What is the Air Force Really Worried About: National Security or Job Security?
Easterbrook, Gregg
What is the Air Force Really Worried About: National Security or Job Security? Maybe the Pentagon wants the new stealth planes because they are technological marvels that will revolutionize...
...More recent use of updated Sparrows suggest this weapon still falls well short of its sales pitch...
...The ATFs are operating with radars and jammers off, so as not to betray their presence...
...Alternatives such as unmanned drones and affordable manned designs are spurned for their very worldliness...
...Concurrently ATFs cross enemy lines at a majestic altitude, high above the range of battlefield weapons...
...At $5 million each, a new fighter avionics package called Lantirn costs more than an entire F4 Phantom did about a decade ago...
...The Pentagon is about to commit itself to three new manned aircraft of record-setting expense: the B2 bomber, the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), and the A 12 Advanced Tactical Aircraft...
...Conventional interdiction of targets such as command centers holds out the hope of what might be called constructive combat: dealing a few decisive blows that bring hostilities to a prompt conclusion, rather than slugging it out at the line of scrimmage, which cannot help but be immensely destructive to both sides...
...The only way a pilot even knows one is coming is if he sees it fired or his wingman spots a smoke trail and cries "Tallyho...
...Ground-based antiaircraft weapons fall under the jurisdiction of the the Air Force's second-most feared foe, the U.S...
...Defense contractor behavior reinforces the upward cycle of cost...
...If the only factor at play here were trading more expensive and glorious aircraft for steadily reducing numbers—Soviet military jet production has declined too, though not as rapidly as ours—the choice might be a toss-up...
...he must further train his concentration on the target and restrict his aircraft's flight path as long as the Sparrow is flying, rendering himself vulnerable to attack from other aircraft or missiles in the area, and often ending up having closed to within visual range anyway...
...At one point an Air Force press release declared that the new plane would achieve an "exchange ratio" of 10 Soviet fighters destroyed for each ATF lost...
...Today pilots receive decent compensation (about $40,000 a year for a major in his early thirties), cash bonuses and flight pay, half-pay retirement after 20 years, plus great stature for their wives and families within military society...
...services, only the Army showed interest in similar equipment, though its first drone, Aquila, was a spectacular dud...
...A new service, the Air Force, was formed, and within it, an interest group controlled by pilots...
...designed, tested and built no less than 18 fighters, most of them supersonic jets: in the three decades since just seven new U.S...
...a contributing factor in the Airbus tragedy was confusion aboard the Vincennes regarding what type of code the interrogator system was reading...
...Beyond smart lies the brilliant munition: ones able to self-guide so that a strike aircraft could fire and forget them, preferably from "standoff" range...
...by Gregg Easterbrook "It is difficult at this remove to view dispassionately the short-sightedness of the prevailing official attitudes towards the new weapon," Peter Young, a British general has written of the decade following the invention of the airplane...
...Though defense-not-conquest is every U.S...
...Next, death-defying performance in the rickety crates of World War I. Following this sacrifice a thankless phase of internal exile culminating in court martial for the air power visionary Billy Mitchell...
...has possessed BVR weapons since the 1950s, principally an air-to-air missile known as Sparrow...
...Wielded by illiterate Afghan guerrillas, this $40,000 weapon overwhelmed Soviet high-performance jets...
...ATF's role is to eliminate them...
...Today almost everyone in a military jet is an officer, with the fancy bombers and fighters flown by men ranking as high as Air Force colonel or Navy captain...
...Amraam will cost much more than Sparrow, as much as $635,000 per missile...
...Putting each new technological gimmick onto a small, unmanned missile is comparatively cheap, while adding the appropriate countermeasure to a large manned target usually means serious money...
...Don't we owe it to our pilots...
...Stealth aircraft incorporate engine exhaust systems that reduce heat signature...
...There ought to be nostalgic lore attached: American citizens owe a great deal to the culture of military aviation...
...Rationales for the high cost of ATF hinge on the ability to fight from beyond visual range, for if ATFs end up in dogfights, money will start pouring down the drain...
...Whenever the ATF launches a missile, its bay door opens—weapons will be stowed internally to reduce radar echoes—and the irregular shapes thus exposed render the plane momentarily visible on electronic scopes...
...During the 1950s unit costs were lower, profit was in volume...
...Such ideas are parcel of the "competitive strategies" doctrine George Bush praised during the 1988 campaign...
...Each is receiving a rich stream of information from U.S...
...Planes became powerful, glamorous and also safer—deaths per flying hour declined...
...Don't expect the Air Force to advocate such a shield, however...
...Meanwhile the Air Force riposte about North Vietnam losses is that though many U.S...
...weapon fiasco of the 1980s, the Divad automated antiaircraft gun, is being replaced by three types of small SAMs that incorporate clever technological variations...
...During the 1973 Middle East war, some 93 percent of the Sidewinders launched by Israeli pilots struck Arab aircraft, perhaps the best performance ever by a precision-guided weapon...
...Miniature SAMs of the 1960s and 1970s worked poorly, so air power advocates tended to write them off...
...No system has been sufficiently effective to enable pilots to trust their BVR weaponry...
...The Pentagon now shuns that term, preferring Special Access Required...
...ATF, intended to be the world's hottest "air superiority" fighter, is being designed by the Air Force...
...the Air Force will warrant to Congress that such high prices will be offset by savings down the road...
...Their quarry are other virtuosos who know the risks and even have a sporting chance to bail out if hit: more like the competition than the enemy...
...Then why employ megabucks manned airplanes to haul them to the launch point...
...The U.S.S...
...even by analyzing the harmonics of jet exhaust to determine who built the engine...
...I wish I had a penny for every time I've taken off a carrier deck loaded down with [BVR missiles] knowing darn well I'll never get clearance to fire one because I won't know what I'm shooting at," Capt...
...Although early generations of military aviators tended to go into non-flying work or became crop dusters and barnstormers, today a jet jockey who sours on military life can start a lucrative second career flying for the airlines...
...Proponents of maximum aircraft technology further note that stupendous exchange ratios have been recorded by Israeli pilots using modern U.S...
...Above the Central Front will be aircraft of NATO allies using several different, incompatible interrogation systems...
...Programs are often low-balled in this fashion, and somehow the huge future savings have a habit of failing to materialize...
...Many justifications for advanced aircraft involve their use as "platforms" for smart munitions that, launched far behind enemy lines, will score direct hits on high-value targets...
...Recent advances in computers, sensors and manufacturing techniques have rendered surface-toair missiles (SAMs) increasingly effective...
...investment on ATF will further widen the gulf...
...During World War II the U.S...
...Their existence is such a touchy subject there is even a dispute regarding what to call them...
...The principle objection air power advocates express to intermediate fighters, of which the $15 million Air Force F16 is the leading example, is that they are fundamentally defensive: best in interceptor roles near their own turf, not so hot for missions deep into enemy territory...
...Army...
...That attitude did not last...
...The advent of the jet age did not immediately alter this equation: in 1951 the Air Force acquired 6,300 aircraft, mostly jets, at an average of $1.3 million in current dollars...
...And unless ATF really is, as its price suggests, four times better than an F16, the money to be lavished on acquiring a small contingent of these planes might better be spent on a larger force of less magnificent aircraft...
...You're going to have thousands of kids on both sides shooting cheap missiles at you...
...pilots, working with a pronounced technological edge, could achieve no better than an exchange ratio of 2.6 to 1 over North Vietnamese fighters...
...the aircraft will be too expensive for that...
...In the final years of the Afghan occupation Soviet planes scattered flares everywhere they flew, hoping to confuse Stinger sensors, or operated above 10,000 feet to stay beyond Stinger range...
...The reason our pilots are outnumbered is that we insist on superplanes...
...As soon as a pilot launches one he can peel away and let the missile worry about itself...
...In that case several sneaky little planes may be of greater value than one gloriously powerful ATF...
...One defense executive describes current flying machines thus: "Not so much airplanes as self-propelled avionics suites...
...This is the principle scenario the Air Force has in mind for the new ATF...
...which encouraged planners to think in terms of loading every conceivable device into those aircraft it got...
...Today the U.S...
...sensors in space and at distant locations, while employing onboard passive technology such as infrared scanners and electronic eavesdroppers, that leave no clues of the ATF's presence...
...These missiles fall into two basic categories, radar-homing and heat-seeking...
...For these reasons some Pentagon documents list an ATF acquisition cost of $50 million per plane...
...Needless to say the thought of $40,000 missiles shooting down $60 million ATFs or $530 million B2s is not reassuring...
...The two engines powering ATF will have thrust-vector nozzles resembling those on the Harrier jump-jet...
...And the pilot class became exclusionary...
...Fewer companies meant less competition...
...They insist on saying "drones," connoting the plodding dim-wittedness of pilotless flight...
...Black boxes can also be retrofitted to existing planes, providing a steady flow of business...
...So far smart munitions need help from Stanley Kaplan, as their mediocre test scores in actual uses such as the Libya raid attests...
...Now along comes the chance to build ultimate flying machines like the B2 and ATF...
...It's an encouraging sign that after years of cannibalizing some high-tech aircraft to keep others running, the Pentagon has gotten religion on the subject of reliability...
...Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus because the $600 million Aegis radar system on the ship was unable—not through failure, just technological limitation—to make as simple a distinction as whether the BVR blip being tracked was a fighter plane or a commercial airliner...
...In ATF cockpits, "data fusion" computers put the streams of digital clues together and predict where the hot Soviet interceptors can be found...
...From long johns to astronauts Just when things really start to get good they become obsolete...
...But based on the information available now, the numbers for ATF don't look good...
...ATF isn't necessarily going to shoot everything it sees," says Colonel James Fain, a manager of the ATF development program...
...First, general mockery of its ideas...
...Logically this would almost have to be so, because ATF will be produced in quantities too small for economies of scale...
...At about $530 million, each B2 will cost nearly 400 times as much in real terms as a B24...
...Now there's a lifestyle...
...Since by definition a pilot firing from beyond visual range cannot see what he's aiming at, in a swirling air battle, there is enormous risk of shooting down the good guys...
...Air power believers can't stand the implications of "remotely piloted...
...A defense contractor with the incredible name General Atomics has shown prototypes of a low-cost propeller-driven drone that could fly 300 miles and deliver a 300pound warhead...
...Flyaway cost is a stripped-down figure...
...Military officials can't opt for a project like a stealth jet, for which they know R&D expenses cannot help but be high, then later claim these costs somehow do not count...
...The planes will incorporate so many costly features—some focused more on career security for the pilots' guild than on military necessity—that the world's richest country will be able to afford only a comparative handful...
...Israel has had relatively cheap drones in operation for a decade, using them for reconnaissance and electronic warfare...
...But by 1984 the service was spending an average of $40 million in current dollars for the mere 322 aircraft acquired that year...
...But lore is one thing, logic another...
...The great problem for pilots in the year 2000 will be weapons from the ground," Lt...
...Because unusual hierarchies of secrecy cloak stealth programs, it is difficult to estimate whether these aircraft will succeed from a technical standpoint...
...Official reaction was tepid...
...The first is that ATF will operate mainly in the other guy's skies, not ours...
...heat-seekers don't give up as easily...
...World War II pilots wore long underwear and silk scarves to keep from shivering...
...Whether maximum technology makes for the best weapon is the subject of unceasing debate in military circles...
...which caused the Air Force to reduced buys...
...work areas referred to as "the white world" and "the black world...
...The most renowned flying humans are those who sit in fighters...
...For some time the military refused to confirm the existence of the B2 or the F117, a limited-edition stealth fighter built principally to determine whether radar-evading jets could be aerodynamically controllable...
...These planes have their own radars and electronic jammers cranked to full blast...
...Researchers have attempted to build gadgets that can identify friend from foe using zoom-lens cameras...
...Air-superiority fighters and superbombers have become as much symbols of American technical prestige as elements of military proficiency...
...Higher numbers of a different fighter would even ensure jobs for pilots...
...the $125 million price of the new Boeing 747400 certainly includes R&D...
...Five years ago no military laboratory could have said that...
...Improved air-to-air missiles are in the offing, and the miniature SAM exemplified by the U.S.-built Stinger has now been added to the quiver...
...And as years pass, the scales may tip further in the direction of SAMs...
...rationality or terror prevents the adversaries from resorting to nuclear malice...
...The scenario pilots love It's the year 2000...
...The additional development funds scheduled to be invested in ATF, about $6 billion, could readily be shifted to designing a more modest fighter that takes into account recent technical advances but does not try to be the most marvelous flying machine of all time...
...During the 1950s the U.S...
...In Pentagon usage, threat means a specific tactical obstacle, whereas The Threat means the Russians...
...Consider what the military aviation subculture has been through...
...Drones are another annoying threat to the pilots' franchise...
...Pilots can sometimes duck a radar missile by evasive action...
...But suppose the Soviets deep-strike our side...
...This in turn leads to a subject the Air Force really doesn't like to talk about: the modern antiaircraft missile...
...Fighting breaks out along the Central Front...
...Diving drones Pentagon planners who normally drool over any new technological prospect have been dragging their feet against a flying machine recently made practical by advances in microelectronics, composite materials and small turbine engines: the miniature drone...
...Both will be stealth—that is, radar-eludGregg Easterbrook is a contributing editor for Newsweek, The Atlantic, and The Washington Monthly...
...Maybe the Pentagon wants the new stealth planes because they are technological marvels that will revolutionize air warfare...
...Many aircraft now carry transponders that in theory permit electronic "interrogation" separating ours from theirs...
...Stewart Schmidt, an F14 pilot, said...
...As tenaciously as military officialdom once opposed the notion that the airplane's time had come, it now resists the possibility that its time is about to pass...
...officer's objective, defensive strategy just doesn't sit well with the military culture...
...Though military theory says the defender holds the cards, in recent wars aggressive tactics have often prevailed: for example, Germany and Japan overran numerous entrenched positions early in World War II, later to be overrun in turn after they became defenders...
...Ideally not only does the enemy never see ATF, ATF never sees the enemy...
...Here's the bottom line: If about three percent of the antiaircraft missiles in the world today find their mark, the skies will be swept clean...
...Significantly increasing the quantity of ATFs is not an option...
...A future air superiority force based primarily on SAMs might be more fearsome and cost-effective than one based on manned aircraft...
...ing—aircraft incorporating features similar to those of the B2...
...In the Pentagon's vision of the future a small force of sensationally expensive manned aircraft will do battle against a huge proliferation of such weapons...
...the final figure may hit $60 million...
...The Air Force has established a $35 million cap on ATF "flyaway" cost, and by all accounts Tac Air, the project's sponsor, is struggling earnestly to honor that objective...
...Whether the other half can be solved is something else again...
...forces over North Vietnam, though bombers were accompanied by scores of "suppression" aircraft: jammer aircraft and strike fighters bearing special weapons to attack SAM installations...
...ATF plans call for pilots to make judgments about blips from considerably greater distances...
...Suppose brilliant munitions do turn out to work...
...both armored helicopter gunships and modern strike fighters proved vulnerable to them...
...Of equal importance, while the case for $530 million for any bomber is difficult to make, the ATF and Al2 projects invoke shades of gray, with many points in favor of such aircraft...
...But the true price of ATF is certain to be higher...
...Next, tremendous achievements in World War II, but at precious cost in battles such as Ploesti...
...Nobody can know how many of any weapon the United States requires, nor whether current talks on European conventional-arms reduction will result in treaties reducing the importance of this whole issue...
...Amraam, by contrast, is a "fire and forget" device with a full radar set of its own...
...fighters have gone into production...
...During the first phase of the strike, ground guns and SAMs pose the main hazard...
...Modern electronics will make flying them a dream come true...
...But in the postwar period things began to look up...
...Yet most commentators believe that the use of modern jets in Vietnam, the Middle East and the Falkland Islands shows pilot skill, tactics, and numbers to rank with or exceed technology as determinants of victory...
...Now here's the dilemma...
...The goal for ATF is double the dependability of an F15...
...Heat-seeking SAMs and air-launched heat-seekers like the Sidewinder have proven close to unstoppable under some circumstances: their only drawback is a shorter range than radar missiles...
...Focusing U.S...
...Each ATF will cost about 150 times as much, adjusted for inflation, as a P51...
...For ATF reliability and maintenance have been equal to performance as design goals," Colonel Michael Walton, director of an Air Force design bureau, says...
...Though information about the B2 is slowly becoming available, hardly anything has been published about the ATF and Al2, which combined will likely cost more than the stealth bomber program...
...Whether the approach is best for the United States, which must defend thousands of miles of borders the world over, is another matter...
...During early production even flyaway costs will exceed the ostensible cap...
...But while the number of combat aircraft declines, antiaircraft weapons are multiplying like mad...
...Assessing whether the new aircraft can fly from the standpoint of cost effectiveness may be a different matter...
...fighters...
...If a Soviet interceptor jumps an unsuspecting ATF, the pilot defends himself with heat-seeking missiles and cannon fire, the same dogfight weapons employed by existing U.S...
...Son of SAMs Guided missiles are a newer science than aircraft: the first attempts to build them did not come till the 1950s...
...On the down side, deep counterattack engages the military imagination because it is a maxtech assignment...
...Note that the drone the Air Force likes is one that would counter a threat to manned aircraft...
...Thus the romance of the fighter jock dies hard...
...fighters...
...The Navy, acutely conscious that manned aircraft are what justify its beloved supercarriers, resisted drones until it lost two fighters during a 1982 strike against the very Bekka Valley positions that Israeli warplanes, assisted by drones, hit without losses...
...Assuming Amraam works (it's in testing), half the BVR problem will be solved...
...Ordinance released from such altitude almost always misses, so the Stinger gunners prevailed without even shooting...
...Fail-soft means that when components incur battle damage they will automatically reset for limited operation, instead of just winking out as current systems do...
...payment per F15 actually delivered was about $37 million...
...Army has thousands of Hawks, a radar SAM, and is building several thousand new long-range radar SAMs called Patriot...
...It will raise the level of pilot information [about BVR targets] from uncertainty to educated guess," Kocher said...
...Officials concede the number is low even by standards of high-performance jets: for instance, the U.S...
...Technology proponents point out, for instance, that although the ATF's new system of practical supersonic speed won't be cheap, ferrying back and forth to base at blazing speed will allow ATF to generate more sorties than current fighters...
...Such a choice may be fine for Israel, which has only a tiny land area to defend and need not care about the cost of its U.S.-subsidized equipment...
...Unlike contemporary fighters that have impressive top speeds but rarely use them because then fuel consumption goes off the scale, new "dry supersonic" motors enable ATF to sustain mach velocity without activating an afterburner...
...But heat-seekers are passive...
...Around Air Force labs I heard many references to "the human on the platform...
...devices broadcasting scrambler pulses on infrared frequencies may also help...
...Thus these fighters transit the lethal envelopes of defenses in less time than current aircraft...
...And by the time ATF appropriations wend their way through Congress, the total may be lower still...
...Some 1960s-vintage SAMs in the possession of Muammar Qaddafi caused such concern to U.S...
...Unlimited appropriations seemed to flow the pilot's way—merely training an F15 pilot, an easily overlooked factor in aircraft funding calculations, costs $7 million...
...Some inconvenient facts Interdiction is an important element of Western strategy in part because the idea of carrying the fight to enemy turf is more palatable to NATO residents than other alternatives...
...Concomitant with the improvements in military aviation, the civilian airline industry developed...
...This has been a somewhat sensitive issue," Colonel Fain allows...
...Any missile launched toward ATF's fleeting image fizzles off harmlessly...
...runaway The goal of 750 ATFs was arrived at via Air Force computer simulations of future aerial combat...
...Air Force officials currently are heatedly complaining on Capitol Hill that the troublesome $530 million sticker price for the B2 would decline by approximately a third if R&D expenditures were not rolled in...
...During Vietnam, radar SAMs crude by today's standards inflicted consistent losses on U.S...
...The best fighter in the world, drawn into a dogfight against numerically superior forces, will eventually lose," he says...
...commanders planning the 1986 Libya raid that the Navy had an estimated four suppression aircraft in the air for each plane that actually delivered a bomb on Libyan soil...
...Both are black programs, meaning many references blacked out of public documents...
...Kids on the ground Contractors love avionics because they know that while Congress will wring its hands interminably about building an airplane, approval for black boxes is nearly involuntary: if only because hardly anyone understands what the boxes do, let alone which ones are justified and which aren't...
...Because ATF has stealth, it is reasonably secure against radar detection at altitudes conventional aircraft would find suicidal...
...A key cultural difference between the jet-dominated services and the Army is that in the latter, even the costliest helicopters are flown by "warrant officers," noncommissioned personnel who enjoy little institutional prestige and few lifestyle perks...
...Existing airborne radar missiles work by homing in on echoes from the nose radar of the launching fighter...
...But the same maneuverability as current fighters, plus the same close-in weaponry, means ATF won't be notably better at traditional combat than what the U.S...
...So even if the F15s and F16s make it past the ground weapons they still face jeopardy...
...Current plans call for 132 B2s and 750 ATFs...
...Instead you might put the brilliant seeker head in a General Atomics drone, and put the pilot out of business...
...Costs: flyaway vs...
...These missiles were devastating in Afghanistan...
...Airplanes, their primary role increasingly to serve as racks from which to launch missiles, are called "platforms...
...But new Soviet interceptors operating in the sanctity of Warsaw Pact airspace can use improved radars to spy attackers in the otherwise elusive low position...
...Long-running negotiations between the Pentagon and NATO, aimed at a common electronic protocol for identification transponders, recently broke down in bickering over whose standard would be adapted...
...Unlike airframes and engines, these microchip concoctions have high markup...
...Underpinning it are two critical assumptions...
...Slang had mutated to the point that public-record programs were called "white...
...Most important, the Air Force already concedes that the $35 million figure will be arrived at by assuming unspecified savings in future years...
...Yet a measure of subtle awareness in military circles that the end for traditional aircraft may be in sight is that already occupants of the cockpit are called not pilots or people but "humans...
...No brilliant munition has yet been fielded, though several are being researched...
...What it will be is outnumbered...
...Recognizing the smallness of the planned purchase, the Air Force buzzword about ATF is "leverage...
...The second driving assumption of ATF is that beyond-visual-range weaponry will work...
...These ATF price estimates include a proration for research and development, a calculation that drives the military to distraction...
...The great U.S...
...In 1987 the Air Force claimed a flyaway cost of about $25 million for an F15...
...An Aegis radar is far more powerful than any sensor ATF will be able to carry...
...Such confusion, in the ideal conditions of tracking a single target, bodes ill for blip identification during the madness of general combat...
...By manipulating exhaust flow, these devices will afford pilots maneuverability compensating for the inherent clumsiness of stealth aerodynamics...
...A group of F15s and Fl6s, frontline fighters from the 1980s, crosses into Warsaw Pact territory flying "terrain masked," down low where ground radars cannot see them...
...As a corollary, today the profit is in aviation electronics: such "avionics" now account for 40 percent of Defense Department spending on aircraft...
...Only a select few—astronauts practically—will qualify for the privilege...
...Pentagon planners tend to downplay this concern, suggesting that few Soviet fighters could survive the excursion across our SAM belts...
...Some ATF squadrons prepare to lead a raid, the objective being a Warsaw Pact airfield...
...Though there won't be many ATFs, planners concede, their ability to take on the best Soviet fighters will leverage existing F15s and Fl 6s into the next century...
...Or maybe it's just because without them, the pilots might lose their jobs...
...This last argument is circular, however...
...during the recent encounter in which Navy F14s shot down two Libyan fighters, three Sparrows were fired, under conditions suited to the missile...
...And after considerable hemming and hawing the Air Force is pursuing drones that could destroy SAM guidance equipment by circling over a battle waiting for a radar to be turned on, then diving into the transmitter and exploding...
...In short, what was once a crummy way to make a living has become a sweet deal...
...For their part the Soviets have nearly 5,000 SAM launchers near Europe, plus another 9,000 ringing their home borders...
...The weapons they use pose little threat to noncombatants...
...Only the fanciest and most expensive airplanes will do...
...Unless there's some very basic fact about the B2 that the Air Force is withholding to the detriment of its own funding prospects, or unless the Pentagon is willing to trade B2 funding for termination of another new strategic weapon, this program seems a deserving candidate for cancellation...
...fielded aircraft in quantities like these: 16,494 B24 bombers, 13,586 P51 fighters...
...The Al2, intended to attack land targets from carrier decks, is being designed by the Navy...
...Today the Pentagon says precious little about ATF...
...Radar missiles depend on transmissions that can be jammed, and announce their approach to an aircraft's "fuzzbuster...
...A new Stinger version perfected in the early 1980s changed that...
...Other new features such as "fail soft" circuitry should enhance ATF value...
...It's easy to understand why the desire to preserve this exerts an emotional pull on the Pentagon, Congress and the public...
...Even Colonel Fain agrees...
...New technology should also make ATF more reliable than current fighters...
...Partly, too, it is because tacticians are more comfortable with counterattack than defense...
...Virtually all commercial aircraft are priced to reflect what the company spent on development...
...But such devices are notoriously finicky...
...While the B2 is a subsonic aircraft, in order to be capable of intercontinental travel, the shorter-range ATF cruises at around mach 1.5...
...Colonel Ted Wierzbanowski, an F15 pilot, says...
...planes fell, huge numbers of SAMs were expended in the process...
...If any is perfected it might, like Amraam, finally make real a technology whose practical value thus far has been vastly inflated...
...already has...
...In Vietnam, its performance was a major disappointment...
...Aboard ATF is the new Amraam missile, a "beyond visual range" (BVR) weapon for shooting at planes as much as 50 miles away...
...ATF will have a new integrated fire control system able to combine readings from many sources to provide improved friend-or-foe cues to pilots...
...built 5,300 F4 Phantoms...
...even less about the Al2...
...which led to higher price per unit...
...If a superior force of Soviet aircraft arrives, the pilot exercises discretion and bolts, using sustained supersonic speed to outrun pursuers who can go into afterburner only momentarily...
...highly accurate radar bursts...
...An official developing this system, James Kocher, told me that positive identification cannot be guaranteed...
...This means any pilot firing a Sparrow must keep his radar on, announcing his position...
...Today the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a secretive Pentagon offshoot that occasionally takes pleasure in twitting the powers that be, is tinkering with a low-cost drone called Amber which has demonstrated an ability to stay aloft for 30 hours on one tank of fuel...
...According to the Defense Department, in the last decade the Soviets have built 140,000 missiles for these installations...
...ATF is expected to have the same dogfight handling power as the F16...
...NATO doctrines with names like Follow-on Force Attack and Win Early, or the generic name interdiction, emphasize immediate counterattack behind the lines of a Warsaw Pact advance...
...Israeli pilots also do not fight outnumbered: Israel has more combat aircraft than Syria and Jordan combined...
...only about three percent of enemy missiles struck home...
...Depending on who does the calculating, Warsaw Pact tactical aircraft outnumber NATO's two or three to one...
...Even then planes were still built like flying canoes...
...Other fighters may be the least of your problems...
...And they cite the most powerful argument of all: if we're going to be outnumbered, can we have anything less than the best possible aircraft...
...Only one hit...
...the House defense bill minimized B2 funds and cut the ATF altogether...
...and Aegis's inability to determine the nature of the target held true even after the Airbus had closed to within 20 miles...
...The Threat is beginning to build aircraft with true lookdown, shoot-down capability, and the purpose of this airplane is to remove that threat...
...Unlike bomber or transport pilots, fighter jocks are glory hounds and individualists...
...Taking high R&D into consideration is essential to making rational choices about a project's worth relative to the defense resources consumed...
...Proponents say "remotely piloted vehicle," emphasizing that microcomputers and digital transmission now make it possible to control RPVs from ground stations, not just send them on preprogrammed courses...
...The $35 million is quoted in 1985 dollars, which equates to $44 million today...
...Because their passive sensors employ few moving parts, heat-seekers are cheap: Sidewinders cost about $55,000 and Stingers about $40,000...
...If Congress lets it...
...But one cannot help fearing the rising curve in antiaircraft technology represents a threat air power advocates are simply trying to wish away...
...The plan is that long before Soviet fighters can draw close enough to target an ATF visually, it will unleash a hail of Amraams...
...These are the airplanes a World War I ace would have given his left arm just to see...
...The Soviet Union now builds similar missiles...
...Backers of these projects say their aircraft will withstand missile onslaughts by foiling radar guidance with their stealth and by flying high above the limited range of heat-seekers...
...Not only would that deprive the service of seats for pilots...
...Are there enough...
...Until recently, of the U.S...
...Then military contractors began to merge...
...But somebody's got to pay for R&D...
...But in this case, a Pentagon price increase appears justified...
...During the Vietnam War, U.S...
...In 1912 the American colonel Isaac Newton Lewis fitted his famous aircooled machine gun to a Wright Biplane...
...But after the missiles are away, these doors shut and the fighter changes course sharply, maneuvering at random...
...The U.S...
Vol. 21 • September 1989 • No. 8
