In previous pieces in this series I discussed the range limitations that are inherent in the design of tactical fighter aircraft. This includes the F-35A currently being acquired by Australia to constitute the core of its air combat force for a long time to come.

While aerial refuelling can increase a fighter’s time on station, there are limits on how much it can increase range. Even with tanker support the maximum achievable range for the F-35A is between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometres. Moreover, the number of F-35As that can be kept on station at those ranges is extremely small—sustaining just two fighters on station at 1,500 km would likely consume the Royal Australian Air Force’s current enabling capabilities.

One way to address these limitations would be to operate from airfields away from the Australian mainland. But it can’t be just any airfield. A minimum runway length of 8,000 feet, or almost 2.5 kilometres, is required to safely operate the F-35A. A shorter runway could be used, but then ordnance or fuel may need to be sacrificed to reduce the take-off weight and, as we have seen, fuel is crucial.

In addition, lots of pavement is required for the aircraft to stand on while they are maintained, refuelled and armed. A 2002 RAND Corporation study determined that a squadron of fighters required around 12,000 square metres of ramp space. Runway and pavement size requirements increase substantially if large aircraft like tankers and early-warning aircraft are also operating from the base, as does the required pavement strength. There’s also the need for substantial fuel reserves.

Gaining access to existing military airbases helps, as at least some of those things are already available. The risk with foreign airbases, of course, is that access is always at the owner’s discretion. Fortunately, Australia has a couple of airfields of its own that could help at Christmas Island and at the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The latter has an 8,000-foot runway that supports the P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft, which has recently retired from RAAF service. According to Defence’s Integrated Investment Program, the runway is being upgraded to support the larger P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. In June, Defence released a tender for works to strengthen and widen the runways, taxiways and aprons at an estimated cost of $200 million. No improvements to support fighter operations appear to be planned.

Figure 1: 1,500-kilometre range ring from the Cocos (Keeling) Islands

From the Cocos Islands, the F-35A could conduct strike operations in the vicinity of the strategic Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra at its extreme range of 1,500 km, assuming it had access either to air-to-air refuellers (potentially operating out of a mainland base) and/or a long-range strike missile. But maintaining a sustained presence would not be possible. Any operations over the Malacca Strait would be improbable, and they would be impossible over the South China Sea.

To project further north, Australia would need to rely on bases like Malaysia’s Butterworth that Australia has access to through an arrangement with the Malaysian government.

Figure 2: 1,000-kilometre range ring from Butterworth, Malaysia, and 3,000-kilometre range ring from Hainan, China

Butterworth puts the entire Strait of Malacca inside the F-35A’s unrefuelled range. It doesn’t get the F-35A very far into the South China Sea, although extending its range to 1,500 km through air-to-air refuelling would help.

Of course, in a contingency Malaysia might not feel that hosting Australian air combat operations was in its interests. The other big disadvantage is that Butterworth is within range of Chinese intermediate-range ballistic missiles. A 2017 report by the US Center for a New American Security argued that such weapons have the ability to ‘devastate’ US forces in Asia and the Pacific as they are sufficiently precise to target runways, aircraft hardstands and fuel depots. Currently Australia has no ability to defeat such a threat.

And there’s the rub. The further north we operate, the further inside China’s anti-access/area-denial zone we get. Of course, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Australia would be operating so far from home without being part of a coalition with the US. But even the US is facing the same challenge presented by Chinese capabilities—its fighters are out-ranged by Chinese missiles and its defences could be overwhelmed.

Airfields will be even more critical to any contingencies in the South Pacific. Just as operations in World War II in the Pacific were focused on gaining or denying access to airfields, so they will be in any future conflict. But runways 8000 feet long are in short supply in the South Pacific. Those that do exist are international airports, not military airbases.

While the US military built many airfields across the region during the war, they were made for the aircraft of that time. Consequently, they are only 5,000–6,000 feet (1.5–1.8 km) in length and have very limited pavement. Many are in poor condition.

Manus Island in Papua New Guinea shows the potential advantages and disadvantages of offshore airbases in the South Pacific. Australia is currently working with PNG to upgrade the naval base at Lombrum on Manus. There’s also an airport on Manus at Momote, originally established as a WWII airbase. As the figure below suggests, air combat operations from Momote would close the gap between PNG and the US forces based at Guam.

In a worst-case scenario in which US power in the western Pacific had been severely weakened and China sought to physically isolate Australia from the US (essentially a key element of Japanese strategy in WWII), airpower based at Momote could interdict any Chinese attempts to project force into the southwest Pacific. If China does have intentions to establish military bases in countries like Vanuatu, Momote would in turn isolate them from China.

Figure 3: 1,000-kilometre range ring from Manus Island, Papua New Guinea

However, the runway at Momote is only about 6,000 feet long. Upgrading air combat operations will take a lot of concrete for runway extensions and aprons as well as fuel and munitions storage, particularly if larger aircraft will be operating from there. If just strengthening and widening the Cocos runway is set to cost $200 million, upgrading Momote to support air combat operations will cost many times more.

While China has demonstrated its ability to lay a lot of concrete on islands quickly, it’s not something that the Australian Defence Force can do overnight. If it’s something we think is important, we’ll need to build it well in advance of any contingency. As with all offshore bases, partners’ interests and sensitivities need to be heeded at both the local and national levels.

Depending on the threat, many other assets would need to be deployed to protect the airbase, such as ground-based air defence and other land forces. This would bring Defence’s amphibious capabilities into play. Fuel may need to be delivered by the navy’s tankers. Protection and supply elements could need more F-35As and the navy’s major surface ships to protect them en route.

While offshore airbases could help project Australian power further forward, they would likely require substantial infrastructure investment well in advance of their military use and, potentially, the deployment of a substantial joint force to sustain and protect them.

In part 1, I examined the hard limits on the F-35A’s unrefuelled range. Air-to-air refuelling can certainly help extend it.

Tankers can substantially increase fighters’ time on station (that is, how long they can stay out). But they can’t extend the jets’ combat range indefinitely. There are several reasons for this. The first is that generally pilots want to have enough fuel on board to get home alone, just in case the tanker they were planning to refuel from isn’t there (due to mechanical problems, being shot down or driven off station by enemy aircraft, or just running dry).

In a region like the Middle East, this risk can be mitigated by having fallback airfields to divert to in an emergency, but in the Pacific (and indeed in Australia itself) there are very few fallback options, particularly ones that you can safely land a conventional fighter on.

That means once an F-35A flies out roughly 1,000 kilometres, it needs to tank before it can go any further. But that load of fuel only allows it to go a further 500 km because at that point it will still need to have 1,500 km of fuel reserves on board to get home. And that doesn’t give any time on station or give it fuel to fight. So, it would need to tank again to stay on station. But, theoretically, a combat range of around 1,500 km is achievable. That would look something like the red ring in Figure 1.

Figure 1: 1,500-kilometre combat radius from Darwin

I’ve included only one ring, and that’s because of the second reason that tankers can’t extend a fighter’s range indefinitely—air-to-air refuelling to keep fighters on station is very resource intensive.

If a commander wanted to keep F-35As on station around 1,500 km out from mainland airbases (potentially protecting an amphibious task force, a lodged land force, or a naval task force patrolling choke points), planners would likely need to set up two refuelling circuits—one to enable the fighters to reach their station, and then one a few hundred kilometres behind the fighters’ station so they can pull back, refuel and return to station with fuel to fight.

In that scenario, keeping just two F-35As on station would take at least eight F-35As in the air at one time around the clock (two heading out, four cycling between their station and the refueller, and two heading home). Each of them would need to fly an eight-hour mission, potentially tanking four or five times. Taking aircraft maintenance and unserviceability into account (which will increase as the operation continues), that would potentially require at least 12 to 16 aircraft to sustain. But since pilots can fly that mission only once per day, the cycle needs a minimum of 24 pilots (and more to account for ‘unserviceability’ of pilots as the operation grinds into the future).

But more is needed. The whole concept of a fifth-generation air force relies on superior situational awareness, so to fully exploit the F-35A’s capabilities the package would need to include an E-7A Wedgetail early warning and control aircraft flying a circuit a hundred kilometres or so behind the fighters to detect enemy aircraft. The RAAF has six, and fewer than that will be available for operations, and fewer again serviceable for missions. Therefore, sustaining that one combat air patrol will likely require all the Wedgetails. Keeping them on station will likely draw on some of the tankers’ fuel.

But the biggest stressor on the viability of the mission is tanker capacity. The air force now has seven KC-30A air-to-air refuellers after recently acquiring an additional two. It’s hard to see more than five being available, and fewer will be serviceable on any given day. One tanker, engaged in continuously refuelling fighters on the combat air patrol, can’t stay on station for more than four to six hours before needing to refuel.

Sustaining two refuelling stations (one to get the fighters out to the patrol area and one to sustain them on station) with a force of only four or five tankers would likely exceed any responsible commander’s risk tolerance by creating a single catastrophic point of failure. One unserviceable tanker, accident or combat loss would cause the entire cycle to collapse, potentially with pilots and aircraft unable to make it home.

Keeping the fuel flowing to the tankers would also be challenging. Even exercises such as Pitch Black have taxed fuel supplies at permanent bases. The kind of scenario outlined here would require well in excess of 500 tonnes of fuel per day (visualise around 20 semi-trailers, or over the course of a month something roughly commensurate with the Northern Territory’s total average monthly aviation fuel consumption). Getting that reliably to remote bare bases such as RAAF Scherger on Cape York would be a demanding task, although the challenge could be mitigated by flying the tankers out of permanent air bases.

A 1,500 km sustained presence over a hypothetical task force in the Bismarck Sea would look something like the smaller of the two rings in Figure 2. That would consume all of the RAAF’s enabling capabilities. It’s possible that enough fighter pilots and jets would be left over to conduct air defence of one other location (indicated here by the ring based on Darwin), but they’d be doing it without early warning aircraft or tankers.

Figure 2: F-35A combat air patrol at 1,500 kilometres

Pulling the patrol back into 1,000 km would destress the cycle, potentially by allowing the commander to manage with just one air-to-air refuelling circuit, thereby requiring fewer KC-30As. But that gets us back to our starting point—air-to-air refuelling doesn’t help that much with increasing the F-35A’s combat range.

Would more of the same help? The short answer is, it can’t extend range much beyond 1,500 km as that limit derives from the nature of the F-35A. But more enablers would make the system robust. Andrew Davies recently gave a concise list of what these would be, ranging from greater fuel storage to tankers.

People are key—not just pilots, but also maintainers, ordnance handlers, and air combat officers in the back of Wedgetails, to name a few essential categories—but all will be taxed in a scenario of sustained operations. Even mundane things like concrete hard stands would be in high demand, because the limited space of the bare bases would quickly be overwhelmed. In short, the F-35As themselves are just the tip of the iceberg.

If the enemy has long-range standoff strike weapons or special forces that can destroy fuel farms, that’s another point of failure, as is a strike that craters the runway and shuts down operations. A favourite special forces tactic in exercises is to sneak in at night and ‘kill’ all the pilots. So ‘more of the same’ would also need to include defensive capabilities such as ground-based air defence missiles, air defence guards, and maybe even a combat air patrol over the base itself (requiring more F-35As, more pilots and more fuel).

More fighters could allow the RAAF to operate simultaneously from multiple airbases, partially mitigating the risk posed by an enemy strike on any individual base, but those bases would also need the rest of the logistics chain.

With the sticker price just for tankers around $300 million each, building robustness is a very expensive proposition.

In part 3 of this series, we’ll look at what this means for operations.

Sea state

A video of a near collision between a Russian destroyer and US Navy cruiser has been released by the US Navy. It’s unclear where the incident occurred. Russia says the encounter happened in the East China Sea, but the US says the two ships were in the Philippine Sea. While Russia claims the US warship was responsible for the near collision, a picture taken by a US military aircraft analysed by ASPI’s Malcolm Davis shows that the Russian destroyer Admiral Viongradov deliberately manoeuvred towards USS Chancersville.

Brazil has agreed to transfer its four German-made Tupi-class submarines to Argentina. Brazil is modernising its fleet of submarines and has plans to start building its first nuclear-powered submarine in the mid-2020s. The transfer of Brazilian submarines is a positive development for the Argentine Navy, which lost 44 submariners in a deadly accident in 2017. But safety concerns are likely to resurface as the four Brazilian submarines are not operational and will need to be repaired and refurbished before entering Argentine service.

Flight path

The US has given Turkey until July to cancel its order of the Russian S-400 missile defence system. Failure to do so will see Turkey removed from the F-35 program and Turkish suppliers will be replaced by other companies by 2020. Turkey’s exit from the program is likely to delay F-35 deliveries. In April, Vice Admiral Mat Winter told Congress that the removal of Turkey would put more stress on F-35 production lines.

Spatial disorientation has been blamed for the crash of a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A in April.  The report from Japanese officials comes just days after the pilot’s remains were recovered off the coast of northeastern Japan. The aircraft itself hasn’t been found, but the search for it has been called off. There are reports that Russia and China could try to locate the missing aircraft for intelligence purposes.

For the first time, two Vietnamese pilots have finished the aviation leadership program in the US, a one-year course run by the US Air Force. Defence ties between Vietnam and the US have increased significantly since US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hanoi in 2016. Vietnam is expected to take delivery of several Boeing ScanEagle drones and Beechcraft T-6 Texan II trainer aircraft by 2022.

Rapid fire

Brigadier General Laura Yeager will become the first woman to command a US Army infantry division when she takes command of the 40th Infantry Division on 29 June. Yeager will move from her current position as the commander of the Joint Task Force North, US Northern Command. She has previously served as a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot and was deputy commander of the California National Guard’s 40th Combat Aviation Brigade during her deployment in Iraq. ‘As a female, I have found the military to provide opportunities and benefits unmatched by any profession’, Yeager said.

As Britain prepared to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day last week, its chief of general staff warned that the British military risks becoming ‘irrelevant’ in future warfare if it fails to modernise. General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith said the outcomes of warfare will be increasingly determined by ‘software and artificial intelligence’ rather than ‘hardware’ and that an ‘urgent reappraisal of how, with what and by whom war is waged in the future’ is needed. The comments were made at the annual RUSI Land Warfare Conference in London.

Final frontier

NASA has released a commercialisation strategy for the International Space Station. Commercial activities must be connected to NASA’s mission, promote the sustainable advancement of the low-earth orbit economy or make use of the ISS’s unique microgravity environment. The strategy includes a commercial use policy which provides a pricing schedule for transporting cargo to and from the station and services at the station. Part of the plan will allow companies to use a docking port to attach commercial modules. The strategy, including policies and pricing, is open for industry feedback.

United Technologies and Raytheon plan to merge to create an ‘aerospace and defense giant’ worth US$121 billion. The new conglomerate would span aerospace and commercial aviation and defence procurement to create an ‘aerospace powerhouse’. US President Donald Trump has criticised the planned merger, which could raise the cost of US military procurement. The plan will come under scrutiny from American antitrust regulators.

Wired watchtower

The New South Wales auditor-general says universities in the state are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. The report comes less than a week after it was found hackers stole the personal information of thousands of students and staff at the Australian National University. The report calls for significant improvements in security policies and IT controls, and notes that universities have been slow to implement key recommendations outlined in previous audits. Charles Sturt University was found to be at high risk of having sensitive data stolen, though the university disputes the report’s finding.

The US National Security Agency has issued an advisory warning Microsoft Windows users of a flaw that could make them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Operating systems including Windows 7 are at higher risk of automated attacks and malware that can give hackers complete control of a computer system. While the advisory is not linked to any specific threat, Microsoft has told users to update their software immediately.

One of Australia’s greatest but least known military assets is the Delamere weapons range in the Northern Territory. It’s a large range located around 120 kilometres south of Katherine and RAAF Base Tindal. As the main air weapons range used by the RAAF, and with little or no civilian presence nearby, it’s the ideal playground for fighter pilots flying fast jets who want to ‘feel the need for speed’ and practise dropping live ordnance.

Delamere is not just used by the RAAF but is open to Australia’s close allies. And it’s not just a place for fast jets, but is also visited by heavy bomber platforms from the US Air Force like the B-52 and the B-1B. It plays a vital role in airpower exercises such as the biennial Pitch Black and Arnhem Thunder.

Its use should be significantly expanded as the F-35 Lightning comes into service with the RAAF and allied air forces.

The facility was described by a RAAF range safety officer:

Delamere is undoubtedly the premier air weapons range in Australia; all Aussie aircrew as well as visiting ones acknowledge that. The fact that we can provide the facilities we do and have virtually unrestricted airspace provides terrific training value for them.

The absence of human settlement over a vast area means that live ordnance—like freefall and guided bombs, aircraft cannon and rocket pods—can be used, including against fake townships (known as ‘Tac Town’ and made up of shipping containers). USAF bomber crews can train under realistic conditions; the missions they’ve conducted have included flying non-stop from Guam to strike at targets in Delamere, and then returning to base, with in-flight refuelling en route both ways.

One of the most important aspects of the Delamere range is that it’s also fully instrumented, which enhances range safety during missions. The instrumented range means that bombing can be monitored for accuracy and effectiveness against a variety of targets, and post-attack analysis can be done in high fidelity to consider how to improve tactical capability.

In addition, simulated threats can be exercised. For example, the fire control radar emissions of various adversary fixed and mobile ground-based air defence systems can be simulated, increasing the realism of training. This obviously has benefits for operational experience, as well as allowing planned missions to be practised before they’re flown. Testing models of systems in a real-world environment also contributes to greater understanding of red-force capability.

Delamere remains a well-kept defence secret, and one wonders if this is deliberately so. It will take federal government leadership to grasp the alliance and regional security value that will come from making these training facilities the hub of Asia–Pacific F-35 operational excellence. We should grab this opportunity.

With that in mind, how do we make better use of facilities like Delamere?

The introduction of the F-35A Lightning II joint strike fighter into RAAF service from late 2018, with full operational capability of all 72 aircraft due by 2024, adds a new opportunity for developing Delamere for greater cooperative training with key allies in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

Practising similar and dissimilar air combat training operations—for example, our F-35s flying alongside F-35s from the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, the Republic of Korea Air Force, and the US Navy and US Marine Corps, as well as the USAF—under realistic conditions would be a valuable operational boost for all partners. It could also help strengthen defence cooperation between partners such as South Korea and Japan. For other F-35 operators, like the UK and Singapore, that lack adequate weapons ranges and must operate in constrained airspace, the wide-openness of the Northern Territory would have real appeal.

Delamere, together with Bradshaw Field, and the Woomera test range further south, should be seen as key capabilities for defence diplomacy as Australia seeks to strengthen defence partnerships with its Five Eyes allies, and other key partners such as Japan, Singapore and Indonesia.

Australia does conduct major international exercises such as Pitch Black and Talisman Sabre on an annual or biennial basis, but it’s time to go beyond that approach and develop a more regular drumbeat of exercises that make full use of Delamere.

We could conduct regular multinational exercises similar to the USAF’s ‘Red Flag’ exercises, with Delamere and Bradshaw Field the focus of air operations. The Red Flag exercises are run over two weeks several times a year. An Australian equivalent run out of RAAF Tindal and Darwin, focusing on F-35 operators, and practising fifth-generation airpower and multi-domain network-centric air operations, would link well with the recently announced arrangements for F-35 maintenance and sustainment.

Additional exercises could practise ‘fifth to fourth’ operations between the F-35, F-22 and fourth-generation platforms like the F/A-18F and E/A-18G as well as regional partner platforms such as the F-16.

With the announcement of an Australian development of the ‘Loyal Wingman’ unmanned combat air vehicle, it’s easy to see the Delamere range and others like it being the ideal testing ground for practising manned–unmanned teaming and developing UCAV capabilities for the RAAF, and potentially for export.

Finally, the employment of ‘aggressor’ capability designed to fly and fight in a manner similar to possible future adversaries, notably China, should be part of such exercises. The US operates them, as do Japan and the UK. If we want to expand the use of our weapons ranges, operating in a contested airspace, including with aggressor squadrons in the air, is a vital aspect of training.

Too often when we debate the current state, or the future evolution, of defence capability, we focus on platforms—sometimes at the expense of the more intangible command and control aspects. Australia’s vast and sparsely populated outback terrain is an asset in itself that we can promote as we seek to strengthen our defence relations with our key partners, given that we all confront a more dangerous and unpredictable strategic outlook.

Columnist Robert Gottliebsen’s frequent articles about the supposed deficiencies of our future combat aircraft and submarines and the implication that this has for our position in the region are often wildly inaccurate.

Take the proposition that Indonesia will have ‘air superiority over northern Australia’ in coming years because they are ‘buying even more lethal Russian aircraft’.

Here’s the reality: the Indonesian Air Force struggles to get its combat aircraft off the ground. Poor-quality purchases mean that Indonesia has fewer than a dozen each of American F-5 and F-16 fighter aircraft along with British Hawk, South Korean T-50 and Russian Su-27 aircraft in fighter and ground attack roles and the Brazilian Super Tucano aircraft in a ground attack role.

That’s six aircraft types from five different countries—a disastrous logistic support recipe for a country with a defence budget one-quarter of Australia’s.

Indonesia is now buying 11 Russian Su-35 Flanker multirole fighter aircraft, which will add further to the burden of maintaining a mixed fleet of aircraft with separate supply lines, different weapons and different sensors.

The Indonesians also have no air-to-air refuelling aircraft and no airborne early warning and control aircraft that coordinate the fighting capabilities of multiple aircraft.

This is a far cry from dominating northern Australian airspace. In fact, the Indonesian Air Force is struggling to maintain a capacity to move troops around its own archipelago, which is why Australia has assisted Jakarta with airframes and maintenance for its C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

Most Southeast Asian countries that have bought Russian fighter aircraft find that the only long-term use for them is to put them up on sticks in front of bases. No rational decision-making process focused on designing a sensible air force would go Russian.

It seems that there is no story more enjoyable to an Australian audience than to be told that our defence equipment purchases are all duds. Mostly the criticisms are just nonsense, such as the statement from an American general that Gottliebsen is fond of quoting: ‘The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22.’

Contrary to the dogfight scenes in Top Gun, the F-35 will never be looping the loop overhead chasing Russian jets. It’s not designed for that. The F-35 is a stealth platform designed to fight as part of a joint military force bringing multiple capabilities to the scene. Most of the F-35’s ‘kills’ in a future war will never know they were targeted. The aircraft’s stealth capacity is 10 to 15 years ahead of that of the Chinese and Russian jets.

It should be a relief to Australians that successive governments and ministers and the defence establishments of the US, UK, Israel, Japan, South Korea and many others have concluded that the F-35 is far superior to any potential competitor.

Against that evidence, Gottliebsen arrays a persistent group of F-35 critics whose phone calls most journalists have learned not to take. Yes, there have been delays and cost increases as there are in any complex equipment project, but the F-35 is emerging as a superb aircraft.

And now to the submarines. Gottliebsen is impressed that Indonesia is buying three 1,400-tonne Type 209 Chang Bogo-class submarines from South Korea. Since the early 1980s, Indonesia has struggled to keep any of its three small submarines operational. At best, the Indonesian Navy has managed very short deployments.

Australia has an interest in helping Indonesia to develop a capacity to successfully operate submarines in the South China Sea. Three new submarines will help Jakarta police its sovereign interests. It only benefits Australia if Indonesia can control its sea and airspace, knowing what ships and aircraft are moving around the archipelago.

Australia, however, has no use for small, coastal submarines capable of staying underwater for a few days with basic weapons and sensors.

Australia’s future submarines are mind-blowingly expensive and will take a long time to deliver, but claims that the designs are disastrously flawed are just hot air. Nor will Australia face a gap in submarine capability as Gottliebsen claims. The Collins subs, which are formidable weapons, will be upgraded as long planned.

It’s beyond understanding why an Australian Defence Department that’s able to make such sensible decisions on equipment is so chronically unable to explain them. It’s not sustainable to treat Australia’s biggest ever defence investments like secret projects never to be discussed or explained.

In the absence of those explanations, we will continue to be subjected to an endless stream of critical commentary about the F-35 and future submarines that ranges from the mildly plausible to unhinged conspiracy theories. Left unchallenged, this damages our long-term defence and strategic interests.

The story of the Collins submarines offers an important lesson. The boats could never escape the false reputation that they were duds. Defence shouldn’t let a failure to explain its business create the same problems for the F-35 and the future submarines.