Posted on 07/01/2002 7:33:44 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Faced with the possibility that the Pentagon may order cuts to its prize program, the F-22 Raptor fighter, the Air Force is billing the plane's capabilities as a precision strike bomber.In an interview with Defense Week, Air Force Secretary James Roche said Lockheed Martin's F-22 will be as adept at supplying precision air support to ground troops as it will be at clearing the skies of enemy fighter planes.
In fact, Air Force leaders are casting the F-22, which is slated for deployment in 2005, as a multi-role aircraft that will be a fighter par excellence, a bomber, and even a surveillance aircraft.
Sitting in an armchair in his Pentagon office, Roche told Defense Week that the next-generation F-22, with its proposed speed, stealth and advanced avionics, will be a perfect match for the Army's lighter, more deployable future forces.
"The Army's new doctrine of having dispersed, smaller forces; we're trying to tailor an Air Force to do that," he said. "That's the future we want. We want the F-22 to be something that operates deep, that hunts mobiles, that supports the small Army teams, whether they're Special Forces or otherwise."
One of the biggest lessons from the war in Afghanistan is that the U.S. military still has a long way to go in finding and destroying targets that don't sit still. The F-22 will be key in addressing that deficiency, say service officials.
Another lesson from Afghanistan is that the best sensors for finding targets, moving or otherwise, are the eyeballs in the heads of young commandos, whether Air Force Combat Controllers or Special Operations Forces troops from the other services.
Roche wants to equip these ground soldiers, commonly referred to as "the sergeants," with better targeting and communications equipment that can burst transmit to F-22 pilots tearing through the stratosphere at supersonic speeds.
But for the F-22 to really excel as the P-47 Thunderbolt or Sturmovik—the U.S. and Soviet close-support stars in World War II—of the 21st century, it will need the Small Diameter Bomb, a developmental weapon so precise it will only weigh only 250 pounds. An F-22 could carry eight of the small bombs, compared to two 1,000-pound GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions in its internal bays.
A flight of two SDB-armed F-22s would give a combat controller 16 highly precise munitions, Roche said.
"It turns out the F-22, because it has certain capabilities, and had a partial air-to-ground capability designed in from day one, because it can fly so high, and with super cruise it can get to one of these sergeants and get a weapon in the basket very, very quickly," he said. "If someone comes up to bother you, you can shoot him down, [or] you can escape."
The options to fight or flee aren't open to all current Air Force aircraft, Roche said. The F-117 Nighthawk, for example, is vulnerable during the day and lacks the speed to run and the agility to fight. The B-2 Spirit is also too slow to run away from a threat, Roche said.
That's important to keep in mind, Roche said, because Afghanistan—with its paltry air defenses—is probably not a paradigm for future conflict. The skies over Iraq, for example, would be far more dangerous.
Although supporters of the older airplanes would say that the U.S. system of AWACS, tankers and current fighters such as the F-15C Eagle could protect the F-117 or B-2, the Air Force is bent on having an aircraft that can operate independently, deep in enemy territory.
"This whole notion of our concept of the F-22 is really, if we could, we would borrow the Navy expression and say it's an F/A-22," Roche said, referring to the sea service's designation for the F/A-18 Hornet, denoting its roles as both fighter and attack aircraft.
Long legs
Nevertheless, the Air Force is having to defend its goal of procuring 339 Raptors, a number Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said may have to be trimmed down. Speaking last month on Capitol Hill, Roche said the Air Force welcomes the challenge of defending its pet fighter in internal Pentagon debates.
"People refer to the F-22 as short-legged," Roche said. "We're trying to convince the world that when you compare the F-22 to an F-16 or an F-18 ... [that] the F-22 has at least three times the range of everything else" because it carries its weapons inside, where they don't cause drag, and it has more fuel-efficient engines.
The only time the F-15, F-16 Fighting Falcon, or F-18 can boast a comparable range with the F-22, said Roche is "when these planes have no weapons and they're useless and heading home."
While the Air Force sees the F-22 as the best way to kill moving targets such as Scud launchers or mobile surface-to-air missile batteries deep in enemy territory, a new version of the Raptor may be even more potent, Roche said.
Delta wing F-22
Called the FB-22, it would haul three times more bombs almost three times farther than the original Raptor, returning to the Air Force a capability it lost when it retired the F-111 medium bomber.
The two-pilot FB-22, which offers a "dramatic increase in capability," could haul 30 small diameter bombs to a range of 1,600 miles, Roche said.
Although it could still supercruise, fly supersonic without using afterburners, it would be slower and less maneuverable than the original F-22, Roche said, having a five-G wing instead of a nine-G wing.
"It's a candidate, and we want to analyze is it worth developing it, or is it better to just have pairings of regular F-22s," he said. "Both can fight, both can run away from a fight if it looks like a fight not worth having, or I've run out of weapons, where something like a B-2 cannot."
The service is analyzing whether it wants the FB-22 and, if it does, whether they would come out of the Air Force's currently planned force of F-22s. Building a bomber version of the Raptor will not hurt the U.S. efforts to rule the sky, he said.
"The point we're going to make is, we get air superiority for free with the F-22," Roche said. "We'll actually have reversed the mission and it will be done at modest, minimal costs on the regular 22."
Bombers not needed
Roche was adamant that the service's huge tactical air programs—it also intends to buy 1,763 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters—are not hurting other aircraft programs such as bombers, tankers and transports.
"Even if you look at the current estimates of the costs of the FB-22, you're talking about getting five to seven of those for the price of one B-2," he said. Considering that a B-2 costs around $2 billion, the cost of a single FB-22 would run between $286 million and $400 million.
Roche said he agrees with current plans not to produce a new bomber until after 2030.
"We have no need to build a new bomber for many, many, many years," he said. "We can take out fixed-point targets so many ways it's kind of silly."
Although the JSF will not be as capable in the deep-strike mission as F-22, Roche said it "would be a nice complement" thanks to its internal carriage of weapons, which equates to less drag, better fuel efficiency and fewer trips to the tanker.
"The JSF is fine, but it's not as stealthy, doesn't fly as high, isn't as fast, and, by the way, it's range is only 100 miles more, that's 700 miles. The F-22's is 600 miles, so, there's not a whole lot there," he said.
While the Air Force plans to eventually replace the A-10 and the F-16 with the JSF, the need is not nearly as urgent as getting the F-22.
"Right now, if we say, `Well, we'll wait for the JSF,' then forget the going deep after the mobiles," he said. "We could do some half-hearted attempts with the 117, but you're not going to fly as high, you're not going to fly as long, they like to fly at night time ... they can be shot down if they're seen."
One area where the JSF may be comparable to the F-22 is information gathering. Roche emphasized that the two aircraft will also be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets.
"They will be vacuuming up so much information" that the service is already studying how to process that information in real time and how to electronically debrief the aircraft after missions and archive their data.
You know, that seems awfully different than the current air support platform, the A-10, which flies low, and slow, loitering over the area with its big-ass, tank-eating cannon.
A:
Because it doesn't generate enough profit.
Make money for LockMart.
BWAAAAAHAHAHA! Try 15-20.
As I recall, if not for Desert Storm, the Air Force had planned to move the A-10 to the National Guard and then get rid of it completely. And, as I heard it, then the Army wanted the CAS mission and the A-10's, so the AF kept the A-10's around just to keep them out of Army hands.
It seems to have been deliberately weaned from the budget and deprived of upgrades. I wonder what's happened to A-10 pilot's careers in the last decade?
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