AD,
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Load carrying ability is probably more relevant than it ever was. Have a brief look at the major air campaigns over the last 15 years. What characteristic would you say particularly stands out? The ability to destroy targets on the ground or in the air?
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I think the first thing the RAAF needs to do is decide if it still needs to beleager Indonesia yet more and if so whether it wants to do so with-
1. A carrier (even a container ship axial deck conversion) with F/A-18E/Rafale (30-40 airframes at 55-60 million). Or STOVL JSF (10-20 airframes at 104 million).
2. A CVTOL JSF that can hack a reasonable payload:radius (from landbases) with all-standoff missiles on the first day (S2 or JASSM), supported by a wing area that is larger than an F-15s. (20 airframes at 104 million or more).
3. A UCAV force that costs half as much as the JSF but is, as yet, 'developmental' (50-100 airframes= twice the robopylonage at 3 times the cruise point profile efficiencies for 25-45 million each).
4. An F-16 force which is fully developed. And quite capable of making range and 'combat persistence' with .50+/E mods. If you buy a tanker or two to go with (50-60 aircraft at 50-80 million each).
5. Beg an F-22 and a single tanker, along with a 4-5 RQ-4. (at 10 aircraft for 150 million each).
Myself...
A. I do not like single engine aircraft over water with a pilot involved. I also do not like single engine aircraft which cost more than 40 million dollars.
B. I do believe the small standoff munitions (after all that OZ did with the Awadi and later MMTD on the F-111, you should be able to call in a favor) change, radically, not merely the ability to hit target-X as a function of limited sorties and maximum efficiency on tankers. But also the /types/ of targets which you can saturate on the outer of Warden's 5 rings.
C. I think Cope India has finally put the nail in the coffin on 'dog fighting' proving that the InAF does not want to fight the 60km+ engagement. And that the USAF cannot beat them without it (AIM-9X as 20km seeker, 10km motor pipe, on the F-15 vs. MiG-21 Bison with R-73 and updated avionics supported by MFFC Su-30). The day of the Phoenix as 'representative' of the LRAAM _as a mission type_ (Naval AAW in the OAB attrition of archer and scout rather than arrow) is indeed /long past/. But the day of 'look in, shoot in' is NOT. And the only reason it has not been further invested is because the Russians follow the U.S. and the U.S. could not afford to design a weapons system (AAAM) which made the F-14/15 superior to the F-22. And which turned the AMRAAM/F-16 combination into just another ISRM.
D. If I was just chomping at the bit to prove how good the RAAF was, I would NOT do so with a system of systems approach that was the clone of the U.S. model (and indeed the ROW). I would want something that let those SAS Regimenters sitting on a ridge top call down multiple small weapons for /hours/ _before_ the threat could target a Tora Bora threatened U.S. force determined to set down between village and mountaintop.
E. HUG'ing the Bug is a waste of time. I don't care if it's an APG-73 under the hood. That centerbarrel is always going to be a stone beach which plagues naval operations (what, 4G limit in peacetime?) and as we go Lot-III on the Super Horror and start to back out of JSF or begin F-35C deliveries; the tails-per-deck rule will inevitably begin to shrink the USN support pipe on the first generation F-18s and thereby increase costs on yours. Even th Finn/Swiss/Malaysian deal won't help that much. Orphaning when your parents die in a car crash is one thing. Orphaning as a function of watching them starve themselves off before jumping ship is a whole 'nother tale.
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Add to this the current paradigm of time sensitive targeting: ie attempting to attack highly mobile ground forces who give you minutes at best to take your shot. Unfortunately in this situation you can't sortie an aircraft from an airfield to undertake the task.
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You can, it just doesn't exist as an armed system yet. How far do you think an SDB would go off an RQ-4? How long can an RQ-4 stay on station at 1,200nm radius?
Is the RAAF up to teaming with say Korea to get there now that the fighter mafia have obliterated all hope of the U.S. leading the pack?
Again, /from my perspective/ the threat of an Su-30 force alone is nothing to worry about.
They can't threaten Oz without all the same goodies that we would use (ACP, AAR, Strike Recce) and that is quite simply beyond say Indonesias purse, even if they could get the the largely Western technology base to pull out the proliferation control rods limiters on sales to the region.
As such, I _think_ there is a TIME WINDOW before any external threat could require you to consider 'super fighters' as a viable modifier to force structure design.
This window could in turn allow Australia to low-ball with a limited force of A-50 type strike trainers (though god knows you already have a motley mix of LIFTs) and arm them as Mirage III for local air defense at 25 million each. Or even 'go Russian' with Land-ASTER or ERINT as principal (coast in) defenses.
At the same time buying into a unique technology base leverage point with _U.S._ covert design support. And Korean or Tai heavy industrial engineering. As second customer on a realistic deal for 50-100 jets, you could end up with a significantly better (25-30% of manufacture?) offset than you are on the JSF as Tier 2 partners.
Theoretically, you could even do a major tradeup on price for the JSF or F-22 (or big wing Flubber) in a _silver bullet_ (escort force with LRAAM) once you had the basic three-tier system in place.
Of course this would effectively mean retiring the F-111s _immediately_ and conserving the F/A-18s down to perhaps 20 jets in the best condition.
But again, the real definition of a power player in the military procurement world is the ministry which says "We have a window in which we can do the drawdown while making the transformation happen..." as a function of layaway _legislative funding guarantees_ (can't touch this) of budgetary power for a future reentry to market once the technology is present to make it happen.
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The target will be gone before you get your aircraft gets anywhere near it. This is why the USA couldn't stop the Scuds in Western Iraq in the first Gulf war. If you are loitering over a battlefield for an extended period you're going to want more than 1 or 2 guided munitions or else you will have wasted your time. Your aircraft could have been more profitably employed elsewhere.
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I couldn't agree more though I think the real problem the USAF had in 1991 was that they had a barely functional E-8 and no gapfiller (with realtime relay) like a TESAR Predator or RQ-4. It didn't help that the LANTIRN was far from being all that it was supposed to (not ATR, limited altitude stabs, high failure rate.)
These days, if you can MTI the threat, you can track him until the fighter can overlay it's own sensors and then 2 vs. 20 PGM doesn't matter except as how it effects your (
L@D) loiter and performance behind the tanker.
The more interesting argument, for me, being how /defenses/ have changed. The APY-3 has a limited ability to track TBMs on the rise. ERINT does what the PAC-2 was supposed to. THAAD is coming along and ABL is coming along faster. With ATL now also a C-130 if not F-35 option and M-THEL prototypes shooting down artillery rounds; it seems to me that the arching ballistic fire is not worth as much as it once was and while a system that can sustain Mach at lower levels and/or vari-traj dump a spray of guided weapons may yet prove to be a real nuissance, there is increasingly less and less reason to play Wombat Hunt with TELs solely to push them off their best-when-fired-off-surveyed-and-weatherradar'd footing
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What air forces in combat tend to do now (if they are sufficiently capable) is to loiter aircraft over the battlefield waiting for the opportunity for targets to reveal themselves. Unfortunately to make it capable and worthwhile employing an aircraft over the battlefield, it needs one major thing: persistence.
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Indeed-
http://www.afa.org/magazine/june2004/0604marine.asp
Though there are still some significant operational limits inherent to streaming ops with a host of dissimilar, 'fighter optimized' platforms with but minutes on the clock in the target area because they are as much as twice as over-fence-far from MOB (90-120 minutes in 1991 becomes 170-210 minutes in 2003). It is also unfortunate that even the Marine DASC-direct system doesn't work well (bandwidth pipe I presume) without a SCAR coordinator to pull back the BCL.
What this tells me is that if you aren't getting trade in one regional tasking zone, you may not have the gas to get to another without screwing up sorties already fragged. Which means a waste of sorties overall.
It also says that if you push forward tankers far enough, often enough, _someone will catch on_. And you will end up losing a /lot/ of aircraft, either interned or flat out fuel-killed as a result.
Finally, it speaks to an intentional or otherwise tendancy to bigot the ape into controlling situations where he really is not needed. Because even with Sniper/APG-63V3 or ATFLIR/APG-79 as the best possible baseline, you are looking at a high definition 'eyes on' limit of about 40nm around a given airframe. Whereas, if you stick with systems like AAS-52 and APY-8, you total range footprint of coverage may only be 20-25nm _but_ you can space them out to cover every ground team, every highway, byway and backroad. Even chop up cities into block-sectors with your 'tactical interpretational factor' _on the ground_. Via ROVER like support on a militarized bluetooth LAN.
As soon as you do this, as soon as you let the ordinary grunt do what SOF troopies have been doing since Vietnam, in _calling down the hard rain personally_ rather than through somekind of artificially time-restrictive CAS loop, you will see a magnification in what Air Power does vs. what the 5-rings target set definitions says it should.
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The best way to get this is to use a large fighter/strike aircraft (examples: F-15, F/A-18E/F, SU-30, Tornado or F-111). These aircraft possess inherent endurance and payload capabilities necessary for this type of warfare. Aircraft such as F-18A/B/C/D, F-16, MiG29 and the Mirage series do not.
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Six of one.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...liner+refueling&rnum=1&hl=en#93dd3975ded9a74b
Should tell you a LOT about 'just how good' the 2/3rds majority of our comparitively /tiny/ F-15E fleet is. The -229 makes it a whole 'nother airplane but the ops limits are still present.
And there is always going to be the human factors element. 'Just to see if they could' _one time_ they sent an F-15E from Doha over to Kabul. Took them 17hrs. Wiped the crew completely (lifted out of cockpit fatigue).
That's a heckuva lot to be paying into for a 700nm 'self escorting' radius advantage. Because you will _still_ need tanking, just not as much. And because your signature is STILL huge. And because (at least for the F-14/15) there is STILL the small matter of not having a PDF-HARM shot option or what I would call an effective jammer. Which means that the Teeny Weeny jets are still along for the SEAD ride.
Now, compare this to a UCAVs 1,100nm _with 2hrs free_ and no fatigue. Also factoring in the just-like-an-airliner flight profile with no supersonic requirements (no heavy G burner and structural loads or a hamfisted pilot who likes to go there for thrills, no 'fighter' radar with all it's attendent power and reliability problems, no cockpit support in the way of LOX or OBOGS or Drag issues).
All of which brings us to New Doctrine.
While the Feyadin as Toyota Cavalry should not have surprised us (the Russian leave behind partisans were largely similar and had similar high-nuissance value 'roll back' effect on German screen units which in turn cost them big wins at Kiev and SGrad both), the fact remains that THAT is the kind of target set you should expect to see, even from conventional forces. Because it works. Because it lets a small, sacrificial, unit expend /whatever/ (technologic-competency level) fires it has on a direct tactical basis of attrition rather than in the maneuver/marshall phase for which BAI works. And because it is imminently self-sustaining on the basis of 'forage' and local admirers.
Yet even if the mission set is itself performed by regular forces, you should not expect to encounter them on every mission. Because frequently their very insular nature will limit their own views across the horizon as much as your ability to winkle them out from amidst the thronging masses.
So, inevitably, your loiter-for-nothin' factor is going to be pretty damn high, even on a Schmuck vs. SCUD level of encounter expectation. WHY kill aircrew with fatigue. WHY load up jets with useless performance and failure prone equipment, massive quantities of high drag support gear. For an encounter mode which, at best, is going be perhaps 30% of an active ground force here-to-there obstacle negation. And perhaps 5-10% of blocking force/CSS escort defense along approach routes?
I'll tell you why. The Fighter Mission. It doesn't matter that the best fighter on the planet is a missile which can make a second pass. As long as too /idiots/ can line up their lances go a-jousting at each other at 1,200 knots closure, manufacturers will be paid to build jets that CAN do that, even if it destroys the functionality of every other mission element.
And the excuse will always be: "Because the UCAV is a bomber..."
Except it's not.
CONVENTIONAL LANED INTERDICTION
......................Target 1...............Target 3...............................
...................................Target 2..............................................
...........Su-30....................................Rafale............................
...............\/.........................................\/.................................
.................\..............F-22................./...................................
........................**....F-35............**....................................
.........Eurofighter..............................F-15..............................
.............................................................................................
...................Tanker..........ISR........SOJAM..........................
UCAV SPIDERS WEB
......................Target 1...............Target 3............................
...................................Target 2..........................................
UCAV....Su-30..........G..................Rafale..........UCAV....
...............\/..................F........UCAV..\/............................
..........?/.....\?..............O................/?........\?......................
......................UCAV..R....................................................
UCAV........................C..................UCAV...................................
...................................E....................................................
.................................A/A..................................................
.................Tanker..........BMC2.......Area Surv..................
Now, assume that all stealth platforms (including the UCAV) have similar reduced observables in the FQ of around -25 to -30dbsm. And that the robot, because of it's unique design has similar RCS in all sectors (no tails, no big gulp inlets, no canopy etc.). How does the threat tackle them? By nosing around until they reach a nominal 10-15nm range with their BARS/AMSAR equivalent radar? Or using a EUROFIRST type, dual channel, to extend this to 20-25nm?
How do they know which direction to go? There is no linear route corridor, no snarl of jamming and active radar emission. And their own _distributed_ force clusters provide no cue-onto-cue predictor. Not least because, with an airburst, the GBU-39 will travel some 50nm with about 40 inches of miss distance. So the UCAVs don't even have to be over the roads they are nominally blocking.
At the same time, the Rafale and the Su-30, by coming _unchallenged_ in to the spider's web, are exposing themselves to attack by LRAAM (AIM-160 or BVRAAM++, take your pick) whose principal nature is not their autonomous seekers. But their sustained (non parabolic trajectory) impulse and _digital 2-way tethers_.
So that a 'dumb truck' which has 4 SDB in one bay, can fire an pair of LRAAM out of the other, without making a single emission. And an 'ADAAM' (Air Directed AAM) volume illuminator (RQ-4 with MP-RTIP) can sit at the back of the stack and steer the weapons to the point in space where their own seekers can lockup.
If you play the conventional game, sooner or later, the combination of disparity in performance point (limited F-22 endurance in super vs. subcruise) and the linear geometries will put a threat jet (Su-30 or Rafale as baseline) or SAM beyond the frontal sweep with enough of it's own torpedo-spread of MRM to put some serious attrition into the advancing strike force.
But if you can _just sit there_ and let them come amongst you, even assuming casual attrition from ground vectoring, you can beat the threat down by virtue of the very depth into YOUR web which they must come. And the fact that they must retreat back through the missile shots /from behind/ to disengage.
Welcome To My Parlor Super Fly.
If you look at a force on force metric whereby you have the _A2G_ multinodeal sensors to attack any 'ring' of the enemy strategic or tactical asset list you want (and a ground force is not necessary though it does replicate OIF for flavor) because you can SEE what is going on; then by their very mission orientation as 'bombers' you can force the enemy to engage them or lose their fielded forces as much as their infrastructural or C2 assets (which you will end up replacing anyway).
Cope India shows the way folks. By their very attempt to 'prove a need' for the 133 million dollar Raptor, the CMICs in the Air Services have shown how BVR is now the utterly dominant delivery method for AAW. And with ADAAM and advanced propulsion, there is no room or need for the 'fighter' mission as a drain upon the sortie logistics of modern war anymore.
If I were going to fight OIF with such an _effective_ system; I would do so on the premise of putting a country into total lockdown mode. Starting with a propoganda leaflet drop: "In 5-7 days we are coming. 10 days after that it will be over. Stockpile enough food so that you don't have to go out for that time. Any vehicle on the roads during the course of the conflict will be considered hostile. Listen to your radio for further news and instructions."
And /because/ I had (through-sandstorm, 24:7) effective airpower that could not be forced off by TBM attack on airbases. Or the terrible misperception that 'bombers cannot be fighters' (come git sum); I could probably halve the size of the occupational force and quadruple the number of force-axes by which combat was /assured anyway/ (forcing enemy engagement) while maintaining minimal direct-fire, high attrition, encounters that required heavy armor.
KPl.
