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Updated: Sun Aug 29 16:43:38 UTC 2010
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APA NOTAMS ISSN 1836-7135
PAK-FA, F-35, F-22 and
“Capability Surprise”
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Air Power
Australia - Australia's Independent Defence Think Tank
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Air Power Australia NOTAM
23rd
February, 2010
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| Contacts: |
Peter
Goon
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Carlo
Kopp |
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Mob:
0419-806-476 |
Mob:
0437-478-224 |
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A PAK-FA prototype
image released by Sukhoi/KnAAPO
(Sukhoi).
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The
first flight of Russia's
stealthy PAK-FA is the best recent example of the problems examined
in the United States Defense
Science Board
report on “Capability
Surprise”,
released in September last year. This study is an important step
forward in identifying the causes of many past, current and
developing strategic failures. A capability surprise arises whenever
an opponent makes use of a new capability, or uses an existing
capability in a different way, catching the target or victim off
guard1.
Al
Qaeda's use in September, 2001, of passenger laden hijacked aircraft
as cruise missiles was a good example of a capability surprise.
The PAK-FA is, but at
many
more levels, another case of capability surprise for Western military
leaders.
The DSB
study divides capability surprises into two broad categories, and
makes some important observations:
Capability
surprise can spring from many sources: scientific breakthrough in the
laboratory,
rapid fielding of a known technology, or new operational use of an
existing capability or technology. A review of many surprises that
occurred over the past century suggests that surprises tend to fall
into two major categories:
▪ “Known”
surprises—those
few that the United States should have known were coming, but for
which it did not adequately prepare. For this category of surprise,
the potential and evidence are clear; the effects are potentially
catastrophic; and dealing with them is difficult, costly, and
sometimes counter-cultural. We specifically include space, cyber, and
nuclear in this category today. We might also have included bio, but
with a focus on threats to military operations, we chose not to.
▪ “Surprising”
surprises—those
many that the nation might have known about or at least anticipated,
but which were buried among hundreds or thousands of other
possibilities. In this case, the evidence and consequences are less
clear, the possibilities are many, and the nation cannot afford to
pursue them all.
In
both cases, the biggest issue is not a failure to envision events
that may be surprising. It is a failure to decide which ones to act
upon, and to what degree. That failure results, at least partially,
from the fact that there is no systematic mechanism in place within
DOD or the interagency to help decide which events to act on
aggressively, which to treat to a lesser degree, and which to ignore,
at least for the time being. Thus, the principle recommendations of
this study focus on developing the approaches and the talent to
better manage surprise—to prevent it from happening or, should
surprise occur, to be in a position to rapidly mitigate its
consequences.
The DSB
argues that five specific measures should be implemented to manage
capability surprises. These are:
1. Integration
and management of
surprise at a high enough level to affect senior decision making.
2. Red
teaming as
the norm instead of the exception.
3. Rapid
fielding that
is truly rapid and can be effectively employed when the circumstances
warrant.
4.
Pointed improvements in “strategic”
intelligence.
5.
For known
surprises,
the Secretary of Defense establish a formal mechanism to ensure
Department progress in addressing the limited number of most critical
threats.
For
surprise management to be successful, however, there needs to be
support from leadership at the highest levels—a recurring theme of
this study. Emphasis should be placed on encouraging alternative
viewpoints, requiring broad risk/opportunity assessment, integrating
and synthesizing, and enhancing knowledge through cross-domain
teaming. Without such leadership, the tendency will be to maintain
the status quo … and the nation will be seriously surprised.
The
reasoning by the DSB is sound. The open question is whether in the
current political climate produced by SecDef Gates and his inner
circle, the five proposed measures have any chance of being robustly
implemented,
let alone implemented at all.
Let
us consider but one level where the PAK-FA effects ‘capability
surprise’ - the issue of the diminishing United States Tactical Air
combat capability effectiveness currently in progress, a decline that
changes the United States’ ranking from air dominance to ‘also
ran’.
The
collapse of United States TACAIR qualifies as a “known surprise”
in every respect. Surprisingly, it is not
included in the three “current” types of surprise the DSB covered
in detail; being nuclear, cyber, and space surprise.
Numerous
analysts including APA, academics, US Air Force generals serving and
retired, and the Air Force Association, have repeatedly commented on
the increasing mismatch between existing and planned United States
tactical fighter fleet capabilities, and the ever advancing
capabilities of foreign fighter aircraft, sensors and air defence
weapons, being developed and marketed globally by Russian, Chinese
and Indian industry.
APA
has published numerous works on this topic, and compiled a collection
of more than eighty quite
detailed technical reports covering the area, by multiple authors,
necessitating the translation of hundreds of foreign language
publications.
At
the rate of decline of United States air combat power, and the rise
of foreign air combat capability, there are but a few years before
‘mismatch’ becomes ‘overmatch’ - at the expense of the United
States and its Allies.
The
TACAIR problem is well understood by the expert community and well
documented in the public domain, yet multiple consecutive policy
decisions, and public statements, clearly indicate that the OSD and
its analogues in other Western nations neither acknowledge nor accept
its existence, or where its existence is partially acknowledged, its
relevance is not.
The
absence of any meaningful response to the development
and first flight of the PAK-FA from the Washington OSD is proof
positive, more likely proof absolute, that the mechanisms of
organisational breakdown and failures in governance discussed by the
DSB are currently and actively in play within the OSD.
The
PAK-FA is a “known capability surprise” in the sense that
everybody knew the Russians were developing it. It is a “surprising
capability surprise” in the sense that Russian mastery of stealth
shaping is much better than Western analysts, including APA,
expected. The advances in PAK-FA kinematic and aerodynamic capability
qualify as “known capability surprise”, the clever way that
stealth was not compromised by the aerodynamic design
and vice-versa is a “surprising capability surprise”2.
If
the DSB report has one weakness, it is that it insufficiently
explores the internal mechanisms of organisational dysfunction which
produce capability surprises. The report does usefully summarise some
of these as:
- Thought it
could respond without doing anything new;
- Knew it was
likely, understood the magnitude of the implications, but didn’t pursue
it appropriately;
- Did not
foresee the full consequences of an action and thus “did it to
ourselves”;
- Believed the
adversary was not up to it;
- Believed the
adversary would not dare;
- Knew it might
happen, but was trapped in its own paradigms;
- Didn’t imagine
or anticipate the strategic impact;
- Lost it in the
“signal-to-noise” of other possibilities;
- Imagined it,
but thought it was years away;
- Was willing to
take the risk that it would not happen.
The
more fundamental underlying root causes of these behaviours deserve
much better treatment
and we summarise them here:
- Failure to
think critically about critical problems;
- Strategic illiteracy;
- Technological illiteracy;
- Operational illiteracy;
- Indifference
to material reality in the pursuit of self vested interests a.k.a “a
total indifference to what is real”;
- Insistence that subordinates
deliver “good news” rather than “bad news”; a.k.a. “shooting the
messenger”;
- Insistence on consensus-seeking
behaviour rather than critical argument;
- Denial of facts, data or findings
which are not politically convenient;
- Institutionalising groupthink
behaviours to maintain internal organisational cohesion;
- Institutionalising
group-narcissistic behaviours to maintain internal organisational
cohesion;
- Optimising planning for very
short term outcomes with no regard for long term consequences;
- Prioritising political
self-interest over national interest, or alliance interests; and
- Simple
organisational laziness and hubris – failure to focus on potential and
emerging threats on the basis that “we are too big to fail”.
These
failures are more than often inter-related, and more than often
mutually supporting.
We
should also give some thought about what is NOT stated in the DSB
report.
A
powerful analytical tool is to divide a complex problem into
‘Process’ and ‘Content’, which the DSB does in part. As
mentioned above, if the Processes are not in place, there is no
chance of delivering cogent, timely and hence effective ‘Content’.
The
report does not make a recommendation on how to assess the risk from
a Capability Surprise, once identified. One method is this:
(Consequence
of a Surprise) x (Likelihood of
Surprise) = (Level of Risk)
Some
strategic changes are made at an imperceptible but inexorable rate,
so that by the time the problem is detected, it is too late to
recover the situation. A domestic example is termites eating the
structure of your house. A military example is the decline of United
States' TACAIR Capability, the rise of potential adversaries’
TACAIR Capabilities such that in a military conflagration, the United
States is soundly defeated and in losing the battle, is at risk of
losing the war. Even if the adversaries’ overmatch is detected,
there may be insufficient time to recover – building air combat
capability is the work of decades, not months. If the tactically
defeated, the United States is forced into a retreat to a nuclear
exchange, that will draw the entire world into holocaust.
Lastly,
there is no mention in the DSB Paper of any prevention or
intervention response once a Capability Surprise is discovered by a
robust ‘Process and Content’ structure, and an assessment of
unacceptable Levels of Risk.
Again,
we may use the PAK-FA as an example. The existence and potential air
combat capability can be no longer classified as a ‘surprise’ as
it has happened. The critical question is what national response the
United States and its allies will mount to the PAK-FA.
The
only air combat aircraft in the world that can match an operational
PAK-FA is the F-22. Yet on the recommendation of SecDef Gates, the
F-22A program was terminated at 187 aircraft – an insufficient
number when Russia and India are planning to produce 500 plus
PAK-FAs, and Sukhoi will be aggressively marketing export versions of
the PAK-FA. Would Congress, finely balanced over the termination of
the F-22A, have approved the program termination had they known about
the surprisingly advanced PAK-FA at the time? Highly unlikely.
Another
element of the PAK-FA ‘surprise’ is that the aircraft has been
designed with a clear understanding of the effects of ‘stealth’
on air combat when both sides present with low-observable aircraft.
Obviously, the combatants will be closer when their radar sensors
detect the other side, so close in fact that the Infra-Red Scan and
Track (IRST) might be the first sensor to detect the presence of an
enemy aircraft. The problem is this: the PAK-FA has IRST capability
and the F-22A does not. Worse, the extreme agility of the PAK-FA will
allow it to dodge the F-22A’s AIM-120 missile shots, while the
Raptor will likely not be able to out-turn the more advanced Russian
(and Chinese) missiles. Surviving F-22As would then be committed to
what fighter pilots call a ‘knife fight’ – close-in dogfights
where superior agility wins – and the PAK-FA will out-manoeuvre the
F-22A.
The
answer to this air combat puzzle is simple: build more F-22s and
build a better F-22, and give it better missiles. The basic design
of the F-22 is sound and there is internal space for additional
sensors such as IRST, cheek AESA arrays and possibly lower frequency
radar that will detect the PAK-FA first. The thrust of the F119
series engines could be increased and a more advanced 3D
thrust-vectoring nozzle fitted. Controls with more power and driven
by smarter software can be added. The MBDA Meteor missile has a
specification and design to kill a 9G target at 50,000 feet – about
the edge of where the PAK-FA can operate. If the Europeans can make
such a missile, why not the United States?
So,
the question is this: if the answer is simple and obvious, will the
United States respond to the PAK-FA surprise with a reversal of the
decision to end F-22A production and fund the ongoing production of
the F-22A while the upgraded F-22C is being designed?
Will it
release the F-22A to its allies like Australia, Japan and Israel, and
ask its NATO partners if any would induct the F-22A into their air
combat aircraft fleets?
Will it offer F-22A upgrade programs as the
full capability of the PAK-FA is revealed?
And, finally, will it
commit to the development of a missile capable of killing aircraft
with extreme agility, such as the PAK-FA and, similarly, the Su-35S?
The
PAK-FA surprise places the United States right at the fork in the road
of
military capability development. One path is the ‘we are too big to
fail’ / ‘there is no alternative’ hubris that leads to
certain defeat in future air combat. The other is an immediate
commitment to use existing United States technology, weapons
development skills and military financing to produce a PAK-FA killer
before the PAK-FA becomes operational.
The
Defense Science Board’s Capability
Surprise Report
and the recently published Supporting
Papers
are a giant step forward. However, these fine works are but a first
and necessary step in a long journey that we must all traverse if the
World is to enjoy peace and prosperity. The PAK-FA surprise is a
litmus-test for the United States. We can all watch and wait to see
the United States' reaction, starting with SecDef Gates'
recommendation to his Commander-in-Chief President Barack Obama, and
then to Congress. Or we can exert our democratic right to demand our
political leaders to engage in the debate and insist SecDef Gates
does what is right and what is best.
If
he fails this simple test
by failing to heed the message and act responsibly, then the United
States and its allies can expect many more ‘Capability Surprises’. None
of them will be pleasant.
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Notes
1 Defense Science Board
- Capability Surprise Report, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA506396.pdf;
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA513074.pdf
2 Dr Carlo Kopp, SMAIAA, MIEEE, PEng,
and Peter Goon, BE (Mech), FTE (USNTPS), Assessing
the
Sukhoi
T-50
PAK-FA; Sukhoi/KnAAPO T-50/I-21/Article 701
PAK-FA; Перспективный Авиационный Комплекс Фронтовой Авиации, Air Power Australia Analysis 2010-01,
February
2010.
3 Refer Dr Carlo Kopp,
MIEEE, SMAIAA, PEng, When
America’s Stealth Monopoly Ends,
What's Next?, APA
NOTAM
#37,
04/03/2009, and WGCDR Chris Mills, RAAF (Retd),
Air
Combat:
Russia’s
PAK-FA
versus
the
F-22
and
F-35, APA
NOTAM
#39,
30/03/2009.
4 WGCDR Chris Mills, RAAF
(Retd), F-22A
Raptors for the Marine Corps, APA NOTAM #28,
09/02/2009.
5 WGCDR Chris Mills, RAAF
(Retd),
and Peter Goon, BE (Mech), FTE (USNTPS), Navalising
the F-22 Raptor - Restoring America's Maritime Air Dominance,
APA
NOTAM
#32
23/02/2009.
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Air
Power
Australia
Website - http://www.ausairpower.net/
Air Power Australia Research and
Analysis - http://www.ausairpower.net/research.html
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