Posted on 12/04/2014 3:20:25 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
High flying and fast, the F-22 Raptor stealth jet is by far the most lethal fighter America has ever built. But the Raptor—and indeed all U.S. fighters—have a potential Achilles’ heel, according to a half-dozen current and former Air Force officials. The F-22’s long range air-to-air missiles might not be able to hit an enemy aircraft, thanks to new enemy radar jamming techniques.
The issue has come to the fore as tensions continue to rise with Russia and a potential conflict between the great powers is once again a possibility—even if a remote one.
“We—the U.S. [Department of Defense]—haven’t been pursuing appropriate methods to counter EA [electronic attack] for years,” a senior Air Force official with extensive experience on the F-22 told The Daily Beast. “So, while we are stealthy, we will have a hard time working our way through the EA to target [an enemy aircraft such as a Russian-built Sukhoi] Su-35s and our missiles will have a hard time killing them.”
The problem is that many potential adversaries such as the Chinese and the Russians have developed advanced digital radio frequency memory (DRFM) jammers. These jammers, which effectively memorize an incoming radar signal and repeat it back to the sender, seriously hamper the performance of friendly radars.
Worse, these new jammers essentially blind the small radars found onboard air-to-air missiles like the Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM, which is the primary long-range weapon for all U.S. and most allied fighter planes.
That means it could take several missile shots to kill an enemy fighter, even for an advanced stealth aircraft like the Raptor. “While exact Pk [probability of kill] numbers are classified, let’s just say that I won’t be killing these guys one for one,” the senior Air Force official said. It’s the “same issue” for earlier American fighters like the F-15, F-16, or F/A-18.
Another Air Force official with experience on the stealthy new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter agreed. “AMRAAM’s had some great upgrades over the years, but at the end of the day, it’s old technology and wasn’t really designed with today’s significant EA in mind,” this official said.
Like boxers, every missile has a reach, a range, a limit to how far it can hit. In the not-too-distant future, the AMRAAM might also be out-ranged by new weapons that are being developed around the world. Particularly, Russia is known to be developing an extremely long-range weapon called the K-100 that has far better reach than anything currently in existence.
“While we are stealthy, we will have a hard time targeting Russian Su-35s and our missiles will have a hard time killing them.” The problem is not a new one. The Pentagon has historically always prioritized the development of new fighters over the development new weapons—it’s a uniquely American blind spot. During the 1970s, the then brand new F-15A Eagle carried the same antiquated armament as the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom II. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the F-15 received a weapon in the form of the AMRAAM that could take full advantage of its abilities. The same applies to short-range weapons—it wasn’t until the early 2000s with the introduction of the AIM-9X that the U.S. had a dogfighting weapon that could match or better the Russian R-73 Archer missile.
The Air Force officials all said that some of the American missiles would get through during a fight—there is no question of that—but it would take a lot more weapons than anyone ever expected. The problem is that fighter aircraft don’t carry that many missiles.
The Raptor carries six AMRAAMs and two shorter range AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles inside its weapons bays. At the moment, the F-35 carries only four AMRAAM missiles inside its weapons bays, but that might be expanded to six in the future. Older fighters like the Boeing F-15 Eagle carry no more than eight missiles—while the F-16 usually carries no more than six weapons.
That means that if a fighter has to fire—for instance—three missiles to kill a single enemy fighter, the Pentagon is facing a serious problem.
“Getting a first shot is one thing,” said a former Air Force fighter pilot with extensive experience with Russian weapons. “Needing another shot when you have expended your load is another when your force structure is limited in terms of the number of platforms available for a given operation.”
There are some potential solutions, but all of them mean spending more money to develop new missiles. former Air Force intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula said it’s “critical” that the U.S. and its allied move “air-to-air weapons into a future where they can effectively deal with adversary electronic attack.”
One relatively simple fix would be to develop a missile that picks out its targets using radars with a completely different frequency band. Current fighter radars and missiles operate on what is called the X-band, but they don’t necessarily have to. “Getting out of X band is on option,” said one senior Air Force official.
The Pentagon could also develop a new missile that combines multiple types of sensors such as infrared and radar into the same weapon—which has been attempted without much success in the past.
Right now, the Defense Department—lead by the Navy—is working to increase the range of the AIM-9X version of the Sidewinder by 60 percent to give the Pentagon’s fighter fleet some sort of counter to the jamming problem. But even with the extended reach, the modified Sidewinder won’t have anywhere close to the range of an AMRAAM.
The other option is to stuff fighters like the F-22 and F-35 with more missiles that are smaller. Lockheed Martin, for example, is developing a small long-range air-to-air missile called the “Cuda” that could double or triple the number of weapons carried by either U.S. stealth fighter. “Look to a new generation of U.S. air-to-air missiles, like Cuda, to neutralize any potential numerical advantage,” one senior industry official said.
The industry official said that despite the small size, new weapons like the Cuda can offer extremely impressive range because they don’t have an explosive warhead—they just run into the target and destroy it with sheer kinetic energy.
But the senior Air Force official expressed deep skepticism that such a weapon could be both small and far-reaching. “I doubt you can solve range and the need for a large magazine with the same missile,” he said.
This official added that future weapons would be far better at countering enemy jamming—so much so that future fighters will not need to have the sheer speed and maneuverability of an aircraft like the Raptor. “I think top end speed, super cruise, and acceleration will all decline in importance as weapons advance in range and speed,” he said.
For a military that’s committed hundreds of billions of dollars to such advanced fighters, such developments might not exactly be welcome news.
How do UK missiles like the meteor and the asraam compare? I know the latter has an infrared guidance system as well as radar.
Would any other president, even Carter, ever leaked this? If you were a high level advisor on a meeting with some members of this regime and this was discussed...then yo uhh saw this article, how would this make you feel?...then you would think to yourself or talk to a close associate...wow, if I complain I know I’ll be fired and audited...
That is where we are now. Any story you see about our military that is negative has been leaked. We cannot have any advantage over any other country.
It all comes down to how many genius level engineers you have and how many dollars you have to spend.
We have lots of both...but do we have the will?
If we spend every spare dollar on social programs we will fall dangerously behind.
Russia, China, India and Israel all have the brain power and the money to create super weapons... just like we do.
If there I a problem I would suggest to engage one of the Israeli scientists. Having brilliant minds endowed by their “CREATORS” (plural) I have little doubt that they may come up with a solution.
The ASRAAM doesn’t have a radar mode, IIRC.
Ping
None of those countries have the industrial base and budget the US has. Three of them have very large quantities of obsolete equipment, so replacing them eats up your budget. Israel has a relatively small budget, so its unfeasible for them to develop multiple types of cutting-edge equipment unless you are talking co-development.
What you say is correct.
The US could out spend them by a large margin... but my point was we are diverting too much to social programs and not enough is being spent on R&D.
Israel and India have teamed up on many military projects.
Russia and China just spend what is needed on advanced weaponry and ignore social programs so they manage to turn out some great stuff.
Analyzing radar signals in real-time is quite a job!
Takes very powerful processors...
If you go by government/international data, the US still spends a larger chunk of its GDP on defense than other countries, which when given its economy, is a huge figure.
Since the end of the Cold War, issue really seems to be defense programs turning into social programs. Pretty much every program now is decided by its clout in Congress and the number of jobs it creates...resulting in an over-expensive and inefficient industry.
Our Chinese are better than their Chinese.
Yup, so much waste... just imagine what we could do if the funds were well spent.
We spend a lot more $$, but a lot of that is personnel costs. Defense is clearly not a priority for this administration.
Personnel costs are a fact across the world, more so in countries that are relatively new to ‘networked’ systems. The likes of China and Russia need to offer more to their citizens if they want them to stay as officers in the military rather than seek greener pastures elsewhere.
Lol, yes, that was effective on Star Trek.
Not so much in the real world....take a fraction of a second to adapt to new frequency.
Sounds to me that I would start working on a missile equivalent of “brilliant pebbles” that would be the size of a paper towel cardboard tube, carry no explosives at all, and be designed to fly right into the engine intake of an enemy aircraft. Where it hits might be a lot more important than the size of the bang.
The U.S. Military and our Aerospace industry have known about stealth technology at least twenty years before the rest of the world learned about it during Gulf War One.
I’m sure that during that time they were ready planning on ways to detect and defeat the stealth capabilities of other country’s.
Just sounds like unreasonable panic to me or the need to gin up funding for another black project.
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