows.
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