Tag Archive for: USAF

Bolt from the blue: what we know (and don’t know) about the US’s powerful F-47 fighter

When the F-47 enters service, at a date to be disclosed, it will be a new factor in US air warfare.

A decision to proceed with development, deferred since July, was unexpectedly announced on 21 March. Boeing will be the prime contractor.

The design will have much more range than earlier fighters, both at supersonic and subsonic speed. But it is not even a fighter as it is generally understood. It will be more stealthy. It will be larger, trading dogfight manoeuvrability for reach, and it will be designed to work within a family of systems, many of them unmanned.

Range and speed are defensive attributes, allowing the aircraft to be based farther from Chinese air and missile bases and keeping tankers at a greater distance from interceptors: the air force has backed away from trying to make a more survivable tanker. But range and speed are offensive characteristics, too: while no aircraft can be in two places at once, fast and long-range aircraft can cover a wide area and sustain high sortie rates.

The F-47 is the centrepiece of the US Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) effort. The intended fighter design, now the F-47, has also been called NGAD. And the name Penetrating Counter-Air has been attached to it, too.

Former secretary of the air force Frank Kendall characterised NGAD as large and costly, and the F-47 will have retained these attributes. Although Kendall and USAF chief of staff General Dave Allvin raised the idea of a less costly NGAD last year, it never got near the stage of an amendment to the initial request for proposals that was issued in 2023.

Stealth: the F-22 and F-35 are classic applications of bowtie stealth design, their vertical tails causing stronger radar reflections when viewed from the side than from in front or behind. (A graph of this looks like a bowtie.) The problem in the Western Pacific is China’s numerous long-range airborne radars and air-warfare destroyers, which make it next to impossible to avoid being illuminated from all angles.

Expanding the envelope of tailless flight in terms of speed and manoeuvrability was almost certainly a focus of the classified Aerospace Innovation Initiative (AII) demonstration program that led to Boeing and Lockheed Martin AII-X prototypes. (AII was run by the Aerospace Projects Office, specially established within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.)

The USAF sees a program for fighter-like drones, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), as an integral part of NGAD, with two or more uncrewed aircraft teamed with each F-47. The Increment 1 CCAs (the General Atomics YFQ-42 and Anduril YFQ-44) are being used to evaluate their role as air-to-air missile carriers, augmenting the F-47’s weapon capability and taking close-range shots; Increment 2 will be designed to target surface emitters—making it an unmanned and attritable wild weasel, a traditional category of aircraft assigned to dealing with air defences. As reported earlier, simulation tests are showing that pilots can manage more than two CCAs.

USAF Lieutenant General Alex ‘Grinch’ Grynkewich, in 2015 and 2016 led the service’s Air Superiority 2030 study that defined NGAD as what was called a Penetrating Counter-Air aircraft. He discussed the reasoning behind Penetrating Counter Air (what’s become the F-47) in a public essay in 2017, by which time AII had been under way for two years.

Grynkewich’s team had started with a range of options, including reliance on standoff weapons and what he termed a ‘Gen6’ concept with F-22-like fighter attributes—which turned out to be far too expensive. The Penetrating Counter Air identity, Grynkewich wrote, avoided both ‘Gen6’ and ‘fighter’ which presupposed ‘a short-range, highly manoeuvrable, supersonic, manned aircraft, typically armed with a limited number of missiles and a gun’.

We know something about the F-47’s size from open-source discussion of its engines.  A 2018 presentation includes a slide outlining the goals of the USAF’s variable-cycle engine program, and it makes a clear distinction between engines of the 200 kilonewton (45,000 lb) thrust class (the General Electric XA100 and Pratt & Whitney XA101) sized for the F-35, smaller ‘scaled core’ engines for what has become the F-47—engines now known as GE XA102 and P&W XA103—and a derivative for retrofit to F-15s and F-16s.

That implies a maximum thrust around 160 kilonewtons (35,000 lb) for the F-47 engine. Given a requirement for less manoeuvre and more range, that points to an aircraft with a loaded weight of about 45 tonnes (much like an F-111, which will please some Australian readers.) But the importance of the adaptive engine is that it allows a supersonic-cruise aircraft to minimise the use of afterburning, even for transonic acceleration, while still being efficient in subsonic flight.

Legions of would-be R. V. Joneses have spent the weekend poring over the F-47 artwork released by the Pentagon. I would advise caution: what we don’t know about its shape is still more important than what we do know, even before we take account of what we do know for certain but ain’t so.

But there are aspects of the artwork that call to mind the work of the late Alan Wiechman, who joined McDonnell Douglas from the Lockheed Skunk Works in the mid-1980s and headed the company’s stealth work until his retirement in 2014. His work included the X-36 tailless prototype, and the Bird Of Prey, demonstrating optical and radar stealth. His obituary in 2023 noted that he had ‘most recently’ been an adviser on stealth to the USAF Rapid Capabilities Office.

As with anything in the United States these days, there is much uncertainty ahead for the F-47. Boeing’s bid was submitted well before new CEO Kelly Ortberg joined, and the company has a painful history of low bidding and poor performance. The requirement may be sound and the technology may be good, but the F-47 is another pull on an overstressed air force budget, and by the time it enters service (not in Trump’s second term) it will face challenges, including whatever F-35X ideas emerge from Fort Worth.

But let’s get back to that surprise announcement on Friday by   President Donald Trump. It came as a surprise for good reasons.

Defying decades of practice, the F-47 was launched by an empty Pentagon C-suite: nominees for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), Air Force secretary, and undersecretaries for acquisition, and research and engineering, are all awaiting confirmation. Defense secretary, infantry major and TV host Pete Hegseth was the sole source selection authority.

Air force leaders had lobbied Trump personally to get his approval for the project, which Kendall put on hold in July. With no CJCS, the lead defense adviser to Hegseth is the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointed last May: Grynkewich, the author of that NGAD-defining Air Superiority 2030 study.

Was this a Machiavellian plan by Kendall? Delaying the NGAD decision last year looks like a coup, allowing the air force to dazzle the president with secret technology, while talking up the threat of China’s new J-36 to inspire a sense of urgency, permitting Trump to present it as his own idea and calling it F-47. Conveniently, the sceptical Elon Musk, usually omnipresent at big occasions, was busy at a briefing at the Pentagon.

Boeing’s woes and the state of the US defence industry

Boeing is one of the Pentagon’s biggest contractors and therefore a heavyweight supplier for US allies. So its alarming financial condition is much more than investment news.

The company has got itself into loss-making defence programs by overestimating the potential for production profits to cover research-and-development losses. Expect it to be wary in future.

Meanwhile, the other two big US military aircraft builders, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, look more interested in defending current business, such as the F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter) and B-21 programs, than moving on new and riskier ones.

Boeing’s Defense & Space division on 23 October posted a US$5.5 billion loss for the third quarter of 2024. Most of the drag came from write-offs of future losses on current programs, mainly the T-7A Redhawk trainer and the KC-46 Pegasus tanker. And the company’s civil division, which makes airliners, has its own enormous problems.

Boeing’s profit estimate at completion (EAC) for the KC-47 and T-7 programs is negative. Quite likely, the MQ-25 carrier-based tanker drone and VC-25B presidential transport programs are no longer expected to make money, either.

‘Our EAC process needs to get better,’ CEO Kelly Ortberg said. Advisedly so: after bidding low to get the tanker job, Boeing tried to save money by building the basic airframe at its civil plant at Everett, Washington, rather than setting up a military line in Wichita, which was needed.

Boeing’s rock-bottom bid on the T-7 was influenced by its partnership with Sweden’s Saab, which offered new and cheaper process. But as far back as 2019, Saab people were quietly saying that Boeing didn’t seem to understand those processes.

In 2018, Boeing agreed with then president Donald Trump to cut costs of the two new presidential aircraft by adapting surplus 747-8 airliners it had already built. An independent VIP conversion specialist, GDC Technics, was supposed to convert them, but it went bust and Boeing had to take the work in-house.

As well as being stuck with loss-making aircraft projects, Boeing Defence and Space is under pressure from SpaceX and other newcomers in the space industry.

The result is that the division is losing money, hard to sell, and hard to grow. One analyst asked Ortberg about ‘the potential of just exiting some programs or some contracts where you’ve got absolutely no path to profitability’. Not viable, Ortberg said. ‘These are our core customers that need this capability. We’ve got long-term commitments.’

Well, that, at least, was reassurance the Pentagon wanted to hear.

But are things better in the rest of the US industry? Its structure was established by the Last Supper, the 1993 meeting where deputy defence secretary Bill Perry advised bosses of aerospace prime contractors who still considered their businesses viable to look to their left and their right, ‘because one of you will be out of business in five years.’

It triggered a wave of mergers and acquisitions.

But from the end of 1996, when JSF program kicked off, there was a long drought of major combat aircraft programs (imagine no new projects between the P-80 of 1944 and the F-111 of 1967), because of the Pentagon’s focus on counter-insurgent war in the Middle East.

Next, the Pentagon focused on squeezing the industry on initial acquisition cost, through projects such as Better Buying Power.

Finally, we saw the shift of business emphasis towards maximising shareholder value. What is good for that is cash profit. What is less good is low- or negative-margin research and development, and what is even worse is spending money competing for programs that you don’t win or might win only to see them cancelled or delayed.

For US defence prime contractors today, the path to prosperity is to defend your existing programs and the future support business that goes with them. With few new starts for suppliers to bid on, the primes can demand lower prices from them by threatening to look elsewhere. They can squeeze suppliers until the pips squeak, raiding them for their best-performing people, and then complaining about late deliveries and quality problems.

New programs? Well there is one for fighter-like drones, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), but it doesn’t look anything like the sort of big-money effort that the air force’s stalled Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) was supposed to be, fielding a so-called sixth-generation fighter.

 

Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet could have been more enthusiastic about prospects. At Lockheed Martin’s earnings call, he said, ‘We have to be able to meet the J-20 with enough numbers in the Pacific. F-35 and F-22 now are the only really competitive jets against the J-20, one to one. We have to field enough of those aircraft in a short enough timeframe to maintain an effective deterrent in the Pacific. We need to be able to bring autonomy in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft concept into fifth gen—and sixth gen, if there is one.’

If there is one?

Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden had a similar message when an analyst asked, ‘With the Air Force reevaluating at least the manned part of NGAD, could that free up to get your funding for the Air Force to get to that desired B-21 inventory of 150 units?’

Warden responded, ‘I think that’s exactly what the air force is looking at. They are undertaking a force structure design review, and we know that B-21 is in the mix.’

There’s common sense to this approach. The walls are going up around the major programs, and the case is being made that the CCA or other capabilities can augment them but cannot be allowed to replace them.

And if any money is freed up by postponing a new generation of fighters, Taiclet and Warden will happily take it. (And don’t forget that Northrop Grumman has a very large stake in F-35.) They’re betting, not unreasonably, that CCA money going to other, smaller aircraft suppliers will not come out of their pockets.

A progress report on hypersonics—doubtful US weapons for the Western Pacific

The US and Australia have been collaborating on technology for hypersonic weapons since 2007, but you might be forgiven for not knowing that. Until 2014, when China was seen to be testing the DF-17 boost-glide weapon, the standard line was that ‘hypersonics are the weapon of the future—and they always will be.’ The Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) program of Australia and the US was seen as a lab project.

Its successor, the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) program, is linked to a funded weapon: the US Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), to be carried by US Air Force F-15Es and, possibly, by Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18F Super Hornets.

HACM development won’t be complete until 2029, if it stays on schedule, and its costs are undefined. For now, US hypersonic weapons are confined to a different class of vehicle, similar to the systems that China is deploying. But due to geography, a technology that is useful to China may be less so to the Pacific alliance.

‘Hypersonic’ has a clear definition: Mach 5 and above. As a vehicle approaches five times the speed of sound (5300km/h at altitude), a layer of stagnant air forms at its nose and leading edges and becomes hot and compressed, subjecting the vehicle to much more extreme conditions than are encountered even at Mach 4.

Two hypersonic vehicle types are being developed: hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), launched by rockets but using aerodynamic lift to maneuver and extend their range; and cruise vehicles powered by supersonic combustion ramjets (scramjets), the only airbreathing engines that will function at such speeds. They fly as low as 30,000 meters, far lower than ballistic missiles, and maneuver at will. So the defenses get less warning and cannot predict their track as easily.

It’s not easy. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes for lower speeds are known and reliable, and large-scale wind tunnels are available. Hypersonic CFD is less mature, because of the interaction of aerodynamics and heating and because of the changes in airflow at the hypersonic boundary. Wind tunnels for Mach 5 and above accommodate only small test specimens and are hard to operate: a hypersonic tunnel test has been compared to firing a large rocket engine.

Flight tests require large vehicles hurled towards hypersonic speed by powerful rockets. They must survive launch then separation from the rockets before gathering any data. Most programs have lost test craft in the boost phase.

That’s why the US has taken a low-risk approach to its first-generation hypersonic weapon. It comprises a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) mated to a two-stage solid rocket booster stack. The Army’s version is the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and the Navy weapon is called Conventional Prompt Strike system.

The C-HGB is based on a 40-year-old design by Sandia National Laboratories. It is cone-shaped with four delta fins that steer the body and orient it so that it generates lift.

The aerodynamics of the finned cone are not as hard to model as those of a wing or lifting body. It can rotate around its axis in flight: the windward side (the lower side) sees the highest temperature, so rotating the vehicle spreads the heating load over the entire skin. Even so, it needs a ceramic thermal protection system, using Sandia-developed zirconium diboride material.

But the finned cone generates more drag relative to lift than a flattened glider (which is more challenging to develop), so it needs more rocket boost to get the desired range. Result: the missile weighs a reported 7400kg to deliver a small 225 kg payload over 3000 km.

It is expected to cost $50 million per round, but most of the life-cycle cost of such a large weapon goes into the platform that moves and protects it. Because the Conventional Prompt Strike weapon is too large for standard vertical launch system tubes, the US Navy is putting it on its three Zumwalt-class destroyers, replacing the two 155 mm guns (for which the Navy never procured ammunition). Each of these 15,900-tonne ships would carry just 12 missiles. Nine of the ten Block V Virginia-class attack submarines, priced at $4.3 billion each, will also be able to carry 12.

But here’s one reason why hypersonic weapons may not be very useful for the US in the Western Pacific: the only ones that would be available for prompt strike would be those in vessels that were within range when a conflict starts. Not many.

China doesn’t have that problem. DF-17s are carried on trucks and most of the people operating them need about the same level of training as a mobile crane crew. Just about the whole stock can be available for firing from day one.

The US Army’s weapon would be carried in two-round packs on oversize semi-trailers. That’s similar in principle to how China deploys regional-range missiles. But the survival of the missile and launcher depends on mobility and dispersal, which is easier to achieve on mainland China than on Pacific islands. Guam has only 1050 km of highways.

The US Air Force has scrapped its HGV weapon, the AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). Even with a glider with better aerodynamics than the army-navy configuration, ARRW would have delivered only a 110kg warhead. And the weapon was still so large that only the B-52H could carry it. Each bomber would have carried just four rounds.

The US Air Force’s 2025 budget included no funds for further development of ARRW but did fund the scramjet-powered HACM. Raytheon is the prime contractor on HACM, but Northrop Grumman is developing the engine, which comprises most of the missile.

Scramjets are more efficient than HGVs and are smaller for equivalent warhead size and range but are harder to develop. The air flowing through the engine is hot, compressed and undergoing thermochemical change, and the scramjet won’t light below Mach 4.

The scramjet engine creates almost as much drag as it does thrust. If either number is missed, the engine produces no net power. The only way to get good test data is to fly a large-scale vehicle.

But there’s one basic question about scramjet hypersonic missiles: how important is it to exceed Mach 5, compared with speeds of Mach 3.5 to 4 that can be attained with less risky ramjets? Weapon time of flight is less, but only by six to eight minutes for 1800 km range. A 2013 paper by Mark Maybury, then chief scientist of the US Air Force, shows that with modest stealth measures, a high-supersonic vehicle is as survivable as a hypersonic one. Moreover, the combination of high Mach and reduced radar cross section was demonstrated more than 60 years ago.

There’s no sign, in all the enthusiasm over hypersonics, that the question has ever been asked. Maybe it should be.

Will US bombers on Diego Garcia deter Chinese aggression?

The strategic contest between China and the United States has taken an interesting turn. Last week the Pentagon confirmed that three American B-2 Spirit stealth bombers had deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Diego Garcia.

This appears to be the first time since 2016 that B-2s have been sent to the US Indian Ocean island base. And it comes only six months after six B-52 Stratofortress bombers were dispatched to the archipelago, where they remain.

The US Air Force’s official line for the bomber taskforce deployment is that it demonstrates the US national defence strategy in action. ‘We are sharpening our lethality while strengthening relationships with key allies, partners, and our sister-service teammates,’ said the taskforce commander, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Conant.

On the face of it, the arrival of B-2s and B-52s could be seen as a standard deployment of military assets. However, it was also reported that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy was planning a live-fire training drill starting 16 August, 545 kilometres north of Taiwan near the Zhoushan Islands.

The Chinese live-fire exercise is just the latest manifestation of increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the militarisation of the South China Sea. Worryingly, this exercise is seen by some as a simulation for seizing the Pratas or Dongsha Islands. These islands are administered by Taiwan and lie 310 kilometres southeast of Hong Kong between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. PLA Navy vessels must pass those islands before they can reach the Pacific Ocean.

So, what could the deployment of B-2s and B-52s to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean have to do with a live-fire exercise in the East China Sea?

The Italian airpower theorist Giulio Douhet provides a useful reference. In his seminal work, The command of the air, Douhet argued that overwhelming airpower—specifically in the form of strategic bombers—could win a war without requiring boots on the ground. The impact of bombing, including the threat of bombing, could be enough to destroy the will of the enemy to fight.

If we follow Douhet, could an overwhelming demonstration or presence of airpower be enough to win without firing a shot?

No one would argue that three B-2s and six B-52s represent an overwhelming show of force—it’s merely an attention-getter. But the arrival of the long-range bombers from the 509th Bomb Wing is certain to have caught Beijing’s attention.

There is another important factor at play: the location of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet. According to the US Naval Institute, the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group entered the South China Sea on 14 August. This is no coincidence: it’s a clear demonstration of Washington’s displeasure with China’s live-fire exercise. Indeed, the carrier group’s movement can be interpreted as force protection with intent. Put another way—and with echoes from the national defence strategy—the naval force’s arrival signals that the US will protect its assets and allies in the region and that it is not afraid of the consequences that this show of force may elicit from Beijing.

So how does the arrival of long-range bombers on Diego Garcia fit into these events?

The answer is found in another tiny island that hosts a US military base, Guam. In the event of a military conflict with China, the PLA can reach Guam with both cruise and ballistic missiles. This puts the main US airbase in the western Pacific in peril.

Deploying long-range bombers to Diego Garcia and the carrier group into the South China Sea sends a clear message from the US that the Chinese government should not think about attacking Guam. If China makes such a move, the US could launch long-range stealth bombers from Diego Garcia against a range of targets, including the PLA aircraft carrier Shandong, in the South China Sea.

The deployment of B-2s to Diego Garcia is grand strategy in action. The tensions in the region, already high, will be ratcheted even higher as a result of the PLA live-fire exercise. Also in the mix is the announcement that Taiwan’s F-16s have been armed with live Harpoon anti-ship missiles.

Perhaps Douhet was right—the presence of American and allied airpower may be enough to avert a war in the region. The next move as the national defence strategy is brought into action will be fascinating to watch.

Are reports of the death of manned fighters premature?

At a recent US Air Force Association conference, Elon Musk, creator of the SpaceX reusable rocket, told thousands of fighter pilots that ‘the fighter jet era has passed’. This declaration on the future of unmanned autonomous systems from one of the world’s most innovative thinkers generated a lot of debate, but it isn’t entirely correct.

Rather than crewed aircraft being replaced completely by unmanned systems, we’ll see a partnership of piloted and autonomous systems. The unmanned aircraft will have various levels of trusted autonomy depending on the operational and tactical circumstances they operate in. For the Royal Australian Air Force, getting this manned–unmanned teaming right is vital if we’re to sustain our operational effectiveness in the face of growing threats.

The starting point for the RAAF must be filling the long-range strike gap that has opened up since the retirement of the F-111C in 2010, and which the acquisition of the F-35A has failed to fill. The problem, as I’ve noted before, and as my ASPI colleague Marcus Hellyer has explored, is a lack of range and payload in the RAAF’s strike and air combat platforms. RAAF aircraft can project power at long range, but only with extensive tanker support in uncontested airspace, or by using another nation’s bases. Neither of those options may be available in a conflict.

So, it’s opportune that Boeing is working on linking manned and unmanned aircraft with the loyal wingman ‘airpower teaming system’. The loyal wingman drone offers the possibility of a low-cost long-range light-strike platform that can operate alongside the F-35A, the Super Hornets and the Growler electronic warfare aircraft. It would support larger enablers such as the E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft.

The loyal wingman is a small platform with a maximum flying distance of around 2,000 nautical miles, which translates roughly to an unrefuelled combat radius of 660 nautical miles (1,200 kilometres), depending on payload and mission profile. It has high subsonic speed but isn’t supersonic and has a limited payload. Boeing is aiming to fly this aircraft this year, and it could be acquired in significant numbers later in the 2020s if the RAAF wants it.

The loyal wingman could transform Australia’s defence industry and possibly the Australian Defence Force. It should be seen as the first of a family of systems to address critical defence needs. Step 1 would be to speed its introduction into service to support the RAAF’s air combat capability. The RAAF can learn to build, operate and sustain these systems to help redress the imbalance in capabilities it could face.

This platform could be developed into new designs with greater size, performance and payload, perhaps midway between the F-111C and a larger bomber.

With China working on a ‘J/H-XX’ ‘regional bomber’, a scaled-up loyal wingman could be an answer not only for the RAAF’s long-range strike gap, but also to fill similar gaps in the US’s and other regional partners’ air forces, which have for too long emphasised tactical platforms rather than long-range strategic airpower.

That could open up the possibility of crewed RAAF fighters being supported by a long-range stealthy unmanned ‘missile truck’ carrying advanced very long-range air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-260  to boost long-range air defence capability. Alternatively, it could deliver hypersonic land-strike weapons and advanced anti-surface weapons, such as the AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile (LRASM), that can strike land and sea targets far beyond the sea–air gap.

Boeing could also develop the MQ-25 Stingray so that it could refuel both the F-35A and loyal wingman. At the moment, the MQ-25 can only refuel navy and marine corps F-35Cs and F-35Bs, so a larger, land-based version is needed to allow longer-range stealthy operations by RAAF F-35As. That should be of great interest to the RAAF. The RAAF’s KC-30 MRTT tankers paint a massive signature on Chinese radars watching from the South China Sea and can’t operate in contested airspace. That limits the F-35A’s utility for long-range air operations.

Unmanned systems are eminently evolvable and lend themselves to experimentation and spiral development. They’ll be central to the US Air Force’s ‘Digital Century Series’ initiative and its Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, project, which aims to produce multiple different types of air combat platforms, manned and unmanned, over a short timeframe. Australia should fully participate in developing the baseline and proposed evolved versions of the loyal wingman.

Australia needs to embrace a bold vision for a larger, more powerful strategic air force in the 2020s. We also must develop that future airpower in a joint context. How naval capabilities such as the Hobart-class air warfare destroyer and Hunter-class frigates contribute to control of the air needs to be factored into future planning. Unmanned or optionally manned surface vessels for the navy could serve as ‘arsenal ships’ to enhance defensive and offensive firepower. Add in land-based capability, including long-range land-based strike, and some radical new force structure choices begin to emerge.

The starting point must be in the air. We must move away from the traditional boutique air force constrained by limited numbers of short-range tactical crewed platforms. Our emerging strategic outlook, in which long-range Chinese standoff capabilities could dominate our region, demands a different answer. A mix of manned and unmanned air capabilities acquired in cooperation with the US NGAD project could expand the RAAF’s strike and air combat forces and enhance their long-range strike and defence capabilities. Musk may be right, ultimately, and more distant future airpower may well be primarily unmanned. But, for the foreseeable future, it’s a partnership.

Space force on the horizon … maybe

Moves to develop a US space force, which is being strongly pushed by President Donald Trump, are quietly gathering pace, even though funding for the force has been pushed back a year.

A draft of a report, to be presented to Congress sometime in August, apparently proposes a four-step process for creating a sixth independent military force alongside the US Navy, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

In step one, the Pentagon would create a new combatant command, to be known as US Space Command, which it can do without congressional authorisation. Second, the Department of Defense would create a joint space operations force that would also include civilian personnel and be tasked with developing a cadre of people with space expertise to support US European Command and US Indo-Pacific Command by next summer.

Next, the Pentagon would transform how it develops, launches and operates satellites to emphasise speed and experimentation. This would be a task for a new space development agency. Private sector space companies would be given a bigger role and become more closely integrated with government agencies. There would be a transition process from current projects, with the space development agency taking on a greater role over time.

Step four would be establishing the space force itself to knit these elements together—which would require congressional support and full funding. That’s something that will be considered for the 2020 defence budget, and it’s highly likely that Trump will continue to push hard for Congress to take that final step. He’s invested substantial political capital into the idea, and it would be a humiliation for him, going into the 2020 presidential election, to have the space force shot out of the sky by Congress.

The first three steps are vital and will lead to a debate over the space force concept in Congress and the Pentagon in 2019–20. It’s important to get this issue away from counterproductive and often mindless partisan criticism. These initial steps are a good use of time and resources because they suggest a better approach to managing a space domain that is contested, congested and competitive.

Having a coherent, truly joint space command that is supported by expertise from all elements of the US military and defence community and having a faster and more efficient approach to acquiring space capability are good things. It’s that final step to a space force that will generate the hottest debate.

The US Air Force has legitimate concerns that a space force might lead to unnecessary duplication of effort, with attendant cost implications for a branch which is already heavily engaged in the space mission. Former air force secretary Deborah Lee James criticised the space force as a classic shiny object that ‘will consume a lot of time, a lot of effort and absolutely will be a distraction’. James goes on to argue that a space force will slow down the momentum of investments in space capability. ‘Suddenly the focus will shift on who is going to report to whom, and how do we get these directives written and everything that goes along with creating a brand new bureaucracy.’

The space force is coming together right at a time when Russia and China are moving aggressively towards developing and fielding counter-space capability that threatens US access to the space domain. Any disruption to the US’s ability to respond to that growing threat could be disastrous if it means the US isn’t prepared to deter and, if necessary, counter a ‘Pearl Harbor in space’. There’s a risk that partisan squabbling—particularly if the Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives or Senate after this year’s congressional midterms—could undermine any serious debate about whether a space force is the answer or not, and slow progress on a coherent US response to counter-space threats.

The key question remains, though, what does a space force actually do? Earlier I pointed to one possible future scenario of US competition with peer adversaries on the highest ground of cislunar space (the region between the Earth and the moon) in the late 2020s and beyond. That’s like something straight out of The Expanse. With both China and the US signalling moves back to the moon in the 2020–30 period, and the potential resource wealth in that region, competition over presence and access to resources could mean a need to protect astropolitical interests. Space isn’t an uncontested commons that sits above terrestrial geopolitical rivalries—not even out at lunar orbit.

Closer to home, and more proximate to the here and now, a US space force would be responsible for defending US and allied interests in the region against growing counter-space threats. It would also be required to conduct operations such as launching and operating satellites and spacecraft for defence and national security missions. Certainly the US Air Force already does this task, so the key debate in coming months must be whether an independent ‘US Space Force’ would do it better.

For US allies such as Australia, it’s important to begin discussing how a space force would affect cooperation between the US and its partners. The initial steps discussed above take the idea of a space force from the butt of jokes by late-night talk show hosts to something a bit more serious. As Australia begins to debate a more ambitious approach to space, including for defence purposes, a discussion on how we might work with our allies in the future is something that should not be dismissed. A US space force might be part of that future.

Update: The final report was submitted to Congress on 9 August 2018.

The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign

This year has seen many 75th anniversaries of battles and campaigns from the darkest hours of 1942, with the Battle of the Coral Sea (4 to 8 May) prominent. But in all these commemorative activities there has been no mention of the air campaign over Darwin conducted by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) 49th Fighter Group from March to September 1942.

The prelude to the campaign of the 49th Fighter Group covers some of the darkest days of the Pacific War: the fall of Singapore on 15 February; the bombing of Darwin on 19 February during which the Japanese shot down nine of the ten P-40s of Major Floyd Pell’s 33rd Pursuit Squadron; and the sinking of the USS Langley (CV-1) on 27 February, taking with it thirty-two P-40s and thirty-three pilots from the USAAF 13th Pursuit Squadron.

With the Netherlands East Indies and Philippines lost, American reinforcements, including three USAAF fighter groups—two with the Bell P-39 and one with the Curtis P-40E—were reconstituting in Australia. In March, the most advanced group, the 49th Fighter Group, commenced its move to the Top End, where US and Australian units were feverishly constructing airfields and associated facilities. By April, the 49th, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Wurtsmith, was in situ, with its three squadrons, the 9th, 8th and 7th, located at Livingstone, Strauss and Batchelor, respectively.

Wurtsmith was a career officer, specialising in ‘pursuit’ operations. He was a graduate of the USAAC Tactical School with 4,800 flying hours. His executive officer, Major Don Hutchinson, was another pursuit specialist with 2,500 flying hours. The 49th Fighter Group was fortunate to have such experienced leaders, plus a handful of veterans from the Philippines campaign, but that only masked the inexperience of the group, as out of its initial strength of 102 pilots, 95 had never flown the P-40 before.

Supported by the RAAF No. 5 Fighter Sector with its radars at Dripstone Caves (No. 31) and Point Charles (No. 105), and with the sector now including personnel from the USAAF 49th Fighter Interception Squadron, the 49th’s sixty P-40s provided Darwin with its only fighter defence from March to September 1942 against a threat mainly comprising fast and well-armed Mitsubishi G4M ‘Betty’ bombers escorted by Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ fighters.

Darwin’s 3.7-inch anti-aircraft artillery forced the G4Ms to ingress at high levels—generally between 25,000 to 27,000 feet. Such a high ingress altitude sorely tested the P-40E fighters as their Allison V-1710 engines suffered from an inadequate mechanically driven supercharger. The Allison, while rugged and reliable, lost considerable power at the higher altitudes, with the operational ceiling of the P-40E limited to around 27,000 to 28,000 feet.

With time-to-height and operational ceiling limitations, Wurtsmith scrambled his squadrons in small manoeuvrable formations of four aircraft, with each flight leader listening to the No. 5 Fighter Sector broadcast. This ensured each raid was subject to multiple interceptions by flights of P-40s, which effectively tied the escorting Zeros to the bomber formation to ensure unchallenged flights of P-40s did not slip through to engage the G4Ms.

But with the intercepting P-40s unable to climb above the Zeros, Wurtsmith’s pilots remained at a tactical disadvantage as the escorting Zeros invariably dived down upon them. Acknowledging the threat posed by the higher and more maneuverable Zeros, Wurtsmith exhorted his pilots to avoid dogfighting and immediately disengage.

Over the period March to August 1942, Japanese records reveal nineteen Japanese aircraft were lost in the raids on Darwin. Losses comprised one reconnaissance aircraft, seven fighters and twelve bombers, plus several more damaged. In turn, the 49th Fighter Group lost nineteen fighters, including four pilots, with another eight pilots lost in non-combat-related accidents.

Given the limitations of the P-40E as a high-altitude interceptor, and the low experience level of the bulk of the USAAF pilots, the 49th Fighter Group can rightly claim to have done its job well. But in August, with the Japanese diverting their air forces to the Guadalcanal campaign, the Darwin campaign tailed off and the 49th Fighter Group commenced their move to Papua and New Guinea. The air defence of Darwin was passed to No. 77 Squadron, which moved to Batchelor in August, and No. 76 Squadron which, having returned from Milne Bay, moved to Strauss in October.

As for Paul Wurtsmith, he continued to serve with distinction in the South West Pacific. As a brigadier general, he commanded V Fighter Command in 5th Air Force, and then as a major general commanded 13th Air Force. His contribution, and that of the USAAF 49th Fighter Group and supporting units, deserve far greater recognition than they have received.

This piece was originally published in the September issue of Australian Aviation. It has been largely sourced from the paper ‘Darwin 1942: the missing year’ by Anthony Cooper.

Space security after Obama

Image courtesy of Flickr user James McCloskey.

In an earlier article on the USAF X-37B space plane I noted that the Obama administration’s 2010 space policy sought to avoid space weaponisation and ASATs. Washington’s current policy reinforces international norms against space warfare and relies on enhanced space resilience, as well as reconstitution of space capabilities.

In stark contrast, Russia and China now are actively developing ground-based, airborne and co-orbital ASATs. In May 2013, China launched a high altitude research rocket that reached Medium Earth Orbit, and demonstrated the means to attack satellites in Geosynchronous Orbit, thus bringing critical US communications and navigation satellites into range. Technologies like electronic warfare and microwave weapons open up the prospect of non-kinetic ASATs which can disable a target satellite by jamming or overloading its electronic systems, without physically destroying it.

It’s clear that current US space policy isn’t preventing space weaponisation. Our reliance on space resilience and reconstitution may mitigate some effects of space warfare, but it’s likely the US and its allies would have to fight within a degraded space environment after what’s commonly referred to as a ‘Space Pearl Harbour’ environment. The effectiveness of mass and firepower over degraded information-dependent forces would see the latter lose the ability to exploit a knowledge edge to employ precision weapons. The playing field would be levelled and, for the US and its allies including Australia, the use of military power would be much more risky.

The 2010 policy states that the US will ‘develop capabilities, plans and options to deter, defend against, and, if necessary, defeat efforts to interfere with or attack US or allied space systems’ and that it’ll ‘maintain the capabilities to execute the space support, force enhancement, space control and force application missions.’ Current US space doctrine breaks Space Control into ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ approaches.

Defensive space control seeks to protect US and allied space capabilities, and includes Space Situational Awareness (SSA), as well as dissuasion of an actual attack by reinforcing resilience. Offensive space control includes ‘negation’ of adversary capabilities, such as active defensive and offensive measures to ‘deceive, disrupt, degrade, deny or destroy’ an adversary’s space capabilities. So the policy essentials are already in place for the US to respond to a growing ASAT threat.

Strengthening the offensive space control element of US space policy may not even require ASATs on orbit. The doctrine makes clear that attacking the ground-segment is one option. Jamming the data-links to control satellites and ASATs, together with the full range of defensive space control measures may be sufficient to dissuade an opponent. However if the US begins to look seriously at real ASAT options, these shouldn’t be designed to physically destroy a target. It’s a bad move to create large debris fields in space, and in the process raise the spectre of a ‘Kessler’ effect illustrated dramatically (albeit inaccurately) in the 2014 movie Gravity. The potential application of directed energy weapons such as lasers and high powered microwave systems, and space electronic warfare seems a better bet.

In 2008 the US demonstrated a direct-ascent ASAT capability using an SM-3 missile launched from the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie, under Operation Burnt Frost. That was to prevent a hazardous re-entry of a failing satellite in a low decaying orbit. However that operation reinforces an interesting dual-use relationship between Ballistic Missile Defence and ASATs, and highlights a likely development path for offensive space control, given that a boost phase intercept of an ASAT-carrying missile is a better option than on-orbit defence. That’s even more relevant today, given the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea. North Korean nuclear ambitions raise the prospect of ‘high altitude nuclear detonation’ (HAND) as the ultimate indiscriminate ASAT. Military and commercial satellites would be vulnerable as such an attack would excite Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, exposing the satellites to accumulating radiation every orbit until they failed. The global economic consequences of such an attack would be incalculable, but for an unpredictable leader like Kim Jong-un, such a threat could be a powerful coercive tool.

The risk in moving from the current policy stance to a more robust offensive space control posture is that Russia and China will take that as a green light to accelerate and broaden their own ASAT efforts, generating a rapid slide from the controlled militarisation of space to the uncontrolled weaponisation of space.

Yet the shift seems already underway, and the US has tripled spending on offensive space control, from US$9.5 million in 2013 to US$30.7 million in 2016. The language is shifting too, with Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work highlighting the importance of ‘Space Control’ in a recent speech. A swing by the US from the ‘strategic restraint’ of the Obama administration, to a robust offensive space control capability would be an important development in the rapidly evolving zone of military space.

Mayday: when UAVs crash

It seems like every few weeks we hear a report of an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lost in a crash somewhere in the world. According to The Washington Post’s Drone Crash Database, the US military’s had 237 ‘Class A’ mishaps involving UAVs since 2001 (although this database was last updated in December 2015 and more crashes have occurred since). That makes sense superficially. The US military is the most prominent user of these platforms and, logically, the more often something flies, the more often something goes wrong.

But an examination of the data shows that this isn’t actually the case; the US Air Force’s (USAF) loss rate per 100,000 flight hours for the MQ-1 Predator (USAF’s primary armed UAV during the 2000’s) actually decreased as it racked up flight time. As the ADF moves towards incorporating UAVs—including potentially an armed medium-altitude UAV (see Para 4.55)—into its force structure, it’s worth looking at those findings in more detail.

The MQ-1 Predator has been the mainstay of USAF’s armed UAV program since the late 1990s. Its use in conflict zones around the world was kept hush-hush for many years, so little was known about its safety record. However, USAF now publishes detailed safety records for the Predator that stretch back to the UAV’s secretive years, giving us a glimpse at its accident rate.

Figure 1: Number of Predators destroyed and loss rate per 100,000 flight hours (1997–2015)

Figure 1 shows the number of Predators destroyed and the Predator’s loss rate per 100,000 flight hours from 1997 until 2015 (data from 1996 was excluded as the aircraft only flew 200 hours that year). During this period the Predator had 122 Class A mishaps that led to the loss of 105 aircraft, meaning that 86% of Class A mishaps ended with a destroyed platform.

While the number of Predators lost in the late 1990s and early 2000s is low compared to later years, the loss rate per flying hour was relatively high. The late 2000s saw an increase in the number of destroyed Predators but the loss rate actually decreased to around 3–4 aircraft lost per 100,000 flight hours. That’s likely due to the aircraft becoming more reliable and its operators gaining experience in flight operations.

Today the MQ-9 Reaper—a bigger and more capable version of the Predator—is becoming the USAF’s armed UAV of choice. Figure 2 illustrates the number of hours flown by the Reaper and Predator between 1996 and 2015.

Figure 2: Flight Hours by Platform (1996–2015)

Both platforms had a relatively modest number of flight hours in the early stages of their lifespans. The Predator saw a rapid increase in the number of hours flown in the mid-2000s; the most prominent increase coming between 2007 and 2008 when its yearly flight hours nearly doubled from 79,000 hours to 148,000 hours. The Predator’s flight hours peaked in the early 2010s before being overtaken by the Reaper in 2015. The Reaper’s followed much the same track as the Predator; its flight hours slowly ramped up as the platform matured. It then saw big jumps in flying hours as it demonstrated its operational value before overtaking the Predator.

Figure 3: Number of Reapers destroyed and loss rate per 100,000 flight hours (2001-2015)

What’s interesting is that the Reaper’s destroyed rate is still fluctuating, as shown in Figure 3. No Reapers were lost in the early stages of the platform’s life, likely because the basic teething problems facing UAVs (such as navigation, communications, and reliability) had been worked out during the Predator’s development. As Reapers began flying more often in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the number of aircraft destroyed (and the destroyed rate) increased. However, the fluctuating Reaper loss rate during this period looks an awful lot like the Predator’s loss rate in the corresponding stages of its life. Since the Reaper was able to skip some of the basic problems associated with UAV development, it’s likely that the platform is now working through some of the unforeseen issues inherent to aircraft development. The high loss rate could also stem from the fact that the platform is conducting more demanding operations. If the Predator’s experiences are any indication, we’ll likely see the Reaper’s loss rate settle down to a significantly lower figure.

This shouldn’t worry the ADF much: accidents are an inherent part of aircraft development. If Australia decides to use armed UAVs in conflict—and its looking increasingly likely that it will—it needs to develop contingency plans for dealing with crashed UAVs in hostile territory. The US military tries to destroy downed UAVs if they can’t secure the wreckage with ground forces. Whether Australian (or allied ground forces) are available to secure a downed Australian UAV depends on the situation, but it’s unlikely that Australian UAVs would operate where there’s no prior Australian or coalition presence. As long as those plans are in place, Australia won’t have to worry about its UAVs falling into enemy hands when one of them inevitably crashes.

Air Power 2020: Raptor redux?

The Australian defence community has been rightly focused this past fortnight on the Turnbull Government’s announcement of the winner—France’s DCNS—of the Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) to secure the contract for building Australia’s future submarine. But some interesting developments in terms of future air combat capabilities are occurring in the US which are also deserving of our attention—particularly given their potential bearing on Australia’s future air combat capabilities.  

The US Congress’ House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has requested that the USAF begin a study on the possibilities of restarting production of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fifth generation fighter in the FY2017 defense authorisation bill. Production of the F-22 was halted in 2009 at 187 aircraft, well short of the USAF Air Combat Command’s (ACC) stated requirement of 381 aircraft—let alone the original 749 aircraft originally planned.

The HASC bill justifies taking a second look at the F-22 because of ‘growing threats to US air superiority as a result of adversaries closing the technology gap and increasing demand from allies and partners for high-performance multi-role aircraft to meet evolving and worsening global security threats…’. The bill requires a comprehensive assessment of the costs and time required associated with producing a further 194 aircraft to, at a minimum, ‘meet the USAF ACC target of 381 aircraft…[or] other requirements or inventory levels that the Secretary may deem necessary to support the National Security Strategy and address emerging threats.’ Significantly, the bill also refers to consideration of ‘opportunities for foreign export and partner nation involvement if prohibiting export of the F-22 were repealed.’

So is the Raptor back? Not so fast. The bill only requests a study—it doesn’t authorise the resumption of production. Once the study is complete, Senators on the counterpart Senate Armed Services Committee would need to support it, as would both chambers of Congress and the Administration in office. The study will have to evaluate both risks and opportunities, and the risks are many.

An F-22 restart would be a complex, costly and lengthy process that would have a significant impact on other key USAF program priorities, including the F-35 JSF and the B-21 bomber. This comes at a time of growing concerns over a looming ‘bow wave’ (and here) of US defence projects that are generating ever-increasing fiscal risk into the future.

The cost of producing new F-22s is estimated at US$276 million per aircraft and the only way to fund re-starting F-22 Raptor production would be to take that money from other key projects. Renewed production of the F-22 would certainly then see reduced funds for fewer (but more expensive) F-35s—the classic procurement ‘death spiral’.

The F-22 design dates back to the late 1990s, so a technical refresh would also be needed. A lot of progress has been made in stealth, data fusion, sensors, computers and avionics since then, which the F-22 has largely missed out on. Building new Raptors as they originally came off the line wouldn’t work due to obsolete avionics and computer systems that would need to be completely replaced.

That’s both a risk—in terms of the cost and complexity of producing combat-effective aircraft within a reasonable time-frame and budget—and an opportunity. A resurrected F-22 could take advantage of advances coming out of the F-35 Follow-On Modernisation process (and here)as well as other efforts towards developing a future air combat capability beyond the F-35, with the potential of then retrofitting these to ‘gen 1’ F-22s already flying.

Another major challenge is that new production facilities would need to be acquired and a new workforce trained. So a long, tortuous and expensive road would be ahead before new F-22s could roll out sometime in the next decade.

But if the F-22 was resurrected what would this mean for Australia’s defence options in the future? The 2016 Defence White Paper (4.42) and the Integrated Investment Program (5.11) both refer to the replacement of the F/A-18F Super Hornet by around 2030—right at the point where a new batch of ‘enhanced F-22s’ would be available—which is why the bill’s mention of export possibilities is significant. We’d then have the option to consider acquiring new-build F-22s to replace the Super Hornets without jeopardising the approved 72 F-35As. A ‘high-low’ mix of enhanced F-22s and the F-35 fleet would be established by 2030 that could see the F-22 offer the RAAF an air superiority capability ‘par excellence’, while the F-35 would offer a fifth generation platform optimised for strike and reconnaissance.

If however, as seems more likely, the F-22 reboot simply doesn’t happen, or if it does and the new aircraft still aren’t available for export or—as also seems likely—they are simply too expensive for Australia to realistically consider, then we’d need to look at other options. The HASC bill is but a first small step down a very long path and at this stage, given other competing demands for limited funding, it seems unlikely to go beyond being a very interesting idea. However it’s interesting that at the same time this study is underway to re-explore F-22 production, the USAF and USN have announced they are moving away from developing a ‘sixth generation’ combat aircraft. Instead the aim is to embrace a ‘system of systems’ approach that implies a mix of unmanned and manned options for the future. So might a manned-unmanned mix of F-35’s and advanced, but lower-cost UCAVs be a better choice for the future RAAF? I’ll look at that question in my next post.