Air Force: It’s time to pull the plug on JSTARS; Congress: Not so fast

Space News ^ | 3/31/18 | Sandra Erwin

[LibWhacker]

This article originally appeared in the March 26, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson calls it a “bold move”: cancel a $6.5 billion purchase of high-tech ground surveillance aircraft and shift that mission to a network dubbed “advanced battle management system.”

The argument the Air Force makes in its 2019 budget request for not buying new aircraft to replace the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, is rather straightforward. It can’t survive modern air defenses.

The Air Force in 2011 started a five-year study that looked at options for replacing the aging fleet of 17 airliner-size JSTARS. Up until a year ago, it was moving down the conventional path of selecting a new airplane to take over when the current fleet is taken out of service in 2024.

At some point during this period of analysis, the realization set in that a new JSTARS would be useless in conflicts against adversaries that have advanced air defenses.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein explained this thinking during a recent congressional hearing. JSTARS today flies in “uncontested” airspace over the Middle East, “where I can actually place any aircraft I have in the inventory anywhere I want and fly it for as long as I want, because there’s nothing that can actually take it out or threaten it.”

The Trump administration’s national defense strategy directs the military to focus on “contested environments.” That means figuring out how to fight in places that are within the range of Chinese or Russian surface-to-air missiles. That would make JSTARS a nonstarter, Goldfein argued. “They know what our asymmetric advantages are and they’ve invested in capabilities to take those away from us.” Their strategy is to “hold us off at ranges where we can either no longer perform our mission.”

If JSTARS were taken down during a conflict, U.S. troops on the ground would be “blind to enemy activity.”

All this led the Air Force to conclude that the traditional “platform solution” is not going to work, Wilson told lawmakers.

JSTARS’s ground moving target indicator and battle management command functions could be done elsewhere by other platforms, she said. The future battle-management network would be a vast improvement over JSTARS because it would bring in data from sensors in space, from C-130s, drones and F-35 fighters. War commanders want this, Wilson said. “Fuse all of that data to give you a much more comprehensive picture on what’s going on on the ground.” Operators “don’t really care what platform it came off of.”

But recent exchanges on Capitol Hill suggest the Air Force is having a hard time selling this vision. Lawmakers who represent JSTARS bases and contractors are pushing back hard. Others don’t really understand what the Air Force wants to do. And because JSTARS supports troops on the ground, the debate appears to be turning into a repeat of the A-10 Thunderbolt II; Air Force leaders wanted to retire the close-air support aircraft but Congress has stubbornly kept it alive.

“We understand the projected threats to our forces are real and that the Air Force has submitted a budget that does not include JSTARS recap. However, completely walking away from this program may prove to be an unacceptable level of risk to our warfighters for this committee,” said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Armed Services tactical forces subcommittee.

The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Niki Tsongas of Massachussetts, questioned the rationale for terminating the new version of JSTARS. If threats are as serious as they seem, why isn’t the Air Force eliminating its fourth-generation fighters or other reconnaissance systems based on commercial aircraft?

Tsongas also called out the Air Force for downplaying the risks involved with the alternative network plan, “specifically the time risk, the cost risk and potential vulnerability of such a network to jamming or cyber attack,” she said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Anthony Ierardi, director of force structure, resources, and assessments, said current JSTARS aircraft will stay in service for several more years until the new battle-command network is available. This is projected to happen around 2035.

“I acknowledge your concern with the timeline,” said Ierardi. The plan includes a “graceful degradation” in the numbers of JSTARS while the battle-management network is being developed.

Under repeated questioning from Turner and Tsongas at a hearing in early March, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris Jr., deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, acknowledged that the 2011 analysis “underestimated the pace of change in the threats” and officials needed to come up with a plan B.

Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) reminded Air Force officials that soldiers and Marines could be endangered if JSTARS was removed from service. “And I hope you guys will really rethink this because we really cannot accept a gap and our capabilities until we have a replacement,” Kelly told Air Force leaders. “We shouldn’t chase shiny objects until we have one that works,” he said. “We still have counterinsurgency fight going on and we can’t afford to just fight a peer fight, we have to fight them both.”

The JSTARS debate, meanwhile, has stirred speculation about the possibility of shifting missions to space. That has been attempted before, unsuccessfully. The Air Force in the late 1990s teamed up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Reconnaissance Office to develop a constellation of radar remote-sensing satellites that would provide global coverage. The project was nixed in the 2000 budget.

Fred Kennedy, director of DARPA’s tactical technology office, said it was “probably a good idea to cancel it back then” because the technology was not mature. He said it might be worth revising the idea of deploying more radar sensors in space. “Now we have the communications infrastructure, the ground segment,” he told SpaceNews in a recent interview. “I simply have to plant sub-constellations into the network, the nodes that we want. [Radiofrequency] nodes, or optical sensing nodes,” he said. “I‘ll be able to use the resources of the space internet, the processing and storage. I don’t see why we couldn’t plant a node with a ground moving target indicator…I think we’re smart enough to figure out how to do it now.”

On how to replace JSTARS, he said, “there is certainly a possibility of moving that mission to space and doing the control segment somewhere. You would have global coverage as opposed to limited airborne coverage today.”

There are tradeoffs, however. “You have to give up some advantages of airborne platforms like having to look from thousands of kilometers away. It would be an interesting trade in terms of what kind of radar we build,” he said. “It might be interesting to do a demonstration of an RF mission of this class just to see if it can be done.”

John Johnson, former vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, said some of the JSTARS functions could be moved to space. “The Air Force and the [National Reconnaissance Office] should take a look at that,” he told SpaceNews.

Northrop Grumman is currently the prime contractor and systems integrator for JSTARS. For the recapitalization program that the Air Force wants to terminate, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are proposing business jet concepts, whereas Boeing pitched a 737-size platform. Contractors still plan to submit proposals should Congress keep the program alive over the objections of the Air Force.

“Recapitalization of programs is always contentious,” Johnson said. “It’s the competitive nature of the defense industry. There’s always somebody out there who says they have a better widget.”

As to what the Air Force is trying to do, “I applaud them,” Johnson said. “They are trying to eliminate singular mission platforms. What they are doing I think is the right thing: Put everything into an integrated architecture,” he said.

It will not be easy, though. “It will be really a struggle,” Johnson said.

[Paladin2]

Build the Wall.

[SkyPilot]

Contractors still plan to submit proposals should Congress keep the program alive over the objections of the Air Force

And there you have it. Boeing has bought off the politicians again. The Air Force does not want new JSTARS platforms. This is a weapon system that began design phase back in the mid 80's, and was first fielded during the first Gulf War. It has done its job, and the Air Force is correct: it is too vulnerable and there are better solutions.

However, just as Boeing stole the tanker contract from EADS (after EADS won the source selection fair and square), crooked Boeing is going to strong arm its bought and paid for politicians into giving it some more Billion dollar contract to build something that the Air Force itself is fighting to not purchase and to save the taxpayers money.

[DuncanWaring]

EADS did not win the tanker decision fair-and-square; the Air Force violated their own rules on proposal evaluation to give them the initial win.

[Revolutionary]

I built the whole future JSTARS replacement structure for the AF back in 1996. For political reasons it has been a closely guarded secret. They only mention a small piece of the structure in the article and the wrong concept for the spaceborne portion. It took a few years for one of the key enablers, but the tech is available now.
The people that talk this way about satellites have no understanding of orbital mechanics.
I also showed them how to get an entirely new tanker fleet for free, but he that we will not speak his name messed that up.

[FreeReign]

Ah JSTARS. Those were the days at NGC.

[Midwesterner53]

When did the AF become concerned with war fighting? The most politically correct of all the services has been concerning itself more with cross dressers being welcomed, heathen “chapels” at the Academy, making sure lesbians and homosexuals are in the highest and most influential positions, etc.

[SkyPilot]

Oh that is such claptrap.

Boeing protested on bogus grounds. They whined about every detail of the source selection that EADS won, and like unethical lawyers, looked for any loophole to latch onto their half cocked arguments, including specious claims about fuel costs and "illegal" subsidies (which were not illegal).

Boeing stealing the multi-billion dollar contract from EADS was pure politics. Pure. Politics.

And now.....Boeing is doing a terrible job delivering the aircraft. The Air Force is livid. Boeing has the money in the bank, so they no longer seem to care. They are focusing resources on their lucrative commercial contracts, and are telling US national security that basically they will "Get around to it" when they are good and ready.

[OrioleFan]

I worked on the original radar processor for JSTARS in the 80s. Our engineers converted a mainframe size parallel processor to a 6”x9” double-sided card and added a special function to process radar data. 5 of these cards plus 3 memory cards and a driver card were put in a ATR rack. I converted memory diagnostics from the Advanced Flexible Processor mainframe to the uAFP. I also worked side by side with the hardware engineers exploiting hardware features to create special purpose diagnostics. The language was Micro Code Assembly Language. The processor flew on the prototypes and early production models. It was later replaced by another vendors processor I was told.

[lodi90]

The GOP filled up the omnibus bill with BILLIONS in junk the DOD didn’t ask for and refused to fund the wall. Now DOD under Mattis is refusing to help POTUS on the wall! How about that tag team!

[SkyPilot]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

I remember the search for a suitable platform for JSTARS. The AWACS System Program Office assisted at first, but JSTARS took off on it own very quickly.

There were other aircraft considered, but in the end the basic KC-135/707 airframe won out.

I think the fact that the Navy TACAMO chose the 135/707 airframe was the kicker.

[lodi90]

They are focusing resources on their lucrative commercial contracts, and are telling US national security that basically they will “Get around to it” when they are good and ready.

---

I imagine they will soon have some excess capacity when the Chicoms and/or Iranians cancel orders.

[FreeReign]

Boeing protested on bogus grounds. They whined about every detail of the source selection that EADS won, and like unethical lawyers, looked for any loophole to latch onto their half cocked arguments, including specious claims about fuel costs and "illegal" subsidies (which were not illegal). Boeing stealing the multi-billion dollar contract from EADS was pure politics. Pure. Politics.

Yup. NGC AND teammate EADS.

[Paladin2]

DC is filled to the gills with anti-Trumpers.

[fedupjohn]

Bttt

[2CAVTrooper]

No, Boeing went to their paid assets in Congress and had them force the Airforce to rewrite the requirements after the fact in order to favor Boeing.

[SkyPilot]

I imagine they will soon have some excess capacity when the Chicoms and/or Iranians cancel orders.

You're more right than you know.

And yes, Boeing was 100% behind the Iranian "deal." Who cares that Obama sold out our nation?

Boeing had a chance to make some money.

Related: Trump moves to bar Boeing-Iran agreement

[SkyPilot]

Boeing went to their paid assets in Congress and had them force the Airforce to rewrite the requirements after the fact in order to favor Boeing.

Bingo.

[Pining_4_TX]

This is why just piling more money on the defense department is a waste. The purchasing is almost all political now. Defense contractors have strategically placed facilities in various congressional districts, so that they will have several congressmen in their pockets just in case the military decides it really doesn’t want what they are selling. It’s a giant scam.

[OrioleFan]

It was one of the most fun projects I ever worked on. I’m an assembly language programmer from the early 70’s, predominantly on Control Data Corporation mainframes.