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A significant Shift: Con Ops Customization And Service Provider
The F-35 represents a significant shift in how one will conduct air operations. The F–35 is more than a fifth-generation fighter; it is a first-generation flying combat system. The effects that the F–35 can deliver within the battlespace are flexible, synergistic, and multidimensional (air, ground, maritime). The F–35’s open architecture allows this flying combat system to become the focal point of three core activities: air-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-maritime roles and missions. The F–35 will be defined by how its open architecture is customized by national militaries in meeting their perceived priority needs and mix of air, ground, and maritime mission sets. Its combat capabilities will be defined in part by “CONOPS customization.”
One example of an opportunity for CONOPS customization derives from the F–35’s multimodal/multimission capability, which includes the ability to deliver nonkinetic as well as kinetic effects, offering decision makers many options. The F–35 is central to operationalizing the networked battle management environment. It can provide services (communications, intelligence, and electronic support) to others in the battlespace in ways that are transparent to its pilot. Large platforms that used to provide battle management will be supplanted by a force mix of the F–35 and unmanned vehicles, shaping a 21st-century approach to air operations.
CONOPS customization is the reason that the F–35B is of special interest to the Marine Corps, Royal Air Force, Italian navy, and other forces. The F–35B’s short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) capability will make possible a different approach to ground-air integration and CONOPS than with that of the F–35 conventional takeoff version. Almost certainly, weaponization and ISR requirements will be modified to work with the STOVL-enabled CONOPS.
Addressing the Robotic Revolution: Building a Core Wolf Pack Capability An additional aspect in developing joint or coalition CONOPS for the F–35 will revolve around its interaction with other manned and unmanned assets. With regard to manned assets, a key challenge will be to work an effective connectivity battlespace with other manned aircraft, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and legacy U.S. aircraft. Here, the advantages of each platform in contributing to the air battle and to the type of flexible military force packages that 21st-century air capabilities provide will be the focus of a joint concept of operations.
In addition to the core dynamic of working with a variety of manned aircraft across the joint and coalition battlespace, the F–35 will be highly interactive with the evolution of robotic elements. UAS are not well designed for self-defense. For early entry UAS to stay alive, they need to be part of a wolf pack built around the protective functions of the manned aircraft. As air dominance and air superiority operations succeed, their significance can recede during an operation, allowing the role of unmanned aircraft to increase significantly and, over the course of the operation, supplant manned aircraft in ISR and C2 roles.
The man-machine attributes and computational capabilities of the F–35 provide a significant opportunity to evolve the robotic elements within airspace to provide for data storage, transmission, collection, weapon emplacement, and loitering strike elements, all of which can be directed by the manned aircraft as the centerpiece of a manned-robotic strike or situational awareness wolf pack. Rather than focusing on robotic vehicles as self-contained units with proprietary interfaces and ground stations, the F–35 can be useful in generating common linkages and solutions to combine all into a core wolf pack capability.
David Fulghum of Aviation Week and Space Technology underscored, in effect, why the F-35 is so central to the USAF’s future:
The Pentagon can no longer afford to build specialized weapons on unique platforms for each kind of war it fights—irregular, conventional or cyber. The military has instead launched an effort to mold already converging technologies into sensors that may also be weapons—weapons that can inflict invisible effects, and effects that may be temporary or permanent, blatant or authorless, tactical or strategic in range.
That quest will then shift to a new struggle about how to cluster capabilities, parcel out scarce assets, redefine missions and pay for all the changes with a smaller budget.
The foundation for this will be the F-35 integrated sensor suites and related capabilities as Lt. General Deptula underscores in this week’s interview. The leveraging of the F-35 capabilities will be central to the success of the quest David Fulhum has highlighted.
French General Gaviard with American General Michael Moseley, then Vice Chief of Staff of the USAF, while visiting the Air Operations Conducting and Command Center (CCOA) in 2004
This is the first of a series of four articles on the subject of conflict management written by General Jean-Patrick Gaviard. General Gaviard was Commander of Air Defense and of Air Operations (CDAOA) in Taverny from 2003 to 2005 and advisor to the French Defense Minister in 2005 and 2006:
He currently works with the Paris-based French Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Strategic Studies CESA (Centre d’études stratégiques aérospatiales) and the Joint Defense Institute CID (Collège interarmées de defense); he is also an advisor to NATO’s Supreme Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, USA. . At a time when foreign military contingencies are becoming increasingly multinational and are most often held in conjunction and end with stabilization missions, General Gaviard ponders whether we should anticipate an exit strategy as soon as a crisis starts. The advantage of such planning is to find a potential solution to a conflict that could prevent military operations to turn into quagmires. Based on different types of conflicts (stabilization missions; urban guerillas; etc) and crisis situations (Afghanistan ; Conflict between Israel and Hezbollah ; Kosovo ; etc), General Gaviard tries to see to which extent such an anticipation is concretely possible and offers various tools to get there.
This first article addresses the concept of “Lead Nation” as part of the puzzle and describes the necessary conditions for a country such as France to keep playing such a role in the international arena, if that is its ambition.
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Being A Lead Nation: The Conditions Of A National Ambition
Inhabitants of the Tagab Valley in the Kapisa province of Afghanistan join the French and Afghan armed forces
for the inauguration of the construction of a new bridge paid for by the Task Force La Fayette
and managed by a local company (Credit Photo: Sylvain Petremand, Combined Joint Task Force – 82 PAO,
Tagab Valley, Afghanistan, March 5th 2010)
Solving A Crisis: Towards A global Approach?
During the NATO Summit, the French president recently suggested to his foreign counterparts to use a “global approach” in order to solve the Afghan crisis. A global approach means taking into account all of the stabilization parameters of a country in crisis, which of course includes military aspects, but also reconstruction ones under the responsibility of civilian organizations only. Basically, it’s a way to perpetuate the results of a coercive military operation, which would otherwise disintegrate due to historical hatred as soon as the last enlisted soldier leaves. It is among other things his aspect of getting out of a crisis that makes the Afghan and Iraqi equations so difficult to solve. Today, a lot of work is being done regarding this global approach to crisis management, which rests on concepts of multinational and interdepartmental planning to be lead prior to any military engagement. France, as many of it allies, works hard at it.
However, this coherent approach does have its weaknesses. For instance, evacuations of citizens or natural disasters do require a very strong reactivity and yet, multinational planning necessitates long debates and cannot be applied easily to urgent crisis. The operation in Chad currently led by the European union was thus planned in the context of a global approach, but required weeks of discussions before a political consensus, followed by a long and arduous generation of forces process, was reached. On the contrary, the Artemis operation, which took place during the summer 2003 under European guidance in the Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was planned and undertaken within a few weeks by France as the lead nation, with the positive outcome that we know of, especially regarding reactivity and speed of implementation.
The Concept Of “Lead Nation”: The Missing Part Of The Puzzle? Thus, is this concept of “Lead Nation” the missing piece of the global approach? We have to distinguish two aspects. Even though the concept is advantageous operationally, it remains sensitive politically since it depends mainly on a single nation benefiting de facto from a delegation of command, which is always difficult to obtain.
The NATO Response Force is supposed to intervene on a very short notice. At the same time, the concept of the Battle Groups 1500 of the European Union is modeled on the same reactivity principle. However, the availability of forces on alert for the NATO or EU command is not automatic, and, worse, can be refused by some nations who had been nevertheless contributing at first. This can lead to a late involvement or, more damaging, to a lack of the necessary capabilities and therefore to operational incoherence. To sum up, a strong political will must come before any “global approach” and must be able to depend on the concept of Lead Nation in case of emergency.
Identifying The Right Capabilities
Once the political will has been clarified (what is the deep meaning of the mission?), we must look at capacities. Contrary to a strictly accounting perspective, it is not about having all the capacities in large numbers, but rather to concentrate on having enough of the “essential” ones to be able to lead operations under time constraint and sometimes far away.
France, which displays the ambition of being a Lead Nation, has to make choices in that direction:
First of all, “strategic” capabilities, such as the ones provided by observation, intelligence and communication satellites are clearly essential;
Command and Control capabilities are also unavoidable;
Considering the need to cover long distances, air and naval means for strategic projection are also key elements;
The capacity to plan and sustain the logistic support of a multinational force, as well as the capacity to “build” a support air or naval base are just as structuring.
Obviously, all those strategic capabilities must be fully interoperable. More standard capabilities based on platforms such as combat aircrafts, ships or armored vehicles, for instance, must be of the latest technology and in sufficiently high numbers to avoid being disqualified, in particular if the ability to be a Lead Nation is the goal. Finally, one must assess, via realistic engagement scenarios, the needed ratios for more classic capabilities, such as the size of land forces.
It is clear that the capabilities included in the program law for the 2009/2013 period will have to be filtered through this Lead Nation ambition, since our country, who is a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations, must be able to maintain its position to avoid losing all political credibility. This has to be achieved regardless of the political options that may be chosen by the Executive Branch.
The Challenges Facing the Supply Chain: An Interview With Bill Anderson
The Honorable William C. (“Bill”) Anderson served as Assistant Secretary of the United States Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics as well as the Air Force Senior Energy Executive under President George W. Bush. Presently he serves as President and CEO of Endura Energy Solutions, a Pegasus Capital company.
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Credit Photo: Managing the Supply Chains, Wharton School, 2004
SLD: The Administration in this constricted financial environment is clearly cutting back contracts to the prime contractors and for both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, the primes were asked to manage the supply chain. With the cutback in manufacturing contracts, obviously the pressure on the supply chain goes up and the ability of the primes to manage it goes down. So essentially how would you address the problems in this kind of context given your experience in dealing with supply chains in both the public and private sectors?
Bill Anderson: The government is making decisions based on the facts that are laid out in front of them – shrinking budgets, etc. As a result, they’re cutting back on acquisition programs, which means there’s less within the federal government pipeline to support the private sector. It is a bit amazing to me when I hear from folks inside the beltway saying: Where did the private sector supply chain go? It’s kind of simple…the commercial sector supply chain has right-sized itself to respond to current and anticipated future demand.
The private sector acted rationally based on signals from the government…shrinking demand from the customer triggers shrinking revenue flow as money available to buy stuff shrinks the program within the federal government. Then, of course, the supply chain reacts in the same fashion.
It’s almost as if the government expects the private sector to pick up for the reduction on the federal government’s side of the equal sign, if you will, and seems surprised that the private sector wouldn’t respond in the way it does.
The private sector is following what is a logical pattern. If there’s less business, there’s less people associated with it and it’s going to cause some pretty significant problems.
If I’m a private sector guy in a truly private sector world, I will respond by focusing my resources where there is the greatest opportunity for revenue, and I would think that in this particular environment, the place where the most significant revenue’s going to be is on the maintenance tail because older assets be tasked to remain in service longer than originally anticipated, driving more maintenance requirements, so that’s where I’m going to put my efforts because nobody’s asking me to build anything new.
How do you manage that? The answer is I think you’ve just got to figure out how to squeeze more capability our of fewer and older platforms and if you’re the supplier to the federal government then you are looking at dealing with a longer-term outlook that is signaling a smaller number of multifunctional platforms that can do a lot more stuff…and that suggests a much smaller pie to be available to the private sector participants in the defense sector.
And then you’ve got to bear in mind that as you move down that road, you’re going to end up with less creative people out there who will have the capacity to develop new stuff if you were ever to ramp up in the future. You’re in essence selling the future at this point or conceding the future is probably a better way to say it to a very different model than we’ve ever seen before with no real understanding by any of us as to the implication because none of us have a crystal ball.
None of us really at this point have the capacity to understand really what that means. We can all project that somewhere in the future we’re going to end up a day late and a dollar short on something.
There’s a problem looming out there. We don’t know what it is yet. But because we’re constricting or shrinking our talent pool and our manufacturing base, it’s going to come some day and it will come as a total surprise. Our reaction time will be sluggish as our bench strength in terms of talent and infrastructure will be non-existent. We’ve been to this dance before, but in a much slower paced world. We moved quickly; we made up for lost time. In the 21st Century world we need to ask ourselves whether we will ever have the time to catch up on what we are giving away today if we are ever put in that position.
SLD: The point is that if you’re cutting the manufacturing opportunities for new platforms, you can’t make the assumption that the supply chain is simply there as a ready capital pool for the government to tap as it wants. The absence of new platforms will essentially shrink the supply base available to meet your needs, that’s your point, isen’t it?
Bill Anderson: Right.
SLD: That’s simply a market logic.
Bill Anderson: Right.
SLD: It would seem that the interest of the subsystem providers and supply chain firms will find their interest elsewhere so, for example, GE is supporting the Chinese and building the commercial aircraft and the Chinese certainly have an interest in going into the market space with the A320 or Boeing 737. GE clearly is moving towards that commitment for the simple reason that they’re going where the work is. So you could well expect such movement with the larger suppliers, obviously the smaller suppliers are not in this position. The largest suppliers would clearly globalize and their globalization may or may not be in the interest of the federal government.
Bill Anderson: And not only are they going where the work is, they’re going where the customer is because the rest of the world will act in their own best interests, and I’m telling you what you already know. If I’m going to be a big buyer of something, I’m going to demand local production of those products.
Let me give you an example in the energy world; this one in the US. When I talk to state governors, they are saying, “Hey, I’m going to invest big in renewable energy. But guess what? I’m going to make sure we buy stuff that’s manufactured locally.”
So you’re going to see a shift to where the commercial sector is growing. You’re going to see a shift from military to commercial, at least in the U.S., the U.K., France, and Germany. But where do we expect to see the real growth in air travel and a corresponding demand for aerospace equipment? China, India and where do we think the manufacturers will go? But you’re absolutely right. The commercial guys are going to chase the opportunities that present themselves. If they can’t, they’re going to go out of business.
SLD: Your point is that they’re going to move to the local area to do that support, so two things happen. One is our major suppliers’ search for global customers and they displace U.S. jobs to foreign jobs is part of that global supply chain that they built.
Bill Anderson: Right. For two reasons. One is cost, and that’s obvious because you can build parts of a plane cheaper in China or India than you can in the U.S. or in Europe. But secondly, you will see customer pressure. You see it all the time where customers will not buy your product unless it’s local.
You saw this phenomenon manifest itself as Airbus worked its joint bid with Northrop Grumman on the tanker. Airbus certainly had the capability to build that machine in Europe. But, politically, if you are going to sell here you have to build here, have U.S. content you stand a much better chance of winning the contract and that’s just natural. Politically, every country will react in precisely the same way.
Source: DIB Segments and Subsegments, Defense Industrial Base, Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources Sector-Specific Plan as input to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan
Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, May 2007, page 5
SLD: You’d mentioned earlier that one response the supply chain could make staying in business is in modernization upgrades, but it doesn’t moving from performance based logistics raise certain questions about the ability of the supply chain to work effectively?
Defense Industrial Base Commodities (Credit: Defense Industrial Base (...), ibid, page 6)
Bill Anderson: Did we ever truly have a competitive environment to determine where best value is for defense products, were metrics ever put into place to measure true performance output, whether goods and services come from in house or are outsourced?
In my mind, the answer is no. Did we really ever have true competitiveness in terms of making decisions on manufacturing, refurbishment, who manages the inventory, and then go through the entire supply chain, then make A76 (competitive outsourcing) in the context of system optimization and overall best value?
If the market is really responding like a true competitive marketplace, in some cases, things will be outsourced. In other cases, things will be moved in house. The latter seems to be a challenge in the current environment, but must be a real possibility if we are to find the best mix of activities and drive true competitiveness in an ever-changing world.
It’s dangerous when you say, and whether it’s the federal government that does this or private sector, because I’ve seen it happen in both, it’s dangerous when you’re going to say, “We’re going to outsource for the sake of outsourcing” or you say, “We’re going to insource for the sake of insourcing.”
The answer ought to be: We’ve done a full analysis and determined that in this particular instance, it is better to do this function in house or it’s better to seek an external supplier without edicts on which way to go and that leads to sub optimizing.
SLD: So you need a sound analytical judgment about the proper balance rather than being driven by an ideological position.
Bill Anderson: Absolutely and sometimes, you’ll do that analytical work and realize later that you made some mistakes in assumptions. That’s why these decisions should ebb and flow because humans make mistake and sometimes the facts change. The approach ought to be: What truly is the best value and provides the best performance in terms of material availability, equipment availability, and reliability in the ecosystem as a whole thereby best serving the needs of the warfighter? By the way, what might well be the best answer today could be a sub-optimized solution later. Therefore, there needs to be a clear process to undo or modify prior outsourcing decisions as mission effectiveness and economy dictate. Unfortunately, I don’t think A76 got us there.
The current initiative in my mind will not get us there either because it’s not an economic model that’s being driven by best business case analysis…and there is no real long term view as to capability viability down the road. It is ideologically driven. As you say, it’s either ideological or it’s politically driven, at least to some degree, in both cases. It doesn’t matter who’s sitting at the helm, there are political influences that get in the way that are blocking our vision towards good decision making.
SLD: Several people in the administration are talking about the need to evaluate the critical skill sets we need for military production, military capability. Although that sounds good, I have some difficulty understanding if you’re not manufacturing and relying significantly on the private sector for the maintenance input, which shapes modernization, how does one do that?
Bill Anderson: I think the need is very real but you raise a valid point. You should also keep in mind, though, when you talk about manufacturing, you’re not just talking about building the next weapon system. We still have to, for example, make ball bearings and other replacement parts no matter if or when the next weapon system is authorized. Who’s looking at sources of raw materials, sources of manufacturing and design expertise, educational policies that impact the worksforce of the future, our scrap policy, as we assess the actual current and future health of our military production capability
Is the federal government capable of doing what you just described? Sure. Will it be hamstrung by politics or ideology and the answer won’t be optimized? I hate to sound crass, but probably.
If you would truly dedicate an independent group of expert manufacturers, and this country is full of folks who are some of the best manufacturing people in the world. Remember it was supposed to be Japan Inc. in the ’70s, but it never happened because there was a manufacturing renaissance in this country. Those people are out there. There are people who are capable of providing detailed analytics and thoughtful recommendations as you described while providing a very solid roadmap in my mind to what the right answer is.
Is that how it’s going to be done? If it is, great. In reality, will this talented pool of expertise be tapped to give us all a true look at what we are facing? Probably not.
If you can keep the politics out of it and get the people who really know in this country what manufacturing excellence is, I think you could have a great study with a great roadmap of how to bring the defense military manufacturing establishment to where it needs to be. And once we have an honest look at where we are and where we need to be, the efforts and costs associated with getting there can be balanced with other national priorities, and the American people will be able to clearly see the tradeoffs and balancing that will be done. Don’t get me wrong…hard choices always have to be made. They just are a whole lot more logical when made based on solid facts.
SEA 21 And Facilitating Global Maritime Partnerships
By Rear Admiral James McManamon
Rear Admiral James McManamon is Deputy Commander Surface Warfare (SEA 21) of the Naval Sea Systems Command for the US Navy. In his current position, Rear Admiral James McManamon is concerned with shaping the capabilities of the US Navy and its allies to maintain ready fleets. In an era of tight budget, getting full capability of existing fleets and ensuring that new platforms are optimized for lifetime support is essential to effective defense capability in the 21st century. Effective naval partnerships must encompass the support and sustainable challenges facing US and allied fleets. In this posting, Rear Admiral McManamon addresses the challenge of building effective partnerships for sustainment with allies.
An interview with Rear Admiral McManamon was posted on our website a fewmonths ago and an overview of one of the key programs sponsored by his office for the FFG class of ships with global partners has been recently published by two contributors to the website, Scott Truver and Rob Holzer.
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PACIFIC OCEAN: Midshipmen from the Royal Australian Navy aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) watch the Military Sealift Command dry cargo/ammunition ship USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE 6) deliver fuel during a refueling at sea. Mustin is participating in Talisman Saber 2009, a joint exercise between U.S. and the Australian Defense Force designed to train Australian and U.S. forces in planning and conducting combined operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Reckard/Released, July 8, 2009)
Meeting Pacific Rim Maritime Challenges
Distinguishing characteristics of Pacific Rim nations are their vast coastlines bordering immense ocean space, creating unique challenges to and opportunities for maritime security. For naval forces and maritime communities at large, this geographic reality creates mutual imperatives for all of the delegates at the Pacific 2010 International Maritime Conference.
Indeed, the key words are mutual and community, for none of the challenges confronting Pacific Rim states can be addressed adequately by one government alone, and no single Pacific Rim nation can fully embrace the tremendous opportunities afforded by proximity to the world’s largest ocean.
Senior naval and maritime leaders recognize these imperatives. For example, in his March 2009 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings article, “The Commanders Respond,” Australia’s Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral R.H. Crane, noted, “Australia’s continued reliance on the maritime environment will dominate our thinking.” Vice Admiral Crane also outlined the major future acquisitions the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) will make in air-warfare destroyers (modeled on the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) Aegis destroyer) and amphibious assault ships that will help safeguard Australia’s maritime interests.[1]
U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead has underscored this focus on the maritime environment in his remarks at the 19th Biennial International Seapower Symposium in Newport, Rhode Island. In addressing the mutual interests in these unique challenges and opportunities to the delegates of the 100+ nations represented at the September 2009 event, he noted:
At this largest gathering of naval leaders in history, we here today represent our countries’ efforts not only to defend our respective maritime interests and our shores, but also to secure the global maritime commons at a time of great challenge. The stakes are massive: our activities – individually and in partnership – are vital to the future generations.[2]
The U.S. Navy has an enormous stake in supporting and sustaining Global Maritime Partnerships (GMP), and the Surface Warfare Directorate (SEA 21) for the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), is the Navy’s principal agent for supporting our many coalition partners. We do this in numerous ways, principally by building both the capability to succeed in a multi-dimensional threat environment and the capacity to work together on the global commons.
The nations – as well as their navies, coast guards, and maritime industry partners – represented at the Pacific 2010 International Maritime Conference recognize the need to work together to address mutual threats to the global commons. From the SEA 21 perspective, this cooperation occurs both globally, under the auspices of the GMP, as well as regionally, in a growing number of maritime alliances, many led and sustained by governments represented at this conference.
SEA 21, as well as our national and international partners – including Australian’s Defence Material Organization – has a keen eye on what it takes to support the GMP with mission-capable ships. As our nations and navies band together to address threats to our mutual interests, we must recognize that at the end of the day we will need to ensure our warships continue to meet the missions for which they are designed over their expected service lives.
Threats to Mutual Interests
Clearly, the navies and coast guards of the Pacific Rim must work collectively to deal with security issues including terrorism and piracy, environmental violations, fisheries security and trafficking in illegal persons, weapons, or drugs. Indeed, navies and coast guards will be increasingly stressed to fulfill their myriad responsibilities while ensuring their ships and craft are well maintained and ready for tasking.
The need to work together to ensure continued economic prosperity and dissuade or defeat those who would use the oceans to do us harm is as critical now as it has ever been. Globalization has borne exponential growth in seaborne commerce, which has more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The tri-service U.S. maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, put it in these terms:
The oceans connect the nations of the world, even those countries that are landlocked. Because the maritime domain – the world’s oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, littorals, and the airspace above them – supports 90% of the world’s trade, it carries the lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth. Covering three-quarters of the planet, the oceans make neighbours of people around the world. They enable us to help friends in need and to confront and defeat aggression far from our shores.[3]
A critical element of this cooperation and collaboration will be a “whole of governments” approach to Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). At its foundation, MDA supports a broad spectrum of operations and is a global process to understand changes in the maritime domain, how these changes might affect our vital interests, and how best to respond across this broad spectrum of traditional and trans-national threats to the maritime, or “contested” commons – and, by extension, to our homelands.[4]
Ultimately, the ability of the RAN to ensure Australian security and prosperity in accordance with the recent Australian Defence White Paper Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 will depend not just on the capability of that force, but on its capacity. In seeking this capacity, Australia – as well as all the nations of the Pacific Rim – must depend not only on newly purchased ships but also on the current ships, submarines and craft already in their inventories. And like the RAN, the navies and coast guards of the other nations represented at the Pacific 2010 conference must also get more life and nautical miles out of their in-service ships and craft.
PACIFIC OCEAN (July 8, 2009) Midshipmen from the Royal Australian Navy aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) watch the Military Sealift Command dry cargo/ammunition ship USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE 6) deliver fuel during a refueling at sea. Mustin is participating in Talisman Saber 2009, a joint exercise between U.S. and the Australian Defense Force designed to train Australian and U.S. forces in planning and conducting combined operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Reckard/Released)
Building Partnership Capability and Capacity
Today, globalization and the presence of a new generation of threats on the high seas, the littorals, and the near-shore land areas demand even closer cooperation among navies and coast guards everywhere. Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 explained that Australia’s defense policy:
…entails the maintenance of alliances and international defence relationships that enhance our own security and allow us to work with others when we need to pool our resources…this defence policy means that we must have the capacity to lead military coalitions where we have shared strategic interests at stake with others…and make tailored contributions to military coalitions where we share wider strategic interests with others.[5]
This point of view is embraced by a growing number of nations, and commanders of many naval forces have become increasingly mindful of the centrality of partnership to the preservation of the safety and security of the world’s oceans. As the number of navies participating in these partnerships and their enthusiasm for this cooperation has grown, the results have been nothing short of stunning. Less than five years ago, about 70 navies and some 50 service chiefs attended the 17th Biennial International Seapower Symposium. By the 19th such symposium, more than 100 nations and 90 chiefs of service came together.
It is the actions these navies and coast guards are taking to work with their respective naval partners in other nations that are even more impressive. In addition to the partnering activities mentioned above, numerous navies and coast guards are taking the lead in partnering activities in their regions and are achieving real results.
For example, Korea has stood up a Regional Maritime Information Exchange, and the Western Pacific Naval Symposium Maritime Security Information Exchange Seminars are helping to establish standard operating procedures for information sharing.
In the Persian Gulf, more than 20 states attend the monthly Shared Awareness and De-confliction (SHADE) meetings in Bahrain, with the European Union, NATO, and maritime industry as active participants. The goal here is to develop and share unclassified common operating pictures and databases, and to synchronize combined maritime forces.
In the Americas, navies have put in place the Inter-American Telecommunications Network, a secure, regional system for sharing information. The U.S. Southern Command has set up the Cooperating National Information Exchange System designed to improve maritime and air domain awareness by providing partner countries with real-time data on potential trafficking targets of interest.
In the Mediterranean, Italy has taken the lead in establishing a Virtual-Regional Maritime Traffic Center supported by 29 navies and which has four separate sub-regional initiatives, including one with Lebanon and another with five North African littoral countries. In 2008, Italy also put in place a federated Trans-Regional Maritime Network –– yet another regional piece of the global maritime partnership solution.
Growing the capability and the capacity of naval and maritime power to prevail against the myriad threats is always challenging, but perhaps even more so today due to the worldwide economic downturn and the cost of new ships. That is why the U.S. Navy in general, and the Naval Sea Systems Command, in particular, are dedicated to ensuring that U.S. surface forces are ready for tasking in the most cost-effective manner, a dedication that extends to America’s global maritime partners, as well.
***Posted on March 22nd, 2010
Footnotes:
[1] Crane, R.H. (2009), “The Commander’s Respond,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 2009.
[2] Roughead, G., (2009) Remarks at the 19th Biennial International Seapower Symposium, Newport, Rhode Island, October 17, 2009.
[3] ) Conway, J.T., Roughead, G., Allen, T.W. (2007) A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (Washington, D.C., Department of the Navy, 2007), pp. 1-16.
[4] Stubbs, Bruce B., (2009) Maritime Domain Awareness: Global Perspectives and Partnerships, Remarks at the Sixth Annual Coastal Surveillance Conference, Singapore, November 2009, www.dodeaformda.navy.mil.
[5] Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 (2009) (Canberra, Australia, Australian Government Department of Defence, 2009), accessed at: www.defence.gov.au
Everyone knows that the F-35 is a stealth aircraft.
This is one element of what makes it a fifth-generation aircraft. But what is not widely known is that the stealth or low observable (LO) character of the aircraft is significantly different from other stealth aircraft like the F-22.
The F-35 LO capability is significantly more robust than legacy stealth, if one might call it that.
Indeed, the F-35 stealth is designed to leave the factory and to be maintained in the field, rather than having to come back to depot or the Fort Worth factory. In addition, the training of the maintainers for the LO repairs are being done at the partner level.
That is, if a coalition partner buys an F-35 it will be able to maintain it with the proper training (such as the one to be received at the Eglin AFB facility) and to do so in the field.
Although a significant aspect of the F-35 program, the LO repair facility has received scant attention in the vast literature commenting on the F-35. In January 2010, SLD sat down with Bill Grant, Lockheed Martin F-35 Supportable Low Observables Integrate Product Team Lead, in Fort Worth, Texas – a joint Lockheed-Martin – Northrop Grumman facility – to discuss the facility itself as well as the F-35 approach to LO maintenance.
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LO Materials Repair: – Tested for USN and USMC operational environment
– Designed to be used in the maritime environment
(Credit: Lockheed-Martin)
SLD: Would you explain the background of setting up the LO facility?
Bill Grant: We had the privilege of being able to work with complete access to data and experience of historic stealth programs, including the F-22. Our perspective was simply that LO was an afterthought from the standpoint of manufacturing, whereby stealth was added on to the aircraft. In our program, stealth is manufactured into the aircraft. The program recognized the LO repair needed to be focused on as an effort by itself. The repair development center was an early invention of the program and was given the resources to go out there and experiment with different material systems and to help refine them and then to incorporate them into a system level approach. We have developed repairs for each of the materials themselves and then as an entire system.
SLD: How would you describe the stealth LO capability of the F-35 compared to legacy systems?
Bill Grant: Performance-wise, it is a very aggressive capability. From a design standpoint, it is a radical change from legacy systems. In legacy stealth, the stealth in effect is a parasitic application of a multiple stack-up of material systems done in final finish after the actual airframe is built and completed. In the case of the F-35, we’ve incorporated much of the LO system directly into the air frame itself. The materials have been manufactured right into the structure, so they have the durability and lifetime qualities. It makes them much more impervious to damage. It is a much simpler system with fewer materials to contend with.
SLD: In terms of the way you’re describing it, stealth goes from being a surface appliqué to becoming an integral part of the actual product being manufactured, is this correct?
Bill Grant: Exactly.
SLD: So this must have a significant impact on maritime operations. For example, the future of the F-35Bs and Cs should be a significant improvement over legacy aircraft, shoulden’t it be?
Bill Grant: Absolutely. The Navy and Marine Corps have set the benchmark for the LO repair facility program and approach. They work in the worst maintenance environments. It was the challenge we had to meet. So our material development effort and material qualification program was predicated and populated by requirements that were specifically suited for the Navy and Marine Corps.
We have the most extensive and aggressive material qualification in our history, probably in industry history. We have as many as ten times more coupons per materials being tested. We have engaged in a very aggressive approach to testing which has been developed with the military labs and the program office. We have worked with them to shape the most aggressive and most challenging test regimen from all of their different programs and their experience, and thereby compiled those experiences into our test matrix.
And the testing process has led to changes in the repair approach as well as the manufacturing approach for the program. Obviously, when we found deficiencies, we suggested changes to the manufacturing processes, which in turn were adopted. Indeed, the interaction between maintainers and designers has been followed throughout the F-35 program in shaping the manufacturing approach.
SLD: You’ve mentioned “ten times the coupons being tested.” What exactly does that mean?
Bill Grant: Well, we use little mechanical coupons. They are then used to do mechanical testing in corrosion and twisting and pulling, and those are representatives of all of the structural integrations of panels and substructure, and the material systems that spanned gaps in the panels and substructure. We test those coupons in those mechanical situations in both hot and cold extremes and we’ve yet to see any of those gaps open up. Naturally, if you can keep the gaps from opening up and introducing contaminants, the potential for corrosion is much lower.
We also have a large selection of similar types of coupons representative of various elements of the structure that are in exposure environments. These environments are either in the laboratory, in our salt bog, exposed to acid rains, or stack gas type of environment – a very, very aggressive environment that they’re out on exposure racks or at Battelle’s corrosion test facilities out in Daytona Beach, which is considered by the Air Force to be the most corrosion-prone area in the Continental-48.
Those coupons being tested, by the way, are in both pristine and in deliberately damaged conditions so that we’ve introduced damage that either the maintenance environment or manufacturing anomalies could represent so that we have a good test of what all the materials do in that environment.
Bill Grant: “Supportability, in general, and supportability of the LO system, specifically, was a highlight of the program. It’s one of the pillar elements of the program to ensure aircraft availability and affordability. Obviously, the issues of the past and the expense of maintaining LO on an airplane was of paramount concern to a fleet like the F-35, where there’ll be thousands of the airplanes flying and need to be globally operational and maintainable. (…)We’re all about providing the maintainer weekends off by giving them systems that are durable and then easily maintained.”(Credit Graphic: Lockheed-Martin)
SLD: One of the unique aspects of the F-35 program is how the Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase has been shaped to front-load many manufacturing and maintenance capabilities prior to the full production run of the aircraft: isen’t the LO lab part of this process ?
Bill Grant: Absolutely. There has been tremendous investment both on our part and the government in the way that they configured the plan and the entire program to address these issues. Supportability, in general, and supportability of the LO system, specifically, was a highlight of the program. It’s one of the pillar elements of the program to ensure aircraft availability and affordability. Obviously, the issues of the past and the expense of maintaining LO on an airplane was of paramount concern to a fleet like the F-35, where there’ll be thousands of the airplanes flying and need to be globally operational and maintainable.
SLD: The program inherited a significant LO legacy capability given that Northrop Grumman and Lockheed are key partners in the program: could you elaborate on this heritage and how it has been leveraged?
Bill Grant: The legacy stealth programs – which to a lesser or greater degrees had to invent the technology in a stovepipe fashion – were on their own and they all essentially had to reinvent the wheel. In the F-35 program, we are partnered with Northrop Grumman and, as such, our team represents a 100 percent of the operational stealth experience in the industry in the world. My team and the LO sustainment area is comprised of half Lockheed and half Northrop Grumman employees. Most of the Northrop Grumman employees are actually retired Air Force LO maintainers who collectively have experience on all of the previous jets currently flying out there. And those that are retired have brought a tremendous wealth of innovation and experience so that they can improve on the conditions markedly for the maintainers of the F-35. We are not starting from zero. Leveraging this experience is allowing us to build a sustainable LO capability. We’re all about providing the maintainer weekends off by giving them systems that are durable and then easily maintained.
SLD: I understand that a core feature of the LO repair effort has been to shape approaches to sustainment that, in turn, have influenced design and manufacturing approaches to the aircraft. In other words, there has been a highly interactive process between the maintenance side and the manufacturing sides of the house.
Bill Grant: Absolutely. From day one, the supportable LO has been a key entity on the program and has had a profound influence on the very design of the airplane. In fact, the element that is manufactured into the skin was an initiative brought about by our LO maintenance discipline. We’ve also had a profound influence on the selection of the materials and then once they were decided upon, we helped refine the properties to make them more workable for field use. In addition, we’ve used the innovation of our team members to create tools and processes that are very easy and reduced the training burden so that they can be easily done in a unit-level environment.
SLD: The F-35 program is built around global partnerships and a globally deployed capability. What is the role of partners in the LO repair facility?
Bill Grant: The partners weren’t involved from the very beginning because our technology transfer agreements didn’t permit that for a while. But as of November of 2008, they have participated in what has become a real institution here. We have quarterly two-day hands-on familiarization courses where members from maintainers from all of the services and several partners come in and get some experience with the tools and the processes affecting the restorations and the repairs. That’s been a tremendous plus in terms of their input and shaping our understanding of what works and what doesn’t work, and we’ve modified our designs and our concepts accordingly. But mostly, they’ve provided a high-level validation that these tools and processes do, in fact, work for them, for both experienced and inexperienced LO maintainers, and that it’s doable in their environment.
SLD: So a lot of the LO maintenance will be done by the services and partners in the field?
Bill Grant: Yes indeed: we have no recognized need for any kind of return to depot or return to manufacturer for doing any type of LO maintenance.
Our system requirement was for end of life, which means that throughout the 8,000-hour service life of the jet, it is to remain fully mission-capable. So we anticipated that the amount of maintenance that would be done over the life of the airplane and anticipated that in the design. So when we deliver the jet, it’s delivered with a significant margin of degradation that’s allowed for all of these types of repairs over the life of the airplane, again, without having to return to the depot for refurbishment.
There may be some cosmetic-based reasons why the jet might go back to a facility to get its appearance improved, but from a performance-standpoint we recognize no need to do that. The unit-level maintenance will be adequate for maintaining the full-mission capability of the jet.
Bill Grant : “Our system requirement was for end of life, which means that throughout the 8,000-hour service life of the jet, it is to remain fully mission-capable. So we anticipated that the amount of maintenance that would be done over the life of the airplane and anticipated that in the design. So when we deliver the jet, it’s delivered with a significant margin of degradation that’s allowed for all of these types of repairs over the life of the airplane, again, without having to return to the depot for refurbishment.” (Credit Graphic : Lockheed-Martin)
SLD: In entering the facility, I noticed you have a “door mat” of stealth that’s been there for some time. Can you comment on this “door mat?”
Bill Grant: Oh, the slab of stealth? That’s our welcome mat. Yes, we actually have one of the test panels that we use for assessing the stealth of the various materials. It represents a stack-up that’s consistent with the upper surface or the outer surface of the jet. It has the exact same structure and the primer and the topcoat system that you’ll find on the operational jets. And that gets walked upon every time somebody comes in or out of our lab area out there, the repair development center.
Occasionally, we take it up to test to see if there’s any electrical or mechanical degradation to the system and with around 25,000 steps across that system we have not seen any degradation whatsoever. So we have a great deal of confidence, however anecdotal that may be, that we have a very robust system.
“Cyber-Exceptionalism” refers to the set of ways in which American provisions for protection and defense of citizens and property, the police and military protections, differ so significantly from the same protections in the Land, Sea, Air, and Space Domains.
There Are Plain Indicators of Cyber-Exceptionalism
Much talk about Cyber Security refers to self-help by citizens and businesses. No one speaks about the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, or Mendocino, California, or Smucker’s Jellies and Jams in Orrville, Ohio having to defend their own airspace and land perimeter from attack, or of San Francisco defending against Chinese and Russian submarine incursion in the Bay. But in Cyber Security and even Cyber Warfare , much of the public conversation is about citizen and corporate and municipal self-help. The conversation in Cyber in this regard is not even as advanced as having a local militia and constabulary as in the 18th Century.
Cyberwarfare is treated as heavily a province of the Intelligence community, and not primarily a province of the professional Warfighting community. The US Cyber Warfare headquarters is slated for Fort Meade, Maryland, the heart of the US Intelligence Community. A notable exception for Cyberspace is the walling-off of data sharing between the Intelligence community, some 20 agencies and offices not fully in harness together, and the Warfighting professionals. Although top-down effort is made to force sharing from the Intel silos to the Warfighters, it is human and organizational nature to thwart such transfer. The data transfer frictions in the Fort Hood assassinations and regarding Flight 253, and the statements of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair indicate this.
The public discussion of Cyberwarfighting is focused heavily on Cyber action alone, and not heavily in the context of combined arms, that is, of multi-domain simultaneous deployment of Cyberstrike with Airstrike, Seastrike and Land Action, and employment of Space Power. That is changing, but the current publicly perceived picture is not one of integrated cross domain attack.
The Statutory reference and guide for Presidential appointees in warfighting is in Title 10 US Code, where Land, Sea, Air, and Space are treated as to warfighting by US federal forces. Absent is Cyber Warfighting guidance. The conventional response is that there is plenty of Cyber guidance in Title 50 US Code, which speaks to the Intelligence Community, and in the informal practices adopted in Government. But that is no substitute for explicit, considered, and duly enacted clear guidance by Statute – if that guidance is needed for Land, Sea, Air and Space, then it is needed in Cyberspace.
In part because of distrust by citizens of the Intelligence functions of government, issues and fears concerning privacy slow enactment of statutes and governance for Cyberwarfare. The military is a more trusted arm of government and might not encounter such resistance and distrust, compared to a Cyber standup that is so based in the Intelligence lanes. One result of the present heavily Intelligence slant on Cyber Warfighting is that Cyber operations are seen as an exception to the other forms of warfighting in Land, Sea, Air, Space. Cyberspace is somehow different and an exception when it comes to citizen and property protection and defense.
With a Nod to Thucydides, a Brief History of War
The course of development of Cyberwarfighting will inevitably incline toward integration of Cyber Operations as an integrated part of combined Land, Sea, Air and Space Operations. Air operations were once seen as special and exceptional, and the province of the Army Signal Corps and then Intelligence arms of the services. The evolution to 2010 has been to one of closely integrated airstrike and land operations, woven together in Cyberspace to provide full awareness and flexibility for the Infantry.
Thucydides devotes chapters to explaining the evolution of early Greek Land and Sea power projection, and the slow integration of Hoplite and then Cavalry forces on the Trireme ships, ending in interwoven combined arms, combined domain operations. Cavalry and then siege engines became fully integrated. The integration and joint operations evolved mostly from the pain of defeat, and not from foresight by Attic Statesmen, Admirals and Generals.
This suggests that humans and States in making war integrate and unify operations across domains, and that no domain is an exception to this unity, and that the reins of all warfighting in each domain are sooner or later placed in the hands of the Professional Warfighters. Air was not an exception. Cyber will not be either, if history is a guide.
Implications for Action
The first action is at each step in establishing Cyber Policy and especially Cyber Warfighting capacity to ask, “How is Cyberspace being treated as an exception to the other four Domains?” “Why is the exception sensible?”
The second action is Unity of Command in Cyberwarfighting. This is the objective in the Standup of USCYBERCOM – delayed and troubled by tussles in grat part involving exceptionalism for Cyberspace.
As a third action, strong and effective information across Intelligence silos to Warfighters is imperative. A strong unified Commander can much improve the situation.
Finally, the overriding action is for the United States to move Cyber Warfighting and Cybersecurity from the 18th-Century model of self-help and volunteer fire brigades to the 21st Century model of fully empowered professional warfighters and police who protect and defend all citizens and property: a young lady on the land sidewalks of Manhattan expects not to be mugged, and the NYPD does not tell her to fend for herself. The same young lady has a right not to be mugged on Cyber Sidewalks.
Cyberspace right now is the Wild West, where light cavalry and sheriff’s posses struggle, so to speak. The need is for fully-empowered Police and Warfighters, to match Cyber Security with Air, Land, Sea and, eventually, Space Security.
Ambassador Jon Glassman is a retired career Foreign Service officer who is currently Director for Government Policy of the Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Electronic Systems sector. While at the Department of State, Ambassador Glassman served in many countries, including Afghanistan. Ambassador Glassman also has served as the Assistant to the Vice President of the United States and as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. The views in this article are his own and do not reflect neither the views of Northrop Grumman Corporation nor the United States Government.
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S400 Battery Movement
Deterrence Revisited? The United States is a unique country in that its geographic isolation has spared it from depredations from strong neighbors. While shocking, Pearl Harbor and the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001 also serve as reminders of how infrequently the U.S. has been assaulted by outsiders.
It should come as no surprise that entities like Russia, which suffered 20 million dead in World War II, China, which lived through two centuries of humiliation and episodic foreign occupation, and continental Europe, which lost the flower of its youth in two devastating world wars, would not share in the buoyant optimism that marks much of the American experience.
Tragedy can lead in one of two directions: paralysis, or a strenuous effort to seek survival and dominance. In the defense realm, one can sense parts of Europe and Japan drifting toward the former and China and India toward the latter.
These decisions are driven in part by economic performance and by political decisions that generate or deny the resources required to sustain national security. Such resources can be generated internally or obtained through foreign assistance.
The marriage between the desire to protect or dominate and the availability of resources creates the dynamic for change in global security. Today’s weakling can become tomorrow’s impregnable fortress given the fusion of technology and domestic or foreign capital.
Conversely, in America’s case, failure to adequately fund technology and procurement could make it possible to neutralize U.S. military advantages or to generate what geopolitical strategist Fritz Kraemer called “provocative vulnerability.”
It is against this background that America must confront those seeking to reverse tragic pasts and overcome current shortcomings.
Efforts by the U.S. and its potential adversaries to defend their homelands, along with land and marine bases, is an important part of this problem set. While sheer size helped protect 19th- and 20th-century Russia and China, that advantage exists today only if nuclear deterrence holds.
Yet, even if nuclear forces are held in check, the possibility of coercion endures. If American aircraft and missiles can penetrate the Eurasian land mass or, as in recent years, individual countries such as the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, the United States will continue to enjoy dominance.
And, should the United States create a shield that calls into question the viability of deterrence, or protects U.S. bases from attack, potential adversaries may seek to either defeat or neutralize that shield.
Russian and Chinese Defensive Systems Buildup
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with his characteristic bluntness, summarized the situation last December: “There could be a danger that, having created an umbrella against offensive strike systems, our partners may come to feel completely safe. After the balance is broken, they will do whatever they want and grow more aggressive.”
Putin’s near-term solution is to enhance offensive systems, an effort that would mean improving the ability of Russian weapons to penetrate U.S. defenses.
Addressing the issue of Russian defenses, Putin has said: “We aren’t planning to build a missile defense of our own as it’s very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet.”
Putin’s uncertainty is significant. Russia built a nationwide air defense system with ground sensors, weapons and air forces to sustain it. Its technological capability in this domain is renowned, but it can remain strong only through continued investment and procurement, and by finding foreign customers.
As Russia moves through its $200 billion force modernization, decisions on whether to expand domestic air and missile defense capabilities will have important consequences for foreign customers, including China and India, who have relied on Russian defensive technology, and on those, such as Iran, who view Russian systems as a way to escape Western dominance.
For Moscow, a decision to improve defenses will also make it more desirable to co-invest with China and India and make sales to capital-rich oil states and others in order to reduce its own procurement costs.
After a decade of benevolent neglect, Russia’s capabilities are beginning to revive, albeit gradually. Beginning in the 1980s, variants of the Patriot-like S300 aircraft and cruise missile point defense system were deployed around Russian high-value targets and sold to foreign customers.
Starting in the late 1990s, Russia began to develop a successor S400 system with added ballistic missile defense capability. This system, reportedly benefitting from a $500 million Chinese investment, has a 400-kilometer (km) range and will offer layered protection around high-value targets and base areas.
Last year, General Aleksandr Zelin, commander of the Russian air force, announced plans to add five, eight-launcher, 32-missile S400 batteries to the two S400 batteries already in existence. That is scheduled to happen this year, with another eight batteries budgeted through 2015.
In addition to China, the S400 has been aggressively marketed in the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Delivery to Iran has been delayed due to Western objections.
At the same time, the Russians are building a new generation S500 to be ready in 2012 with the “capability to destroy hypersonic and ballistic targets” and engage10 simultaneous targets at a range of 600 km. This new system, coupled with the S400s, is designed to create by 2020 the foundation of a new air-space defense branch linking:
Space-based assets;
New perimeter acquisition/space surveillance radars now being installed in the northwest and the south and slated for other future border sites;
Legacy and upgraded area surveillance radars and passive detection assets;
Improved MiG 31 Foxhound aircraft to cover the gaps between the high-value ground missile-defended areas;
Upgraded army short-range systems.
The reborn Russian defensive system appears to be a collection of newly improved but loosely-integrated capabilities. But its real importance may lie in the security it could provide to China and other export customers against the West.
Taiwan Strait SAM & SRBM Coverage. This map depicts notional coverage based on the range of the Russian-designed SA-20 PMU2 SAM system and the CSS-6 and CSS-7 SRBMs. Actual coverage would be non-contiguous and dependent upon precise deployment sites. If deployed near the Taiwan Strait, the PMU2’s extended range provides the PLA’s SAM force with an offensive capability against Taiwan aircraft (credit: DoD's Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2009, page 42)
The Chinese have 128 Russian S300 missile launchers and 64 HQ-9 domestically-produced equivalents and appear to be following the Russian defensive strategy. They, too, are invested in the longer range, more capable S400 and will presumably upgrade their current system to new-level Russian performance with imported or domestic production.
The Chinese have gone a step further, however, They have methodically worked to bolster their defenses in the east — in advance of a potential confrontation with Taiwan and the U.S. — by deploying 500 new-generation Russian and Chinese fighters with high-end advanced Russian air-to-air missiles, more than 1,000 ballistic missiles and 350 land-launched cruise missiles to attack regional airfields, sensors and command-and-control.
Chinese over-the-horizon detection radars and ballistic and cruise missile improvements also have been fielded to put U.S. aircraft carriers and Aegis ships at risk.
Beyond the Chinese and Russian borders, the incentives for proliferation of their defensive systems remain high. This would allow Moscow and Beijing to lower domestic unit costs and maintain their high-tech industrial bases. However, these systems, even if exported at top performance levels, would be difficult to operate and maintain by host country personnel. This might lead customers to import Chinese and Russian support staff, thus complicating U.S. interventions.
As the United States and other Western powers consider what, if anything they can do to affect defensive investment decisions in Russia, China and export markets, thought should be given to a variety of issues:
Are we right to limit F-22 production and export given that the aircraft could putatively overcome the newest Russian/Chinese defensive systems, thus rendering investment in them pointless?
Is F-35 production fast enough to confront the new defensive systems early on with overwhelming electronic threats?
Should we accelerate deployment of Actively Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars with electronic attack capabilities in third- and fourth-generation U.S. fighters?
Can we concede to allies an electronic attack role?
Should we accelerate deployment of a stealthy, weaponized Navy unmanned combat air system (N-UCAS)?
Should we incorporate foreign “loitering munitions” and develop a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) with our allies for using the Euro Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle to engage mobile defensive system sensors and weapons?
Should we accelerate efforts to develop new standoff strike assets?
Are there any arms control or commercial approaches to preventing export of the Russian S400 and S500 systems, or the Chinese HQ-9 missile?
Mark J. Lewis is chairman of Clark School’s Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, and president-elect of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was the chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force from 2004 to 2008.
Five Decades of Research When NASA’s X-43 flight test vehicle separated from its Pegasus rocket booster and accelerated to high-Mach speeds powered by an air-breathing scramjet, the premise and promise of hypersonic flight were forever validated. With a first Mach-7 flight in March 2004, followed by a Mach-10 flight in November 2004, the hydrogen-burning X-43 vehicles were the culmination of nearly five decades of research in hypersonic air-breathing flight.
Next month, if all goes well, the next chapter in hypersonics will be written, as the U.S. Air Force’s X-51 vehicles begin their own series of flight tests.
In many ways, the X-51 is a perfectly logical follow-on to the X-43. Whereas the X-43 was fueled with hydrogen, the X-51 uses the somewhat more practical, though less energetic, hydrocarbon Jet Propellant-7 – the same fuel that powers the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft. Unlike its hydrogen-powered cousin, the X-51 has an engine that is actively cooled, meaning that it can fly under power for minutes, not seconds. And while the 12-foot X-43 was a sub-scale version of a future airplane, the X-51 is a missile-type configuration that could directly evolve into a useful hypersonic weapon.
The story of the X-43 could fill an entire volume; in fact, just such a book has been written, though it only tells a piece of the X-43 saga: The Road to Mach 10: Lessons Learned from the X-43a Flight Research Program (Library of Flight Series)by Curtis Peebles. In a nutshell, the X-43 was a flight vehicle that was derived as a scaled-down version of a concept for a global hypersonic cruiser. It was an incredible experiment in that it incorporated the first real flight of a so-called supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, that produced net positive thrust.
The X-43 was launched from under the wing of a B-52 bomber, on the first stage of a Pegasus solid-fuel rocket. It was powered by hydrogen because that’s the fuel required to fly at Mach-10, the original design point of the vision vehicle; with a solid rocket to get it up to speed, the X-43 engine only had to operate in the hypersonic regime, it did not have to land or take off. In that sense, even though the X-43 was derived from an airplane concept, it was more closely analogous to a weapons application.
There were also some important lessons learned with the X-43, with implications to future hypersonics flight-testing. The first flight of the X-43 in June 2001 was a failure; a fin broke off the Pegasus booster shortly after it launched, and the stack lost control. It wasn’t until March 2004 that the second (and successful) X-43 flight took place.
Why did it take so long? Part of the reason was the amount of time required to investigate and produce a detailed accident report, and to assure that there would be no second failure. But that’s exactly how NOT to run a flight test program. Such efforts have to be allowed to fail, and it can’t take 2-1/2 years between flights if useful data is to be obtained.
This has not been an isolated example. In August 2008 NASA launched the Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition (HyBolt) payload on a sounding rocket from the Wallops Island launch facility. HyBolt would have provided some of the most definitive data on the basic nature of high-speed flows ever acquired, with deep implications for our basic understanding of high-speed flows. Unfortunately, the rocket veered off course and was destroyed 20 seconds after launch. There are no plans for any reflights; it was a one-off experiment for which failure was clearly not an option.
Going Beyond One-Off Experiments The HyShot flight experiment in Australia offers an interesting contrast to the X-43 and NASA’s HyBolt flights. At almost exactly the same time that X-43 was being developed, a group based in the University of Queensland, lead by Dr. Allan Paull, was developing the HyShot flight experiment. HyShot was a scramjet engine launched on a sounding rocket at the Woomera range in the Australian outback. The first flight of HyShot was in October 2001. It failed because a fin broke off the rocket booster, just like in the first X-43 flight. But unlike the X-43 team, the Australian team diagnosed the problem, developed a modified design, and were ready to fly within weeks, not years.
The second flight of HyShot occurred in July 2002; from a technical standpoint it could have been even sooner, but the government chose to delay the launch for political reasons. Even so, the Australian team demonstrated that an experimental failure could be quickly solved. Their second launch was the very first in-flight operation of a supersonic combustion ramjet, though it did not produce a net positive thrust (in other words, the engine produced thrust, but the overall drag on the test vehicle was still greater than the thrust). Note also that while HyShot was really just a flying engine, and X-43 was a fully-operational flight vehicle, the budget of HyShot was roughly 100 times less than that of the X-43 program. This proves that small teams can do great things on modest budgets.
There is another important take-away from the X-43 program: the lack of consistency in hypersonics funding. After the third (and second successful) flight of the X-43, there were no plans by NASA to continue. In fact, the third flight almost didn’t happen; the Department of Defense – in particular then-DDR&E Dr Ron Sega – insisted that NASA fly it. Concepts for future vehicles had certainly been developed, including a hydrocarbon-fueled version, the X-43c, and another vehicle that might accelerate on it’s own power without a solid rocket motor, the X-43b. Both of these would have been worthwhile investments. But at the end of the day, NASA’s leadership in place at the time pulled the plug on the X-43 program immediately after its greatest success, citing budget challenges and questioning whether NASA should have been investing in a technology that initially would have a primarily military application.
Now we are approaching the first flight of X-51. This program has already added significantly to the body of knowledge in hypersonic flight, including ground tests of a hypersonic engine operating for extended periods of time in a wind tunnel at NASA’s Langley Research Center. The X-51 program has benefited directly from experience gained in the X-43 program. NASA has lent a number of its engineers to the Air Force program, and the X-43 lessons-learned have made it directly into the design and testing of the X-51. Even if the X-51 succeeds, the naysayers will point out that hypersonics has had a checkered history of starts, stops,and promises unfulfilled. In fact, from the X-15 to the space shuttle, hypersonic flight has already been a reality.The remaining challenge is high-lift, low-drag flight, especially using air-breathing engines.
Closing the gap between expectations and funding Billions of dollars have been spent on failed programs, ranging from the original 1960’s AeroSpace Plane to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) recent Blackswift. These failed programs have led some to question whether hypersonics will ever be practical. Post mortem analyses of the failed hypersonics programs usually conclude that they have been too ambitious, linking unrealistic goals to insufficient funds.
The poster children for this include the X-30 National Aero-Space Plane (NASP), which sought to offer single-stage-to-orbit airplane-like flight. The NASP had its origins in a DARPA-funded effort called Copper Canyon, and by the mid 1980’s was in full swing, having caught the attention of President Reagan himself.
In retrospect, there were aspects of NASP that were hopelessly naïve. The required propulsion technology was completely unproven; the expectation of being able to deliver a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle was also dependent on at least a few miracles occurring. Claims were also being made that NASP could be designed with extensive use of computer simulations, at a time when state-of-the-art in computations was woefully inadequate. In the end, NASP was cancelled after spending billions, and to this day remains a prominent example of the failure of hypersonic promises.
The NASP example was recently repeated with the DARPA Blackswift program. Much smaller in scope and ambition than NASP, Blackswift still suffered from excessive expectations and insufficient funding. Conceived as an outgrowth of the DARPA FALCON program, Blackswift was billed as a combined-cycle flight demonstrator, a platform that would take off and land on turbojets but transition to ramjet-scramjet engines at higher speeds. That in itself was a very worthy goal, and a logical direction for hypersonic research building on X-43 and the anticipated success of X-51. But Blackswift floundered in part because it was oversold.
Lewis Page, Blackswift hyperplane hits trouble in Washington, June 13th, 2008 (www.theregister.co.uk)
DARPA pitched the vehicle as a potential intelligence platform; it was sometimes referred to as the “SR-72” in reference to the Blackbird aircraft. However, there were no plans to do any real sensing experiments from the Blackswift craft, and a significant constituency in the Air Force was lost. There was tremendous risk in the development of the propulsion system, including discovering ways to effectively transition between an turbine engine and a ramjet. Yet these challenges were inadequately addressed in the program. DARPA also imposed what can only be described as bizarre requirements that needlessly complicated the design challenges, the most famous being a requirement that the vehicle perform a roll maneuver at high speeds. Perhaps worst of all, DARPA projected the costs of a Blackswift craft at approximately $750M, a number far below any reasonable estimate for a program of this type (for example the similar but far simpler X-43B craft had been budgeted at more than $1B). And when challenged by Congress, DARPA was unable, and frankly unwilling, to articulate a meaningful response to these concerns.
One could argue that, while NASP failed due to overly ambitious goals, Blackswift failed because of very poor program management. Yet, there are glorious examples of programs that have worked well, including the X-15 rocket plane, the quintessential hypersonic flight test program. The X-51 is also on a path to success. Both of these programs have combined realistic though ambitious technical goals with competent program management.
Hypersonics: A Very Resilient Field Indeed, the good news is that despite the quixotic nature of funding and limited successes of previous hypersonic programs, the field has shown amazing resiliency. That’s important, because hypersonics could truly be a game-changer.
It is perhaps worth asking why the field has been so resilient, despite the setbacks. There seem to be several reasons:
First, the prospect of hypersonic flight is simply exciting, and a motivation for the best and the brightest to enter the aerospace field.
Second, hypersonics offers the enticing promise of practical, useful systems, including weapons that could cover many hundreds of nautical miles in mere minutes; aircraft that could penetrate nearly any hostile airspace;, and flexible launch systems that could operate more like aircraft, with aircraft-like costs and support, rather than expensive, labor-intensive rocket-powered vehicles.
Third, the field of hypersonics has also benefitted tremendously from the support of some key visionary leaders. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was one such man, who understood the value of speed and the capabilities it brought to the Air Force mission. With his departure in June 2008, it still remains to be seen if the Air Force will stay the hypersonics course in the long run. Thus far, it appears that the groundwork Secretary Wynne laid is remaining in place.
As hypersonics is developed into practical systems, it is safe to say that weapons applications will clearly appear first. Programs such as X-51, HyFly, Rattlrs, etc. are almost there. These programs do not require complicated combined-cycle systems; they can fly at Mach numbers we know are attainable (Mach-6, versus NASP’s Mach-25) and they have a built in constituency. All else being equal, what smart military commander wouldn’t want a cruise missile that reaches its target in minutes rather than hours?
In support of hypersonic weapons, there is a range of programs and activities in progress in the United States that are filling the gaps in our hypersonic knowledge. In fact, despite ever-limited resources, a survey of activities suggests an optimistic landscape. The U.S. Navy’s Hypersonic Flight Demonstration (HyFly) program, the DARPA/U.S. Air Force Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) and Mode Transition (MoTr) programs, the U.S.-Australia HypersonicInternational Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) program, and the robust basic research programs sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and NASA are just a few of the highlights.
HyFly has had its setbacks: the first two flights failed due to reasons completely unrelated to their hypersonic systems (and unfortunately like previous hypersonic flight test programs, it is now in a hiatus status). Despite a much-needed infusion of technical expertise from the Air Force’s Research Laboratory (including one of AFRL’s most brilliant hypersonic experts serving as flight test director) the unpowered DARPA HTV-2 maneuvering reentry vehicle is also experiencing program management issues (not surprisingly attributable to some of the same folks involved in the failed Blackswift effort) that have delayed the first test flights.
Of particular note is the joint nature of many of these ventures, especially between the Air Force and NASA. The HIFiRE flight test program is a marvel of international cooperation, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Air Force and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO), with strong support from NASA and several companies. It builds on the lessons learned from HyShot, and follows much of the same philosophy.
More important, some of these programs have shown real progress, including the successful tunnel operation of Pratt & Whitney’s flight-weight, actively cooled scramjet engine at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; the first flight of a HIFiRE rocket in the Australian Outback; and the recent establishment of three major university centers, cosponsored by NASA and the U.S. Air Force, dedicated to basic research in hypersonic flight. The Air Force’s recent upgrades to the remarkable Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9, the world’s premiere long-duration hypersonic test facility, are further testament to the perceived importance of this field. This year’s formation of a multi-company Hypersonics Industry Team, inspired and led entirely by its members, dedicated to joint planning and advising, is proof of undiminishing industrial interest. Other nations have established ambitious programs as well.
Developing a Realistic National R&D Plan and an End-User-Based Approach Of course, there is always more that can and must be done in hypersonics. Most lacking is a coherent, robust national research and development plan that could lead to actual acquisition. Such a plan should follow a path that begins with weapon-scale vehicles, expendable but possibly recoverable. For this to be successful, the warfighter must be involved. Again, the good news is that studies of this are being done, and real operational concepts are being considered. In fact, in nearly every instance where hypersonic weapons have been connected to analyses of alternatives or wargames, the hypersonic options perform extremely well.
The next logical hypersonic application would be hypersonic aircraft that offer responsive in-theater reconnaissance-strike. These can be thought of as the logical 21st-century follow-on to the SR-71. The Blackswift program should have tackled this, and one can speculate that if the smart engineers at places like the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks and Boeing Phantom Works had been given proper resources and technical freedom, it would have been. Despite the Blackswift failure, a combined-cycle aircraft for in-theater operations is still a worthy goal and an important step in hypersonic flight.
Graphic provided by Dr. Richard Hallion
In discussing hypersonic aircraft, it is important to distinguish between practical, achievable hypersonic craft that might operate in the Mach-6 regime for reconnaissance and strike, and so called “global cruisers,” envisioned to magically reach anywhere on the planet in two hours or less. A hypersonic aircraft simply would not have sufficient range to cruise just anywhere on the planet, and all the claims for aircraft that can strike any point from CONUS are fiction unless those craft are designed to fly “transatmospherically”, exiting the atmosphere and returning over their target.
Finally, the ultimate application of hypersonic research would be access-to-space vehicles, using air-breathing engines to provide mission flexibility and high performance for space launch. This could be significant not only for the United States Air Force, but also for civilian space applications as well. From the Air Force standpoint, there is a tremendous desire to be able to launch payloads into space rapidly and inexpensively. A hypersonic launcher, perhaps incorporating a rocket-powered first-stage with a scramjet-powered second-stage, could make space launch more “airplane-like” and less “rocket-like” with resulting reductions in cost and required time. Short of some unforeseen breakthrough, airbreathing flight to space is really the only obvious means of reaching orbit at lower costs and with greater reliability than conventional rockets. Hypersonic flight to space is clearly farther off than high-speed weapons, but the game-changing payoff could be just as great. And the path to those space applications can be built on the evolutionary goals of relatively small weapons, then aircraft, then scaled-up space launchers.
How then to proceed? There has been a disturbing tendency in the history of hypersonics to jump to the next big thing before the previous program has been completed, or in many cases, even really started. There has been insufficient connectivity between the various programs and efforts, and frankly too much territorialism as programs, and agencies sought to establish their own defining concepts.
So rule number one: the path forward should build on existing programs. It will be important to resist the temptation to jump to some new platform design when an existing vehicle can fill a role. That doesn’t mean we remain static, and in fact a given platform can be morphed, grown, modified, expanded, etc. to meet new experimental needs.
The X-51 design would serve as an excellent platform to continue hypersonic development, possibly with alternate engine flow paths, different cooling and ignition schemes, and advanced materials, maneuverability, and control concepts. To do this, it needs to fly much more often than is currently planned. The goal for the program should be something closer to the X-15’s envelope-expanding 199 flights, not the currently budgeted four. Follow-on craft should be aimed at providing reusability and flexibility, and all reasonable engine options should be on the table.
Similarly, it is important to remember one of the lessons of NASP, that there are basic scientific unknowns that must still be solved before hypersonic flight is practical. Basic research is important to not only build our technical knowledge but to train and motivate the next generation. On the fundamental side, the remarkable HIFiRE program should continue to probe questions of basic science that are relevant to realistic flight systems. University programs, such as those supported by NASA and the USAF, must continue and even expand, working in close conjunction with the testing community. To do all of this, it is essential that ground test infrastructure be preserved. The enormous investments already made in hypersonic facilities, not to mention operator experience, are too precious to lose.
Along the way, several basic rules will be key:
Fly. Nothing will beat actual time in the air at hypersonic speeds. This doesn’t mean that we should skip ground testing; in fact, it’s quite the opposite: Ground testing must be fashioned in support of flight. Computation is important too, but not to supplant testing, as opposed to enhance it and help explain test results.
Test, don’t demonstrate. That means flights should be aimed at answering meaningful questions, performing experiments that provide useful data following the often-forgotten principles of good science, not just proving things we already know. As in all good research, we must accept risk; hypersonic programs must be allowed to fail or else they will not be pushing the envelope. A key to the X-15’s success was the acceptance of risk. Even the tragic loss of a vehicle and its pilot did not end the program.
Programs must be developed with the operator in mind. End users must be involved, and there must be a constituency to accept transitioned products at the end of the process. In meeting the users’ needs, it is important not to unfairly burden programs with unjustified requirements (such as Blackswift’s famous roll). These will do nothing to advance hypersonics; they will merely drive up costs, add complexity, and pose risks without benefit.
Aerospace engineering is ultimately about pushing the boundaries, and nothing does that quite like hypersonics. There is no single subject that can captivate the imagination of our next generation; no single technology that holds such potential for changing the Air Force’s technology landscape. The inexorable march of progress makes it all but certain that there will be hypersonic vehicles operating within, and through, our atmosphere. The only real questions are when and which nations’ flags will adorn them.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” —George Santayana
