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Subject: USAF CoS Prefers F-35, UAS and NGB. Also say USAF has enough TACAIR capability
DarthAmerica    5/27/2009 10:45:26 PM
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz said increasing production rates for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and developing the next-generation bomber are at the top of his wish list of projects to fund if the service had more money.

SOURCE:
h*tp://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=aerospacedaily&id=news/SCHWARTZ052009.xml&headline=Schwartz%20Wish%20List:%20Boost%20F-35,%20Plan%20NGB


Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on the Air Force?s $160.5 billion fiscal 2010 budget request May 19, Schwartz said service leaders felt they had enough tactical aircraft capability despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates? plans to halt F-22 Raptor procurement at 187 aircraft.

The Air Force chief said the service?s leadership believed it was a ?prudent opportunity to accelerate the retirement of older aircraft.? The FY ?10 budget calls for retiring 250 F-15s, F-16s and A-10s, enabling the Air Force to redistribute more than $3.5 billion over the next six years to modernize combat air forces into a ?smaller but more capable force,? Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told lawmakers in joint written testimony.

Schwartz did say more money would make it easier and faster to upgrade remaining legacy aircraft and make modifications to the F-22 until the F-35 starts rolling off the line in large numbers.

Schwartz said the Air Force would like to see F-35 production boosted to at least 80 aircraft and perhaps as many as 110 per year before the F-16s start retiring in large numbers.

Committee members, including Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Rep. John McHugh (N.Y.), the senior Republican on the panel, worried about producing and flying an aircraft while it was still being tested.

Donley conceded budget constraints compelled the Air Force to make some difficult calls. If there was more money ?we might have made some different choices,? Schwartz added. But both leaders insisted the Air Force was not short-changing itself.

The chief of staff said his wish list also included developing plans for the future long-range strike capability. ?We need, through the QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] and the NPR [Nuclear Posture Review] to get our secretary of defense comfortable with the parameters of what we propose for that platform.?

Gates canceled funding for a next-generation bomber study, which Schwartz said was of concern to the Air Force ?Once we get him comfortable with the parameters ? range, payload, manned, unmanned, nuclear, non-nuclear, low observable, very low observable ? then we need to proceed aggressively with that program.?

Schwartz said the Air Force also needs to explore using additional automation in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to reduce manpower. He noted that currently one crew operates a single UAS.
 
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DarthAmerica    SYSTEMS BASED APPROACH   6/8/2009 9:28:42 PM

Press: Two real quick questions. One, the airborne FACs you just mentioned, would they be in AWACS aircraft? Or what type of aircraft would they be in, number one? And number two, given the size of the JDAM and its slightly reduced accuracy compared to a laser-guided bomb, does it become of increasingly less value when we start talking about urban CAS?

General Moseley: That's a great question. Let me take the first one.

The airborne FACs are in a mix of A-10s, F-16s, F-15Es, F-14s, F-18s, all of the Navy, Marine and Air Force aircraft that we can bring to bear that have FAC A-qualified pilots and crews, we'll use them. In fact they're up there right now, again today. We started this so we could stay over the top of the city and provide support.

So if you check into the CAS stack you may be working with a Marine in an F-18 or Navy crew in an F-14 of an Air Force pilot in an A-10. You won't know the difference. You'll just know the call sign and the location. So I think that's another wonderful testimony to joint training, joint doctrine, joint CAS, and being able to work the command and control to get the airplanes up there.

If I sound like a proud father, I am, because I am extremely proud of these guys because they really, really do a good job.

Your second question about the JDAM, no, we've used the JDAM before in Afghanistan doing this same sort of work and we're using the JDAM every day.

The average miss distance on the JDAM has been about the length of the bomb. When some people say that we've got these GPS jammers up there, I find that's humorous also because we've killed every GPS jammer that's come up with a GPS weapon, so that hasn't worked out very well for them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seems like we are familiar with anti-"telemetry" issues and how to work around it.

 
-DA
 
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warpig       6/8/2009 11:23:55 PM


The PRCs have our telemetry protocols. ALL of them.


Herald


Please feel free to tell me what those two sentences mean.

 
 
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Herald12345    Reply to WP and to the amateur.   6/9/2009 4:22:42 AM


Press: Two real quick questions. One, the airborne FACs you just mentioned, would they be in AWACS aircraft? Or what type of aircraft would they be in, number one? And number two, given the size of the JDAM and its slightly reduced accuracy compared to a laser-guided bomb, does it become of increasingly less value when we start talking about urban CAS?


General Moseley: That's a great question. Let me take the first one.


The airborne FACs are in a mix of A-10s, F-16s, F-15Es, F-14s, F-18s, all of the Navy, Marine and Air Force aircraft that we can bring to bear that have FAC A-qualified pilots and crews, we'll use them. In fact they're up there right now, again today. We started this so we could stay over the top of the city and provide support.


So if you check into the CAS stack you may be working with a Marine in an F-18 or Navy crew in an F-14 of an Air Force pilot in an A-10. You won't know the difference. You'll just know the call sign and the location. So I think that's another wonderful testimony to joint training, joint doctrine, joint CAS, and being able to work the command and control to get the airplanes up there.


If I sound like a proud father, I am, because I am extremely proud of these guys because they really, really do a good job.


Your second question about the JDAM, no, we've used the JDAM before in Afghanistan doing this same sort of work and we're using the JDAM every day.


The average miss distance on the JDAM has been about the length of the bomb. When some people say that we've got these GPS jammers up there, I find that's humorous also because we've killed every GPS jammer that's come up with a GPS weapon, so that hasn't worked out very well for them.




----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Seems like we are familiar with anti-"telemetry" issues and how to work around it.




 

-DA


To the amateur. I'm not talking about navaids, I'm talking about telemetry. That just shows you have no clue.. 
 
To WP. Hardware you seize is hardware that you can examine.. It drives your shopping lists.
 
 
 
 
Add to that, this:
 
 
That should not be possible for them yet; and yet there it is.
 
Herald

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Some of these flyballs we fail to field are critical.
 
 
 
 
 
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DarthAmerica    Vitriol not necessary   6/9/2009 10:19:34 AM
To the amateur. I'm not talking about navaids, I'm talking about telemetry. That just shows you have no clue.. 
To WP. Hardware you seize is hardware that you can examine.. It drives your shopping lists.




Add to that, this:


That should not be possible for them yet; and yet there it is.

Herald



 


To the person who still doesn't know how to conduct himself in an open forum where different opinions are present. You greatly underestimate the ability of some people to recognize obfuscation. Rather than typing out vague out of context words such as "protocal" and "telemetry" mixed in with your usual sarcasm and vitriol. Try explaining EXACTLY what it is you are trying to say. That way we can all better determine one of three possibilities. You are trolling, don't know what your talking about or have a legitimate discussion point. Allow me to show you how that is done.

When I mention the GPS System, JDAMs and jammers. I am demonstrating in plain english a live system that depends on telematics, telecommands and encryption thereof  to function properly. We discussed how an actual enemy might try to usurp that functionality and what the USAF did about it so that it could continue fighting. In other words, complete acknowledgement of both sides of the ECM vs ECCM fight where the side with greater systems level dominance can still operate and fight when challenged by niche capability. 

What you are trying to say behind a lot of out of context statements that are beginning to indicate YOU may not understand the subject as well as you think is that in the presence of electronic warfare, UAVs will not work because they will not be able to receive data from the controller. In the abstract that isn't exactly untrue, but you failed to provide any context which in effect makes your post meaningless. It would be like saying the P-51D is a great fighter. OK, in 1945, yes. In 2009, nope. You need to learn context.

I deal directly with "telemetry" everyday so allow me to put this in context and ENDIT as Warpig so eloquently suggested. If we send UAVs into war with an opponent that poses good EW capability. We better make sure our ELINT and other technical intel capabilities are up to the task of accurately assessing the enemies capability so that we can institute proper security protocols to ensure the operation of our warfighting equipment in the face of enemy and friendly EW. This is what the GPS and GPS Jammers post was demonstrating.

It is not new that other nations spy. Including allies. The PRC being no exception. Showing examples of that simply means they have an active interest in maintaining a credible military capability across a wide range of military disciplines that they feel are important to their national interest. It's something we need to carefully protect to the extent possible.

Showing a Chinese MQ-1 clone is not any support for where the PRC should or shouldn't be. Predators and Reapers are not military secrets. The Chinese like everybody else has had a chance to witness the benefit and utility of UAVs over the battlefield and are logically trying to incorporate that into their military doctrine so that they can be more effective. Without any details however, all you did is show a UAV and say "They shouldn't be able to do that". OK, why not? If there some built in inferiority to PRC Military related R&D? If so, try to put into context for us. Otherwise, why is a PRC MQ-1 in 2009 any different from a USSR Mig-29 and its cloned avionics? All nations adopt doctrine, technology and tactics in the interest of defense. It is no different from...

In search of Freedom, on September 06, 1976 Lt. Viktor  Ivanovich  Belenko piloted his Mig-25 (USSR Product #84) from the 513th Fighter Regiment at the Siberian Base of Sakharovka, Soviet Air Defense Command and defected to the United States. He landing the Mig-25 in Japan under adverse weather conditions. No Westerner had ever been close to a Mig-25 and much about the aircraft were unknown. 
It was the one plane most feared in the West. In 1973, US. Air Force Secretary Robert C. Seamans deemed the Mig-25 as "Probably the best interceptor in production in the world today". In 1967 a stripped down Mig-25 set a world record by achieving a speed of 1,852 MPH and another aircraft set the altitude record by soaring to 118,898 feet. Lt Viktor Belenko with very low fuel landed his Mig-25 at Hakodate Airport in northern Japan, running off the end of the short runway. His defection to the West gave the United States the opportunity to closely examine the Mig-25.




Or the Following which is also from SP...


Compromised hardware is nothing new.
 
  
What you are doing is talking a lot and saying nothing. Also, I'm sure everyone remembers the boy who cried wolf ...

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry's numbering system[1]). Theprotagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by calling out "Wolf!". Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock (and in some versions the boy). The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.
In reference to this tale, the phrase to "cry wolf" has long been a common idiom in English, described in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,[2] and modern English dictionaries.[3][4] The phrase "boy who cried wolf" has also become somewhat of a figure of speech, meaning that one is calling for help when he or she does not really need it. Also in common English there goes the saying: "Never cry wolf" to say that you never should lie, as in the above phrases.



....That was the logic behind Warpigs sarcasm about lets retire all DoD UAV/UCAVs in reply to your assertions that "they have our telemetry protocals". Now, ditch the insults, use some context or...



ENDIT


-DA 
 
 
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warpig       6/9/2009 3:09:17 PM

Okay, thanks, having participated in some FME and having benefitted from a whole lot of it, I think I can appreciate how useful it is to the enemy as a shortcut in his own UAS development and acquisition cycle, as well as his countermeasures development cycle.  Regarding the Chinese, I suppose there would be many other examples, such as their first UAS being based on Ryan AQM-34 Firebees shot down during and after Vietnam, and their recent HALE UAS that looks just like our RQ-4A Global Hawk.  Oh, wait, they copied that without having access to one of ours.  Oh well, so I guess that's not such a good example of them always having to copy us from captured hardware after all.

 

I wish I could make more of an input into this thread at this time, but I'm having difficulty just following what is being discussed becuase it seems to have slid across several topics, most recently including:

How useful UCASs are in various roles, including air superiority.

How secure are our communications links to control our UCASs.

How secure are our crypto keys from espionage.

How much the threat has exploited our hardware through FME.

 
 
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gf0012-aust    RedHen   6/9/2009 5:09:45 PM
there used to be an ex-USN operator on here who talked about the chinese doing a reverse FME on the Tomahawk.

 Williams lost technology on their small and micro-jets which ended up in chinese cruise missile and UAV's.

 
 
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ArtyEngineer       6/9/2009 7:15:15 PM

Okay, thanks, having participated in some FME and having benefitted from a whole lot of it, I think I can appreciate how useful it is to the enemy as a shortcut in his own UAS development and acquisition cycle, as well as his countermeasures development cycle.  Regarding the Chinese, I suppose there would be many other examples, such as their first UAS being based on Ryan AQM-34 Firebees shot down during and after Vietnam, and their recent HALE UAS that looks just like our RQ-4A Global Hawk.  Oh, wait, they copied that without having access to one of ours.  Oh well, so I guess that's not such a good example of them always having to copy us from captured hardware after all.


 


I wish I could make more of an input into this thread at this time, but I'm having difficulty just following what is being discussed becuase it seems to have slid across several topics, most recently including:


How useful UCASs are in various roles, including air superiority.


How secure are our communications links to control our UCASs.


How secure are our crypto keys from espionage.


How much the threat has exploited our hardware through FME.


 



In regards to the highlighted, I would have to say "Very Secure".  Heck even the slightest chance that a key has been compromised will initiate a complete purge and generation and issuance of new ones. Or at least thats what teh commo bubbas tell me ;)
 
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DarthAmerica       6/9/2009 7:43:53 PM




Okay, thanks, having participated in some FME and having benefitted from a whole lot of it, I think I can appreciate how useful it is to the enemy as a shortcut in his own UAS development and acquisition cycle, as well as his countermeasures development cycle.  Regarding the Chinese, I suppose there would be many other examples, such as their first UAS being based on Ryan AQM-34 Firebees shot down during and after Vietnam, and their recent HALE UAS that looks just like our RQ-4A Global Hawk.  Oh, wait, they copied that without having access to one of ours.  Oh well, so I guess that's not such a good example of them always having to copy us from captured hardware after all.


I wish I could make more of an input into this thread at this time, but I'm having difficulty just following what is being discussed becuase it seems to have slid across several topics, most recently including:


How useful UCASs are in various roles, including air superiority.


How secure are our communications links to control our UCASs.


How secure are our crypto keys from espionage.

How much the threat has exploited our hardware through FME.




 

In regards to the highlighted, I would have to say "Very Secure".  Heck even the slightest chance that a key has been compromised will initiate a complete purge and generation and issuance of new ones. Or at least thats what teh commo bubbas tell me ;)


Darn AE! I really didn't want to say that aloud even though it's pretty common knowledge considering there is no Distribution Restriction on the FM 11-53. But I'f I told you how many times I've been through this and much more strict COMSEC procedures just during deployment it would boggle the mind. Think about this. Just a single GT getting hit, a single aircraft crash, and the crypto isn't recoverable due to fire or just the plain fact that bad load plans and physics ejects stuff into oblivion, every single system gets purged by the 6 shop almost instantly. That doesn't even begin to get into other things that are done by SOP. Breaking into any of the secure communications protocols is extremely difficult. Staying in even more difficult. What's worse is if you have to emit in order to wage EW, there are a lot of people who's job it is to find and kill you and quite literally there is a bullseye on your head. So by no means does brief compromise invalidate a communications architecture that is as robust as this.

-DA 
 
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Herald12345    Not what exactly U'm saying AE.   6/9/2009 8:05:43 PM
We can change keys all we want or even scramble the algorithm til the cows come home, but when your HARDWARE is on the enemy workbench, he has a good idea of what your tech tree looks like.
 
Familiar to you would be, how our glide bomb kits work ore how our artillery fusing works. Some of those families trace their base design back to the American Civil War!
 
Engineers, (the good ones anyway) try to find a good solution and stick with it That goes for code logics HARDWIRED into our circuit cards as it does for how we design something as simple and critical as a breech block for new tube artillery weapon...   
 
I'm not going to sit here and let some amateur aerially dismiss exploits we ourselves use every day to thwart our enemies.  

We're immune because we can write a patch?
 
 
Battlefield network is battlefield exploit.
 
Its called the MIDWAY LESSON for a reason.

Herald

 
 
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ArtyEngineer    Darth   6/9/2009 8:12:44 PM
I absolutely hate everything to do with commo and crypto.  I try to stay as far away from it as possible as I live in fear of commiting some sort of violation!!!!  I did actually check I could say that before I did :)  Which talking about FM's you might like this, Im sure you are pretty squared away on all your FM's but here is a link to where you can get all FM's which are released for public distibution on one DVD,it also has links to all the non public which you can access via AKO:
 
 
Regards
 
Arty
 
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DarthAmerica       6/9/2009 9:13:05 PM

I absolutely hate everything to do with commo and crypto.  I try to stay as far away from it as possible as I live in fear of commiting some sort of violation!!!!  I did actually check I could say that before I did :)  Which talking about FM's you might like this, Im sure you are pretty squared away on all your FM's but here is a link to where you can get all FM's which are released for public distibution on one DVD,it also has links to all the non public which you can access via AKO:


Regards

Arty


Yeah I try always to stick to generalities here. Weather it's classification or civilian NDA you just never know when you go too far so it's just best to stay well clear IMHO. And I checked prior to my reply...;) Thanks for the link! 


-DA
 
 
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warpig       6/9/2009 10:03:45 PM

We can change keys all we want or even scramble the algorithm til the cows come home, but when your HARDWARE is on the enemy workbench, he has a good idea of what your tech tree looks like.

 

Familiar to you would be, how our glide bomb kits work ore how our artillery fusing works. Some of those families trace their base design back to the American Civil War!

 

Engineers, (the good ones anyway) try to find a good solution and stick with it That goes for code logics HARDWIRED into our circuit cards as it does for how we design something as simple and critical as a breech block for new tube artillery weapon...   

 

I'm not going to sit here and let some amateur aerially dismiss exploits we ourselves use every day to thwart our enemies.  




We're immune because we can write a patch?

 


 

Battlefield network is battlefield exploit.

 

Its called the MIDWAY LESSON for a reason.





Herald





 


 
This is one of the reasons reading your posts is so exasperating.  I am quite interested in reading what you have to say, but so often you seem completely oblivious to what others are actually saying, and you are arguing your own strawman opponent rather than the actual posts in the thread.  DA took explicit and detailed pains on several occasions to make abundantly clear that he most certainly does not at all think we are immune to all threats to our C3 of UASs.  Yet here you are once again charging off "proving" that we are not immune to all threats.  Congratulations, you have proved what we all knew all along, and all previously acknowledged all along, including DA in this very thread.  Still, I appreciate that the point is valid, and that you cited some interesting articles.  Yes, you are right, there are threats.  I certainly agree that China poses about the largest of these threats both in quality and quantity, fed in part by Chinese successes in foreign materiel acquisition and foreign materiel exploitation.
 
To Arty Engineer et al., I hope COMSEC procedures these days do a better job of discovering insiders like John Walker, because I'm thinking it's the "trusted agent" that's going to burn us most of the time, not the daily crypto load that might somehow be recovered from the wreckage of that MH-47 downed this morning (to make a hypothetical example, not that we actually lost one today).
 
 
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gf0012-aust    AE   6/9/2009 11:36:24 PM
you can encrypt the links and force an immediate purge - but that does not alter the fact that there are systems in operation today, which the stakeholder has been advised is unimpeachable - and yet their own safety routines have failed. if your UAV defaults to a gate closed or gate open (whatever is the safety trigger) then no amount of purging and resetting will fix the problem.  In fact, thats exactly whats happened.  A UAV goes AWOL and people frantically try a mid air reboot or flash boot in the hope that "ET" will reconect

" Home" for a UAV sometimes defaults to heading west over the mountains - not doing a boomerang

As we move to a 25gb comms future, its even more of an issue.  We're part of the US 2014-2018 vision, so they're not shy about telling us what does and doesn't work.

the reality is different from the brochure 
 
Quote    Reply

DarthAmerica       6/10/2009 12:49:00 AM

you can encrypt the links and force an immediate purge - but that does not alter the fact that there are systems in operation today, which the stakeholder has been advised is unimpeachable - and yet their own safety routines have failed. if your UAV defaults to a gate closed or gate open (whatever is the safety trigger) then no amount of purging and resetting will fix the problem.  In fact, thats exactly whats happened.  A UAV goes AWOL and people frantically try a mid air reboot or flash boot in the hope that "ET" will reconect

" Home" for a UAV sometimes defaults to heading west over the mountains - not doing a boomerang

As we move to a 25gb comms future, its even more of an issue.  We're part of the US 2014-2018 vision, so they're not shy about telling us what does and doesn't work.

the reality is different from the brochure 

GF,

Such issues happen and are more often than not isolated and subsequently fixed. 


-DA 
 
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Herald12345    How many lines of code to program an ant?    6/10/2009 2:41:22 AM
Something like 2.5 terabytes?

And we go whoopee over 25 gigabytes in a telemetry system? 

Somebody has been smoking that hemp.
 
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