When Defence
Secretary Robert Gates announced on
Monday last week his intended recommendation to Cabinet that the US
cease
further production of the F-22 Raptor fighter, it came as no surprise
to many
observers of the Pentagon bureaucracy. This recommendation is
unprecedented as
it amounts to a unilateral choice by the United States Office of the
Secretary
of Defense to opt out of the business of defending American forces,
allies and
interests against industrialised nation states. In an era of rising
industrialised regional powers across Asia, this choice amounts to a
self-induced strategic death spiral.
The ground truth of current
times is that
“anti-access” technologies capable of denying access to all US combat
aircraft
other than the F-22A Raptor and B-2A Spirit have been the hottest
selling items
in the globalised arms market. These technologies include advanced
digital
technology fighter aircraft and long range Surface to Air Missiles
(SAM), and a
range of supporting systems such as radars, passive sensors, computer networks, data
fusion systems, radar decoys,
radar / communications / GPS jamming
equipment and point defence weapons
designed to shoot down US smart munitions
in flight.
Advanced
Surface to Air Missiles are a particular
concern since they are relatively cheap, often highly effective, and
unchallenging in personnel training demands. Russia has exported large
numbers
of the S-300PMU /
SA-10C, S-300PMU1
and PMU2 Favorit /
SA-20, and is set to
export the new S-400
Triumf / SA-21, which includes a 200 nautical mile range
missile built to kill AWACS, JSTARS and jamming aircraft like the EA-6B
Prowler
and EA-18G Growler. These missile systems are often described as
“Patriot
class” and are similar to the US Patriot in basic design, but employ
more
refined radar designs, longer ranging missiles, and are much more
mobile than
the Patriot, making them vastly more difficult to kill compared to
legacy
Soviet era or Patriot SAM batteries. An opponent operating
SA-10C/12/20/21/23
SAM systems can play the same “shoot
and scoot” game even better than Saddam
did with Scud launchers in 1991, or Serbia did with SA-6 SAM batteries
in 1999,
and evade US fighters most if not all of the time.
Cold War era tactics of
inundating enemy SAM batteries
with HARM anti-radar missiles are effectively bankrupt. Not only are
missile
battery and search radars protected by smart decoys and other
countermeasures,
but they are also defended by advanced short range missiles and radar
directed
gun systems, the latter similar in concept to the US Navy Phalanx CIWS,
designed to shoot down incoming US missiles or smart bombs.
The Cold War era tactic of
high power jamming against
missile battery radars is also approaching bankruptcy, because the new
generation of more powerful digital frequency hopping phased array
radars are
very difficult to jam, but also because SAM batteries are now equipped
with
missiles of sufficiently long range to kill a standoff jamming
aircraft. The ALQ-99
Tactical Jamming System in both the US Navy Prowler and Growler lacks
the power
to permit jamming from outside the range of the newer SAMs, and both
aircraft
are too slow to outrun SAM shots.
In the air, US forces will
have to confront a new
generation of high performance fighters, such as the fully digital
supercruising Su-35-1/Su-35BM Flanker,
and over the coming decade the stealthy
PAK-FA. The only Western combat aircraft with the combination of
performance
and stealth sufficient to decisively defeat these new aircraft is the
F-22A
Raptor.
While Russia remains the
global leader in producing
and exporting sophisticated “anti-access” weapons, China is now
entering this
market with a range of indigenous products, and derivatives of Russian
products. This year China announced the export of the HQ-9/LD-2000, an
improved
Chinese derivative of the Russian S-300PMU/SA-10C SAM system, which
includes
the option of the FT-2000 passive anti-radar missile, designed to home
on the
radar emissions from an AWACS, JSTARS, U-2 or Global Hawk surveillance
aircraft, or on emissions from jamming aircraft like the EA-6B Prowler
and
EA-18G Growler. To defeat US smart munitions in flight, the LD-2000 is on
offer, a clone of the European Goalkeeper radar directed Gatling gun,
carried
on a high mobility truck. Other Chinese built anti-access products
include
Missile Approach Warning Systems for SAM batteries, and jammers, as
well as a
wide range of modern digital radars including low band designs with
some counter-stealth capability,
and phased arrays derived from the Russian S-300P
series.
The existence, performance
and capabilities of these
weapons are well documented in a plethora of unclassified Russian
language and
Chinese language literature, ranging from professional journals,
academic
journals, manufacturer’s literature and marketing documents, and also
numerous
public interviews and statements by the research scientists and
engineers who
developed these systems.
Any nation which deploys a
sufficient density of these
modern high technology “anti-access” weapons will be able to put up a
defensive
umbrella which is impenetrable to legacy US combat aircraft like the
F-15, F-16
and F/A-18 series. Moreover, these weapons can be used to effect an
“ISR
lockout”, driving US surveillance systems like the JSTARS, AWACS, Rivet
Joint,
U-2 and Global Hawk away and blinding US commanders in the field.
Of no less concern is that
the design specification
for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter was written around the
generation of potential threat radars, SAM systems and fighter aircraft
which
preceded the current generation of products now in the global market.
The
result is that the F-35’s stealth design, defensive systems and
performance are
completely inadequate to deal with modern “anti-access” systems. The
F-35 would
be shot down in combat almost as frequently as the legacy jets. The
F-35’s poor
aft hemisphere stealth and lack of supercruise capability make it
highly
vulnerable to long range SAM shots during escape manoeuvres and egress
after
weapons release.
Whether the
troubled F-35 meets its stated design specifications is now irrelevant,
as that
specification itself has been overtaken by opposing systems.
The inadequacy of the F-35’s
basic design
specification against current threat systems continues to be ignored by
senior
US decision-makers despite the overwhelming volume of hard technical
evidence
proving this is so.
One recently retired US Air
Force strategist, upon
receiving a technical briefing on the new generation of “anti-access”
systems,
observed that this painted a “scary picture”. It is a scary picture.
Twenty
years of clever scientific and operational thinking, motivated by
profit rather
than Soviet ideology, and access to sophisticated Western computer and
software
technology in a globalised market, has produced a deep generational
change in
Russian built weapons technology. The Chinese in turn have licensed or
“acquired”
this technology to build their own derivatives.
The US has never confronted
1980s generation Soviet
SAMs and radars in combat, nor has it ever confronted the 1980s
generation
Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker fighter. The derivatives of these weapons now in
the
market have two more decades of maturity and refinement in their
designs, and
digital weapon systems which are mostly of the same generation of
technology
seen in operational US weapons.
The current
generation of “anti-access” weapons are in techno-strategic terms a
“check
mate” play against US Cold War legacy weapons, and due to its poor
design definition,
also a “check mate” play against the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Where does this leave the
United States in operational
terms?
The planned force of 187
F-22A Raptors is numerically
insufficient to deliver the required number of sorties to effect an air
campaign on the scale of Desert Storm, and would be challenged to cover
the
demands of a campaign on the scale of the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
This can
be easily proven by a simple throw weight calculation based on
precision guided
weapon capable fighters deployed in the 1991 and 1999 air campaigns.
Between
500 and 700 F-22s are needed to preserve America’s historical advantage
in air
power.
The notion that F-22s can
quickly kill off opposing
SAMs and carve corridors through an enemy’s SAM belts was predicated on
the
poor mobility of a preceding generation of SAM systems. This model is
now also bankrupt.
Linked by radio networks and using satellite navigation, modern high
mobility
SAM batteries and radars may take weeks to kill off in a sustained air
campaign. Legacy fighters and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter cannot be
flown
into such airspace, due to the very high risk of ambush SAM shots
killing the
aircraft.
The result of having only 187
F-22s will be air
campaigns limited in size and the rate at which critical targets can be
attacked and reattacked, resulting in opportunities for opponents to
play shell
games with assets, evading attacks.
If legacy aircraft or
insufficiently stealthy F-35s
are employed, combat losses are apt to mount quickly, and the few
surviving aircrew
become politically exploitable hostages for propaganda and political
extortion
purposes. Even at combat loss rates of only several percent, the “half
life” of
a fighter fleet would be measured in weeks even at modest sortie rates.
Overuse of the small F-22
fleet will burn out airframe
life much faster than planned for, seeing the fleet run out of life
possibly in
less than two decades, leaving the US without any credible tactical air
capability.
Where does this leave the
United States in strategic terms?
The inability to project
power on an effective scale
against even a regional nation state opponent in
the class of Saddam’s former Iraq, equipped
with modern “anti-access” weapons, without unsustainable losses in
aircrew and
aircraft, severely limits strategic options available to the United
States.
Confronted with a regional
crisis in which force must
be used to prevent a US ally or US forces on the ground from being
overrun, a
US President will be left with two wholly unacceptable choices.
The first choice is to accept
high losses in expensive
to replace combat aircraft and even more expensive to replace aircrew,
with the
enormous political costs that entails with US voters and Congress, and
the
strategic, political and fiscal costs of replacement.
The second choice is to
threaten the use of, or to
use, tactical nuclear weapons, which carries enormous costs
politically, on the
domestic and global stages, and which carries very real risks of
escalation,
especially if the opponent or its ally has a credible nuclear weapons
capability. The political costs the US incurred by invading Iraq in
2003 would
pale into insignificance if the US were to employ, unilaterally,
tactical
nuclear weapons to deal with a regional conflict.
The cost of procuring a
sufficient number of F-22
Raptors is trivial compared to the costs incurred by the alternatives.
It is
worth observing that one half of the current
‘on-record’ procurement
budget for the
F-35 would buy well in excess of 1,000 F-22A Raptors, making a complete
mockery
of any fiscal justifications for the F-35 over the F-22.
This begs the question of why
SecDef Gates opted to
make his recommendation on F-22 Raptor termination.
Basic strategic logic shows
that this recommendation
produces real and tangible strategic risks over the coming decade that
the US
will be unable to effectively intervene using conventional forces in
regional
conflicts involving nation state opponents, driving available military
options
into politically unacceptable choices such as tactical nuclear weapons.
The recommendation is all the
more remarkable given
the President’s stated policy aims to “...preserve
our unparalleled airpower capabilities to deter and defeat any
conventional
competitors, swiftly respond to crises across the globe, and support
our ground
forces”; and “America seeks a world
with no nuclear weapons”.
Unilaterally
abandoning the capability to use conventional air power against
industrialised
nation states is simply not coherent with the stated philosophical and
practical strategic aims of the Obama Administration. In the words of
one
senior US strategist, “the recommendation to terminate the F-22 is
insane”.
The unilateral grand
strategic policy decision
inherent in SecDef Gates’ F-22
recommendation is also not coherent with the thinking of key US allies
in the
West Pacific, such as Australia and Japan. Australia’s soon to be
released
White Paper, equivalent to a US QDR, is expected to strongly
prioritise regional nation state conflicts over counter-insurgency
campaigns. Japan’s 2007
Defence
White Paper does much the same, also focussing on China’s enormous
military
growth, that being well detailed in the March
OSD report to Congress on China’s
military capabilities.
As the Rumsfeld/Gates OSD
actively discouraged both
Japan and Australia from procuring the F-22, and marketed the F-35
instead,
both nations are left to rely on the strategic deterrent effect of the
US F-22
fleet, and its combat effect if hostilities were to break out. In grand
strategy terms, SecDef Gates’ recommendation leaves both Japan and
Australia
“up the creek without a paddle” as a US fleet of only 187 F-22 aircraft
is too
small for viable deterrent or actual combat effect against China. The
long term
political impact is yet to be seen, but we should not be surprised if
the
Japanese start thinking seriously about developing and deploying
nuclear armed
ballistic missiles. Other Asian allies may change their alignment away
from the
US, throwing their lot in with China. The Gates recommendation will not
be
welcomed by Australia’s strategic analysts.
The most likely explanation
for SecDef Gates’
recommendation is bureaucratic advice based on a combination of very
poor
technical intelligence on new generation “anti-access weapons”; grossly
optimistic assessments of the F-35’s procurement costs, survivability,
capability, and Initial Operational Capability dates; and a complete
absence of
deeper strategic thought and operational analysis on the available
force
structure alternatives.
There is ample evidence to
argue that all three of
these toxic ingredients are present in the current, largely Bush
Administration
staffed, senior Pentagon bureaucracy. It is known from numerous public
statements that performance models for Russian and Chinese built
weapons used
in operational analysis are often ten or more years out of date, and
the
technical sophistication of these weapons has not been part of any
recent
Pentagon public statements or documents. There is also abundant public
evidence
of the F-35’s limited capabilities and performance being misrepresented
inside
and outside the Pentagon. Finally, the detailed force structure
modelling
required to validate force structure choices will likely not be
performed until
the Quadrennial Defence Review later this year, if at all given that
robust
analysis would not validate the current OSD strategic position.
The weakness of the strategic
argument supporting the
OSD position is very clear. The idea of “complex hybrid warfare” is
simply a
renaming of the 1930s Nazi and Soviet practice of using insurgent
proxies,
which they often armed with state of the art light weapons, and
employed to
disrupt and destabilise nation state opponents in support of
conventional
military forces. The post Cold War growth in irregular forms of combat
has been
a reaction to the overwhelming effect of US conventional air power
since the
Cold War. Cripple that air power as the OSD intends to do, and
opponents will
return to the use of conventional forms of combat. A Sukhoi
fighter-bomber
armed with KAB-1500
satellite, laser or television guided thermobaric bombs can kill
American troops far more effectively than any insurgent with a suicide
vest
could.
The focus of the 2010 budget
proposal, and repeated
comments about “next-war-itis”, display a clear indifference to the
strategic
realities of Asia’s high technology
arms
race, which has produced many conventional
military capabilities far more potent than those deployed by the Warsaw
Pact during
the 1980s.
Gates is a highly experienced
intelligence
professional, with a doctorate in Russian/Soviet history, robust
performance in
a range of senior intelligence postings, and a well regarded track
record in analytical intelligence.
It is therefore surprising
that he was prepared to
make a decision on the basis of advice which is not only contestable,
but has
been contested, and repeatedly proven wrong in public.
What is clear is that if the
President and Congress
agree to the Gates recommendation on F-22 termination, for the next two
to
three decades the US will be opting out of the business of deterrence
and
protecting American interests and allies against nation state threats,
with all
of the enormous strategic and political costs that introduces. |
![Australia's First Online Journal Covering Air Power Issues [ISSN 1832-2433]](apa-analyses.png "Australia's First Online Journal Covering Air Power Issues [ISSN 1832-2433]")
