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Home Front: Tech
U.S. warned it could lose air supremacy
2004-06-25
United States must modernize its fighter jets to maintain air supremacy, a top Air Force general said Wednesday citing the success of advanced Russian-made jets against American planes in a recent exercise as signaling an erosion of its overwhelming advantage. Gen. Hal Hornburg, head of U.S. Air Combat Command, said a U.S. air-to-air exercise with the Indian Air Force in February, in which India used Russian jets to defeat aging American F-15Cs, revealed "that we may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we once thought we were."
F-15C began production in 1979, USAF got 409 of them.
Defense experts in both the United States and Europe, however, have said it is unlikely that America -- with vast spending power and a major industrial base -- would lose its dominance in military technology.
If they cut the F-22 we will.
U.S. defense officials have said Indian SU-30, Mig-27 and older MiG-21 jets, some armed with Russian-made AA-10 air-to-air missiles, got the best of F-15s based in Alaska in exercise "Cope India" high over northern India.
The big advantage we've had against Arab flown Russian aircraft have been in the training and tactics area. We can't count on future adversaries being that way.
Hornburg said in an interview with military writers the air maneuvers emphasized his service's push for expensive, stealthy new F/A-22 "Raptors" being built by Lockheed Martin Corp. and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters being designed by Lockheed with input from allies.
Good planes don't come cheap.
He declined to discuss classified results of the exercise but said, "Something like Cope India, when we find that some of our advantages aren't as great as we thought they might be, leads me to remind people that we need to modernize our air-to-air capability." Hornburg added, "We have been saying for a long time that we need newer fighters to do more things," and that the Indian exercise could be a "wake-up call" for Washington. Russia's Sukhoi aviation works and the Moscow Air Production Organization company have been designing and building increasingly advanced fighters such as the MiG-29 in recent years. India, China and other countries are buying the warplanes -- some with contracts for co-production.
And they, as well as the Russians, will sell to anyone with cash.
France and Sweden also build advanced combat planes and a consortium of four European countries, including Britain, are producing the Eurofighter "Typhoon" jet.
Which is having it's own problems.
"I see air forces across the spectrum and across the world becoming better and better as each year passes. That just means that we have to do the same thing," said Hornburg. "With air superiority, everything is possible. Without it, hardly anything's possible" he added. "People jump to the conclusion that it is ours just because we go. And that's blatantly false."
No US ground troops have been attacked from the air since the Korean War. The last US Navy ship hit was by a Iraqi plane with a Exocet during the Iran-Iraq War. We need not Air Superiority, but Air Supremacy. We have it now, let's keep it that way.
Posted by:Steve

#31  Correction, the sale to China was in Dec 2002.

Don't get complacent about the ability of China or Russia to rearm, or to field a smaller force that could make things hard for us in a crisis.

OTOH, I can indeed spell UCAV and think that's where a lot of money will go. The general quoted does sound like he's doing care and feeding of his pet rock (Raptor) ... and that's not a bad thing. We need advocates for a variety of systems to make their cases.
Posted by: rkb   2004-06-26 11:37:22 AM  

#30  In the mid-80s I was program manager for software we exported to Israel for the Lavi fighter program. Think: updated F16, more maneuverable, updated avionics and fly-by-wire systems.

The Lavi was cancelled when Congress got seriously annoyed that the Israelis wanted to export it despite the agreement that they got our technology for their use only.

Guess what Israel sold to China last December?
Posted by: rkb   2004-06-26 11:32:21 AM  

#29  Ima not think Thag needs body armor.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-06-25 8:04:26 PM  

#28  This exercise has the hallmarks of a sandbag to get publicity for the F22 whose program is in political trouble. From http://www.defensetech.org/:

Now, granted, the Indians had the Americans outnumbered: usually 10 or 12 to 4,

USAF pilots were flying "Red Air" -- meaning they were simulating the (presumably worse) tactics and (presumably lower) capabilities of enemy flyers.

That said, I still think the F22 is needed now since the Sukhois are better airframes, can be very formidable with avionics upgrades, and seem to be sold to anyone with the cash.
Posted by: ed   2004-06-25 7:29:45 PM  

#27  Strategy page has article on exercise(mis-called F-15s as F-14s in title-bad editor,bad.)Gave equal performance to US and Russian AAMs that prob not realistic.F-22 is needed.

I have repeatedly dissed F-35.I think it needs to be killed.Here is some info you can draw your own conclusions from:

1)Two project managers just fired.

2)F-16 and F-35 share same engine.Empty F-16 under 20,000lbs.Empty USAF F-35(proposed at 22,500lbs.)now has target empty weight of 27,400lbs.,but is coming in at 1400 lbs. over that.This means F-35 is 50% heavier than F-16 w/same power,giving far inferior performance in air combat manuevering.

3)Australian Aviation did comparison of F-22 and F-35 for Australian needs.Pointed out F-35 wing is optimized for strike mission,not ACM.F-35 nose smaller,so not able to carry as large a radar.Finally,the F-35 was not designed to be as stealthy as F-22.

4)Who knows when it will fly.Already production pushed back to 2007,w/USAF hinting it might wait til 2010 for F-35s.Contributing to delay,weight problem so severe,they are redesigning interior of a/c,so not sure when design finalized.

5)Cost.For an inexpensive fighter,this program is g**awful costly.Latest program estimates of $245billion for full buy of 3,000 F-35s=$80+mil/aircraft.(Includes r$d,not cost rise if program delays continue.)The UK is looking at up to $1.77billion for 150 F-35s(better than $100mil/aircraft-Bulldog,think you all will go for that?)
Posted by: Stephen   2004-06-25 7:25:46 PM  

#26  As far as #24's points go, I disagree with an up-armoured Jeep : M113 Galvin with 4 pindle points and gun shields for M240 LMG is a much better patrolling choice. Make sure that the Galvin is an -A3 or -A4 with the German-style external fuel tanks, the "rubber band" urban track replacements, and the Israeli-style fixed overhead cover on the body - replacing the old top hatch - and the Galvin is a much safer and deadly urban patrol vehicle. Plus, with the Commando turret for the Vehicle Commander, it has the necessary reach : 20mm main gun with dual feed, .50 cal aux gun, and M240 hatch gun. It is also much more resistant to IEDs.
Posted by: Anonymous5348   2004-06-25 6:18:55 PM  

#25  At this point in time, the most advanced fighters in China's air force are counter-balanced by the F-16 variants and derivatives in Tawain's air force; and I doubt that India is going be a formal enemy any time in the foreseeable future. Russia will take a couple of decades to even get what planes they now have up to snuff. That makes the F-22 expensive but tolerable; however the JSF needs to die, white elephant and black hole for money at this point in time.
Posted by: Anonymous5348   2004-06-25 6:07:29 PM  

#24  me grunt.
me say war on ground. me say trying to prop up russia or china as near or peer competitor wrong. me say 200-300 million price tag per plane to much. me say recapitalize the a-10 fleet, expand AC-130's, UCAVs etc. me say expand into near space dominance and strike. me say fighter jock need more porn....getting rocks at mach 2 to expensive now.
me say winning fight in "non-intergrating gap" more important than imagining peer competitor.
me want up armored hummvees.
me want RFI set.
me want gun shields.
me want US industrial base focused on grunt on ground. not air marshalls in pentagon.
me tired from thinking to much.
me say hooah!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Anonymous5189   2004-06-25 6:04:58 PM  

#23  Ruprech:

How do you become good at basketball? By playing lots of basketball...

I'm sceptical in these areas, when someone says - well if our adversaries ever gets around to building such and such, then we'll pull our expertise out of mothballing and go and whip up a vastly superior answer. Best to play to win - keep ahead and stay there...
Posted by: Mark O   2004-06-25 6:04:18 PM  

#22  Do you honestly think Russia, and India could catch up economically, build a scary airforce and become enemies, and then catch us by surprise in doing so? Do you really think the US would simply wait until we had a confirmed and obvious enemy before building up our own air force again?

I'm all for purchasing newer and advanced planes, but this scare tactic of losing air superiority is unreal. This lose air supiority seems to indicate the US will be deaf dumb and blind until one day we wake up to find Russia, China or India is wealthy, has bought up advanced planes and trained thousands of pilots, and then become an overt enemy. Then we suddenly wake up and go wow, we blew it? Not likely.
Posted by: ruprecht   2004-06-25 5:14:36 PM  

#21  hell, I'd sell 'em the tech....with some..er...backdoors
Posted by: Frank G   2004-06-25 4:50:16 PM  

#20  Do you really want to assume that Russia, China and India will remain so far behind economically that they can't afford an Air Force? I'd rather see them go German, so rich they don't mind letting us defend them cuz it isn't worth the cost to catch up. This means truly high tech weaponry like UCAVs.
Posted by: Mr. Davis   2004-06-25 4:44:03 PM  

#19  I'm all for getting new planes and all, but even if the Russians created FireFox and started selling it, few countries could afford them, and fewer still could afford (or even take seriously) the amount of training required to have a first rate airforce. The only countries that would be a risk are either allies, or China. China, even with crappy old planes, is a problem no matter what.

Am I missing something? Does anyone expect us to get into a shooting war with our allies, France, Russia or India? Does anyone expect some third world country will suddenly start respecting the concepts of maintainance and training?
Posted by: Ruprecht   2004-06-25 4:37:05 PM  

#18  "I don't think any [adversary] is going to get close enough to see us for the next 10, 20 or 30 years."

So the Russians and Indians or Chinese will not be able to make a low cost, highvolume UCAV that is equal to the F-22 in every dimension until 2035? I wouldn't be my country's security on that. I'd like to understand why, if the choice is getting to the next generation 10 years sooner or the F-22, we shouldn't get to the future ASAP and let the F-35 bridge the gap. The Russians are cleaning their act up and when they start to joint venture with the Indians or Chinese, we'll see real competition in volume.
Posted by: Mr. Davis   2004-06-25 4:34:26 PM  

#17  F-22 is supposed to have short legs.

Heck, I'm a Tomcat fan. And I love battleships. Get my wheelchair ready.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins   2004-06-25 4:10:45 PM  

#16  The F-106 carried two AIR-2 Genie air to air rockets with 1.5 kiloton nuke warheads so they could sweep the skies clean of formations of Russian bombers. At the beginning of the next days training, the F-15s are coming in from the North looking for their afternoon sport and expecting to embarass the less maneuverable 106's. Over the radio is heard the dauntless 106 pilot saying "Fox 1" followed shortly thereafter by the exercise controller saying, "All aircraft north of line X are destroyed. Exercise terminated

Yes! By heavens that's a tale to listen to on about 6 levels!
But remember our adversaries would never think to do such a thing!

Excellent post.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-06-25 4:10:29 PM  

#15  Most of these air-to-air exercises are dominated by rules of engagement set to insure safety and to maximize training. There is a story, probably apocryphal, about RED FLAG out at Nellis. Some ANG F-106s were being matched against F-15s. In strict dogfighting terms, this is no contest since the 106 was designed to intercept Russian bombers and the F-15 for air-to-air combat. However, one of the F-106 pilots, tired of being beat up on a daily basis, got the instrumentation guys to load his plane with its normal complement of weapons. The F-106 carried two AIR-2 Genie air to air rockets with 1.5 kiloton nuke warheads so they could sweep the skies clean of formations of Russian bombers. At the beginning of the next days training, the F-15s are coming in from the North looking for their afternoon sport and expecting to embarass the less maneuverable 106's. Over the radio is heard the dauntless 106 pilot saying "Fox 1" followed shortly thereafter by the exercise controller saying, "All aircraft north of line X are destroyed. Exercise terminated. Return to base." This was followed by a period of intense sputtering and disbelief from the Eagle jock and a very professional silence from the interceptor pilots. The moral of the story is that in real combat the winners set the ROE.
Posted by: RWV   2004-06-25 3:10:31 PM  

#14  Do you realize that the main flight computer of an F15-E Strike Eagle is a computer comparable to an 8086? My brother is a WSO on one. They are finally starting to upgrade, to a 386-equivalent processor. Also, I've asked him about the Raptor. He's been on the receiving end of a butt whooping courtesy of the F22. They will own the sky.
Posted by: AllahHateMe   2004-06-25 3:09:37 PM  

#13  Being here in Atlanta (home of Lockheed Martin and the building of the F-22), there was an article in the Atlanta paper on May 30 about the F-22 and "cost overruns" and how much the plane was eating up in R&D costs. However, the Pentagon has gone to asking the pilots who've actually flown it to start politicking for the $ to buy some. To a man, each guy says this plane beats the S*it out of anything else WE have, much less what the Ruskies/Frenchies have! Wish I could link to the article, but couldn't find it. Anyways, here's a clip I'm typing from it:

""This airplane kicks the crap out of everything we've got right now," says Lt. Col. Mike Stapleton, an F-15 Eagle pilot and F/A-22 flight instructor. "I don't think any [adversary] is going to get close enough to see us for the next 10, 20 or 30 years.".....""When we go out and fly against F-15s, it's a complete mismatch," Stapleton says of the top fighter for the past 30 years. "The first thing the F-15 pilots hear is 'Fight's on.' The next thing they hear is, 'You're all dead.' "The F/A-22 isn't the kind of plane that's going to win 51 to 49. It's going to be 100 to nothing. The last thing in the world we want is a fair fight."

The article goes on to say "In one recent war game, a lone Raptor was pitted against five front-line F-15s. The Raptor was invisible to the F-15 pilots and their powerful radar. But the F-15s were easy prey for the Raptor, and it quickly aimed missiles at all of them without the F-15 pilots knowing they were being hunted. 'It was all over in three minutes,' says Stapleton....The feat is especially impressive since F-15s have a perfect record in actual combat since they went into service in the 1970s." According to the article, the first squadron of F/A-22s is supposed to go into service in Dec. 2005. The jets can fly higher, faster and further than other fighters.
Posted by: BA   2004-06-25 3:01:21 PM  

#12  The f-15 airframe when built in the 70's was 15 years ahead of anything else. The electronics it had and has been updated with was also years ahead. The missile systems were pretty far ahead also. Mixed with a awacs we had the best radar/jamming.


Now 15 years later the SU-30 have matched and surpassed the f-15 in performance (as the eurofighter is also supposed to). The electronics are still superiour but many customers are upgrading Russian planes with Western technology which in many cases matches our stuff. Missile technology has in some areas passed us (the aa-10 and the the Israeli missiles for example). Newer russian Anti-Aircraft systems are designed to shoot down Awacs now and other countries are starting to purchase Awacs style systems and foreign radars are getting better (pleny of opportunity to test again US equipment in the past few years).


It seems to me we do need the Raptor. It re-ups the performance gap (vectored thrust, super-cruise, etc), adds new electronics that are light years ahead of everything else available, and matches up new missile systems (like the aim-9x) to give us a advantage in those areas also. Plus reports seem to add that the raptor almost acts as its own Awacs plus is stealthy seems to give us exactly what we had in the 70's when we originally built the f-15, a plane that pushes 15 years ahead of everybody else. If I remember the original F-15 was extremely expensive at the time and the same "it is not needed" arguements were being made. The dang plane is done and lets start using it for goodness sakes. The enemy has shown many times the ability to catch up and in some cases pass us (the Mig-15 for example).
Posted by: Patrick   2004-06-25 2:55:05 PM  

#11  
I do not recall where I saw the article detailing the particulars of the Cope India exercise, but, it was something like 10 to 12 Indians against 4 American fighters at once.

I would hardly call the outcome balanced. Seems to me that in a real fight things might be different. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Nony
Posted by: Nony   2004-06-25 2:53:47 PM  

#10  Bullsh**! Old model F-15 C's. ANG? Here are the weapons ranges I found:
Sparrow 30 nm
Amraam 17.4 nm
AA-10 38-65 nm

We don't have a comparable missle for the F-15. Bring in the Tomcats, though, and we'll see.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins   2004-06-25 2:42:05 PM  

#9  USAF is great in Command and Control (Awacs with datalinks ) and in training. Machine wise isnt superior exept for radar quality, Russian missiles have more guidance options and russian planes are beter in some situations, technologically Russian and Rafale French planes have for exemple infra red anti air sensors ,US dont have, also helmet mounted sights in Russian planes would beat any US fighter in short range(exept the Israeli ones that have their HMS). The US military procurememnt is bloated with too much rules that seems a court case.
Posted by: Anonymous5388   2004-06-25 2:29:49 PM  

#8  CrazyFool wrote: "If Kerry had his way we already would have given away air supremacy..."

No, we would just be asked to share it with our NATO and "fraudulaent coalition" allies rather than bear the burden of it ourselves.
Posted by: Tibor   2004-06-25 1:42:03 PM  

#7  If Kerry had his way we already would have given away air supremacy...
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-06-25 1:36:42 PM  

#6  Man I have only been out of the Air Force for five years and they already lost Air Supremacy! Don't make me hae to go back in and get this squared away! Fear not people they are always working on new planes and gadgets to put put us on top. FYI the F-16 is not altitude fighter, that is why we have the F-15. I have seen one swat a MiG-29 from the sky over Bosnia and the MiG pilot never knew what hit him. (High altitiude intercept)
Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter)   2004-06-25 1:09:48 PM  

#5  And good luck if Kerry gets elected. We'll be lucky to have an operational wing of biplanes.
Posted by: Matt   2004-06-25 1:08:36 PM  

#4  Think we can thank a veracity challenged, recent book tour promoter for this situation?
Posted by: Raj   2004-06-25 1:02:40 PM  

#3  it is time for another massive increase in procurements as we saw in the early 80's. the platforms being used currently date from this period and if we do not make an effort now 10 years from now our military will be in terrible shape.
Posted by: Dan   2004-06-25 12:54:28 PM  

#2  F-22, Crusader with wings.

The Air Force is missing the boat, er the train.
Posted by: Mr. Davis   2004-06-25 12:39:07 PM  

#1  Can you say UCAV
Posted by: Anonymous   2004-06-25 12:36:15 PM  

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