PAUL LEWIS / WASHINGTON DC
As old certainties wither, the shifting sands of international conflict are leading the USA to reassess its weaponry needs for the new century
In the 20 months since the Bush administration assumed power, military transformation has become the buzz phrase inside the beltway of Washington DC. The events of 11 September have only served to accentuate talk of transforming the US fighting machine from one that faced down the monolithic threat once posed by the Warsaw Pact to confronting a wide range of less predictable and asymmetrical 21st-century challenges. The question that many observers could be excused for asking is: which weapons might qualify as part of this transformation and why?
In his recent annual report to the president and Congress, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld outlines six operational goals defining transformational capabilities:
defending critical bases of operations, starting with the US homeland, and defeating weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery;
projecting/sustaining power in distant anti-access and area-denial environments;
denying the enemy sanctuary by developing capabilities for persistent surveillance, tracking and rapid engagement;
leveraging information technology and innovative network-centric concepts to link up joint forces;
protecting information systems from attack;
maintaining unhindered access to space, and protecting US space capabilities from enemy attack.
The US Air Force, emboldened by the recent action in Afghanistan, defines as transformational anything that brings about a fundamental change. Gen Daniel Leaf, USAF director of operational requirements, says that for an enemy surface-to-air missile (SAM) operator or fighter pilot, facing a transformational weapon would be "akin to the first batter on night one of the World Series stepping up to the plate and facing a 130mph pitcher, versus 100mph, and, before the first ball is pitched, having the lights turned out".
If baseball is the game, then the USAF's star pitcher is without doubt the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor. Rumsfeld is taking a critical look at air force plans to order 339 of the stealth fighters by 2010 at nearly $100 million a piece, while reviewing three other services' pet projects, notably the US Army's Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche, the US Marine Corps' Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey and the US Navy's CVN(X) aircraft carrier. Accordingly, the USAF and industry are sparing no effort in portraying the F-22 as the poster child for transformation.
With Rumsfeld questioning whether all 339 fighters are required, proponents have sought to make a case for the F-22 as a multi-role integral player in the USAF's Global Strike Task Force - not simply a replacement for the Boeing F-15C Eagle air superiority fighter. Near-term "anti-access" arena capabilities will include the ability to drop the 450kg (1,000lb) Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and the planned 115kg Small Diameter Bomb and enhancement to the fighter's Northrop Grumman APG-77 electronically scanned active array radar to include a synthetic aperture ground imaging mode and other air-to-surface functionality.
Class of its own
This capability, combined with the F-22's low-observability design characteristics for enhanced survivability and the ability to "supercruise" at around Mach 1.6 without afterburner, puts the fighter in a class essentially by itself, with little or nothing else to challenge it. "The F-22 will bring about major change," says Leaf. "For enemy SAMs and fighter pilots trained to deal with transonic threats, they will see less, and things will happen faster - that will be transformational."
With the number of Rockwell B-1B bombers shrinking, the building of more Northrop Grumman B-2s a financial non-starter and the eventual need to replace the F-15E and Lockheed Martin F-117, Lockheed Martin has been funding its own study of a proposed two-seat FB-22 version. The "Strike Raptor" concept would incorporate: a fuselage plug to enlarge the belly internal weapon bays; a redesigned delta wing for increased fuel volume and no horizontal stabiliser; and possibly new or uprated Pratt & Whitney F119 engines. The USAF, although interested, remains focused on getting the F-22 ready for operational service by the end of 2005.
Another major F-22 transformation selling point is its advanced integrated avionics, which present the pilot with time-critical target data fused from onboard and remote sensors. The fighter will plug into a network-centric architecture linking manned and unmanned airborne systems, as well as terrestrial and space-based assets. The aim is to find, fix track, target, engage and assess kill chain, and to accelerate the process towards what air force secretary James Roche has described as an era of "instantaneous attack".
Transformation in this respect is not confined to future platforms such as F-22 and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but to putting the links in place that will leverage off the capabilities of even legacy assets. The Afghanistan conflict has demonstrated that the latest in unmanned air vehicle (UAV)-based surveillance capabilities, such as that fielded by the General Atomics RQ-1A Predator, can feed directly to a Vietnam-era Lockheed Martin AC-130 gunship looking for ground targets. Afghanistan in this respect has been a fertile proving ground.
"We see perfect examples of transformation every day now. The sort of thing I'm talking about is the sight of Staff Sgt X of air force special operations riding a horse in Afghanistan with a laptop and a set of laser goggles, providing guidance for laser bombs dropped from a B-52. There's an example of what information technology can do for us, and for transformation.
"In this case, information technology allows us to use the B-52 in ways we never thought we could. Transformation is all about people, and making the best use of technology," says John Jumper, USAF chief of staff.
Afghanistan provided the debut of armed UAVs carrying in the form of Predators carrying Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire anti-armour missiles. As a result of Predator's success, and later the Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance UAV, unmanned vehicles were made one of a number of transformational initiatives highlighted by the defence budget for fiscal year 2003.
An additional $1 billion is being pumped into development and procurement of UAVs, including the accelerated deployment by 2008 of an initial 14 Boeing A-45 unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV).
Safer pilots
UCAVs could enable the air force to move the pilot out of harm's way for high-risk missions, and, in combination with manned assets, provide an added dimension to the global strike mission. But their value has yet to be proven. "My view is it's the effect that is delivered rather than the nature of the platform that makes it transformational. Predator operated with manned aircraft delivers a significant effect.
"On UCAVs the jury is still out, they have the potential to be transformational, but they will have to deliver on cost and risk," he says.
One of the major challenges in closing the gap between sensor and shooter is ensuring real-time persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) of a battlefield for 24h a day, seven days a week. The USAF is planning for a mix of unmanned systems, such as Global Hawk and eventually perhaps the Air Force Research Laboratory Sensor Craft, along with manned platforms in the form of Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), the future Boeing 767-based multi-sensor command and control aircraft and space-based assets.
The latter arena has in the last year come in for particular attention, with the creation of a National Security Space Commission, which concluded: "The security and economic well being of the USA and its allies and friends depends on the nation's ability to operate successfully in space.
"Specifically, the USA must have the capability to use space as an integral part of its ability to manage crisis, deter conflicts and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in conflict."
This was recently underlined by testimony to Congress by air force under-secretary Peter Teets, who said that, of the 7,000t of ordnance dropped by the USAF on Afghanistan up to March, around 73% was precision guided, which would not have been possible without space-based aids such as the GPS satellite navigation system. Furthermore, in the area of satellite communications, there was 322 times more bandwidth per person than available in the 1991 Gulf War.
As a result, the Pentagon has restructured its space organisations and consolidated responsibility under the USAF, while the Bush administration has more than doubled its space defence budget, pumping around $920 million in FY2003 into the Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite Communications Systems.
The USA is also planning to transform its space ISR capability from the current 30-year old Defence Support Programme to a new Space-Based Infra Red System (SBIRS) designed to provide strategic and tactical missile warning, missile defence, technical intelligence and battlespace characterisation.
But the ultimate in space-based ISR will come with the planned Space Based Radar (SBR) successor to the now-defunct Discoverer II. Targeted for initial deployment around 2010, the planned new constellation would provide all-weather, day-and-night, ground moving target indicator data radar supplementing that of Joint STARS.
SBR promises to look deep into hostile territory without the hindrance of terrain masking and without incurring the political complexities of seeking overflight permission for manned aircraft.
Source: Flight International
