Air Force Research Lab Concept Image for NGAD PCA
AFRL
Today America faces a set of national security challenges that it has never seen before. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are playing for keeps and America’s existential interests may soon be on the line. Given the severity of these threats, it is important to consider key lessons from the last major war America won decisively—Operation Desert Storm. The foundation for that victory resided on rapidly achieving air superiority with offensive counter-air strikes against a broad range of key enemy targets with stealthy penetrating aircraft. This playbook remains just as relevant today albeit the threats have changed. That is why it is crucial the United States Air Force continue to invest in its next generation air dominance (NGAD) penetrating counter-air (PCA) aircraft, along with associated mission types like the uninhabited collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) and the B-21 bomber.
The success of the Desert Storm air campaign was a wakeup call to the world. The reality that stealth aircraft could employ precision weapons anywhere, virtually anytime, across incredibly well defended battlespace was a revolutionary development.
The air defenses protecting the Baghdad area in 1991 were then the heaviest, most lethal, and most comprehensive in history. Many forget that Iraq fielded the fourth largest military in the world at the time of the conflict and were battle hardened just coming out of an eight year war with Iran. Yet, 24 hours after the opening air attacks, Iraq was laid bare and the entire country was made vulnerable to the allied air armada that followed, rendering Iraq’s military impotent leading to a combined/joint force effort that ejected it from Kuwait in a mere 43 days. Demonstrating the leverage of stealth, the F-117—the first operational stealth attack aircraft—flew less than two percent of the total combat sorties during Desert Storm, but struck over 40 percent of the target base.
China took notice of the results. They studied the strategy, tactics, techniques and procedures we used to accomplish our objectives against Iraq. China concluded that their path to prevent the potential of the same thing from happening to them was to attempt to thwart the key element of U.S. military dominance—American airpower—by arraying their defenses in a manner known as anti-access/area denial or A2/AD.
Today, air defense threats and technology have advanced well beyond what we faced in Desert Storm. However, our offensive capabilities have also advanced. Stealth is not a static capability. It has dramatically advanced, along with electronic warfare technologies and the ability to understand the battlespace in real time such that threats are recognized, circumvented, or destroyed. The world recently witnessed this capability in action, when Israel’s Air Force employed its American-built F-35s to penetrate the heart of Iran and not just evade but destroy many of its vaunted advanced Russian-made surface-to-air missile defenses.
China, which the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has identified as its “pacing challenge,” poses a greater threat. China has pursued capabilities specifically designed to reduce the effectiveness of stealth, even as they have developed their own stealth aircraft modelled on U.S. jets. Smart strategic planners know how to negate those Chinese countermeasures, but they need the equipment to do so.
Stealth is not a binary function that either works or not. Stealth, more accurately termed “low observability,” significantly reduces risk. It increases the probability of both penetration and survivability against enemy air defenses by challenging every element of an enemy’s kill chain. Even when an adversary improves its ability to spot low-observable aircraft, stealth remains a desirable attribute because it nevertheless makes it more difficult to defend against such aircraft. Furthermore, technological advances in low observability have significantly improved beyond the advanced features already incorporated in the F-22 and the F-35.
The Air Force and industry are working on next generation combat aircraft. These advanced capabilities have long been planned as the centerpiece for the Air Force’s penetrating counter-air (PCA) aircraft, which is part of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems. The idea is to harness a suite of capabilities, especially uninhabited aircraft known as collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), in concert with one another to achieve air superiority. This in turn allows critical mission functions like conventional strategic attack to occur via the next generation B-21 stealthy bomber. However, to realize the benefits of advanced technology, we need to buy it.
The PCA combat aircraft provides the advanced stealth, electronic warfare, data fusion and computational power, that gives a skilled pilot the information advantage needed to best penetrate advanced enemy air defenses. It is the synergy of stealth and information and the decision superiority that only a human in the loop can provide that transforms battlespace awareness into superior initiative and maneuver. This is the true asymmetric advantage the U.S. needs to bring to the future high-end fight and will enable the defeat of any enemy air defense system. CCA will execute elements of this mission in a teamed fashion with inhabited PCA aircraft.
This is a sound plan. However, the U.S. Air Force recently paused development of the inhabited PCA element of NGAD to reassess its efficacy. Discussions have ranged from pressing ahead as planned, to modifying the design, adjusting the planned program, or even terminating it in favor of a completely different approach. This assessment may be a wise move if used to take stock before committing billions to the development and production of a next generation high-speed, low-observable counter-air aircraft that can provide multiple mission capabilities while penetrating the most challenging adversary air defense environments.
Yet there is concern that the pause is unduly influenced by budget. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall alluded to this in recent remarks. The reality is that the Air Force has been chronically underfunded for decades—receiving over $1.3 Trillion less than the Army and $900 Billion less than the Navy in the 20 years after the attacks of 9/11. It continues to lose more combat aircraft than it can buy. There comes a point where the Air Force cannot do more with less and the time to rebuild is now.
China has modernized their defenses, and the U.S. must accordingly pursue its planned upgrades. This is the price of remaining a viable world power. We cannot succeed in war without achieving air superiority allowing us to strike key enemy centers of gravity as necessary. If people think the expense of winning is high, they really need to consider the cost of defeat.
A smart solution will prioritize aircraft and associated systems that deliver best value. That is different from what may be least expensive based on individual aircraft unit cost. Using individual aircraft unit cost as the key measure of merit misses assessing the true utility/value of a weapon system. Cost-per-effect is a much more insightful measure. It assesses the full spectrum of capabilities required to achieve a desired effect, not just a sticker price. To that point, during Operation Desert Storm, one F-117 could achieve what otherwise would have taken 19 non-stealth aircraft. That meant the F-117 delivered better value and was in fact a far more responsible choice from both a warfighting and fiscal set of perspectives. The stealth multiplier of the F-22 and F-35 is postulated to be on the order of twice that of the F-117, and in the case of the NGAD PCA, even higher. An aircraft viewed as “less expensive” is in fact quite costly if it takes a greater number of them to get the job done, or catastrophic if the quest for a low price point hobbles the ability to secure mission results.
The NGAD PCA decision is especially important because it has major implications not just for air combat, but for the entirety of our combatant command’s joint warfighting plans. A ship at sea, forces on land, terrestrial elements of space and cyber facilities, and numerous air capabilities cannot survive without air superiority. The NGAD PCA aircraft role in the air superiority equation is especially foundational, for its unique focus is on long range air superiority to empower deep penetrating strategic attack. This was a crucial calculation made as the Air Force developed its advanced B-21 bomber—that B-21 and the NGAD PCA would act in concert in a family of systems approach. A family only works with all members present.
Warfare over time is an evolution of action and reaction. The side that sits still in this contest will lose. That is fundamentally why the first decision of the new Trump administration Secretary of the Air Force must be to proceed with the planned development of the penetrating counter air aircraft component of its next generation air dominance system of systems. In tandem, Congress must choose to provide the required funding.
The consequences of these two decisions for the nation’s safety and prosperity cannot be overstated. NGAD PCA is a key element for the U.S. to own the battlespace initiative against future adversaries, much as we did during Desert Storm. The alternative would force us into a reactionary response with a high probability of getting drawn into an attrition-centric campaign—that is a fight we likely cannot win, especially against China. In this regard, it is instructive to consider that the only thing more expensive than a first-rate Air Force is a second-rate Air Force.
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Publish date : 2024-12-09 12:45:00
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Author : theamericannews
Publish date : 2024-12-10 02:29:49
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