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Subject: What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence?
Thomas    6/12/2003 9:00:29 AM
The dominance of the US air power has been so overwhelming, that it has made a lot of issues unimportant. But it has been characteristical, that the hostile air defence has been non-existent, degraded or inefficient. To what extend does the USArmy and Marines depend on a total absense of hostile air defence? To what extend is the ground forces dependent on the F-22?
 
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bsl    RE:Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing -- competent is an innuendo   11/29/2003 7:36:53 PM
Thomas has posted on these boards for quite a while, on a variety of topics. He is not "anti-American". When he disagree with one or another matter, he generally makes a logical argument, and I don't ever recall him resorting to ad hominem attacks or insults.
 
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bsl    SEAD   11/29/2003 7:49:24 PM
The fact that there is a whole, formal category of air missions called SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) should probably be taken as a hint that the matter of air defense has occured to planners and been addressed. In fact, the issue is taken so seriously that there have been dedicated platforms to deal with enemy air defense in the american inventory since the 1950s. The "Wild Weasels". And, air to ground weapons speficially intended for these missions. Especially HARMs. Even a cursory reading of the general media coverage of the 1993 Gulf War and the late Iraq War shows that the first missions flown in a war are tasked to both strategic targets AND SEAD missions.
 
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WDDavenport    The Changing Face of Electronic Warfare   11/30/2003 8:50:05 PM
Aviation Week & Space Technology Login|Subscribe |Register The Changing Face of Electronic Warfare By Robert Wall November 22, 2003 Promise and Pitfalls The electronic warfare landscape is being redrawn, driven by technology advancements and new ideas about linking diverse sensors and systems to improve combat effectiveness. The shift is visible primarily at the technology level, rather than in the larger, more expensive realm of acquisition projects. These developments are confined not just to the U.S. but also form the backbone of EW planning in Europe, Israel and Australia. This special report will focus on projects in both the U.S.--where the largest number of programs are underway--and Germany. Discussion of German initiatives spotlights the problems faced by countries that can't spend roughly $1 billion a day on national defense, as the U.S. does. The transition does not lack speed bumps, however. With a slew of seemingly promising technologies emerging and limited resources, military planners often seem reluctant to make near-term decisions. Germany, for instance, wants to move slowly as it assesses how to replace its suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) ECR Tornados. Rather than transitioning immediately to Eurofighters, which are now entering service, the Luftwaffe has decided on a life-extension project to allow the Tornados to fly for another 4,000 hr., says Lt. Gen. Gerhard Back, the service's chief of staff. The additional hours should allow the aircraft to remain in service until 2015. In the interim, planners should be able to determine whether they want Eurofighters to perform the mission, or if it should fall to UAVs or unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). In the rush to move to the next level of capability, existing projects are often discarded. That process can be painful, especially if international partners are involved. The dilemma may best be exemplified in the AGM-88 High-Speed AntiRadiation Missile (HARM) project. The U.S. Navy has withdrawn from a long-running trinational guidance upgrade to chase the next technology innovation. The move has potentially stranded German plans, just as the upgrade was ready to move from testing to production. Military officials are looking increasingly to networked electronic warfare to help pinpoint enemy air defenses. That could allow them to use all-purpose weapons such as bombs or cruise missiles to disable those defenses. WHAT COMPLICATES MATTERS in Europe are persistently small budgets and the relatively few platform programs through which to launch new products. In the past, the German market was large enough to sustain at least domestic EW suppliers; however, in recent years, tight budgets have forced companies to pursue overseas sales just to keep revenues level, says Johann Heitzmann, president and CEO of EADS Defense Electronics. The company has been able to achieve slow growth in this area, both in the retrofit market and by "piggybacking" on sales of military equipment such as the NH-90 and Tiger helicopters. The financial squeeze in European defense spending also is affecting the pace of development. EADS, for example, is working on a laser warner that would be integrated with its MILDS UV missile warning sensor. The program could be ready in 12 months with government support; otherwise, it could take twice as long, according to EADS. German industry officials hope that after years of meager EW spending, the downtrend will soon reverse. However, relatively new procurement rules could pose a problem because they require a company-funded demonstration before a product is purchased. Under such rules, a supplier can afford only once or twice to develop a product that's not eventually bought; otherwise, internal funds would be depleted, risking financial disaster for the company. In contrast, the U.S. arena clearly offers more opportunities: The Navy's EA-18, U.S. Air Force EB-52 and Army Aerial Common Sensor development projects dwarf EW activities overseas. The efforts are giving rise to new hardware components in the fields of electronic attack and electronic support measures, and helping to spur the move to digital technologies. Moreover, the U.S. also is funding a host of EW technology demonstrations that target modular and multifunction capabilities. The Adaptive Joint C4ISR Node (AJCN), for example, is a payload employing modular architecture to perform communications, comint, electronic attack and information operations simultaneously. BAE Systems is building four such payloads, says Don Peterson, who oversees the company's effort. Two sized at about 850 lb. would be used on Army-owned KC-135 Big Crow testbeds, while two 200-lb. systems would be installed on Army Hunter unmanned aircraft. The smaller payload will have less power and reduced frequency coverage, but the hardware building blocks and software will be the same as for the larger version. Operational hardware would have mo
 
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bsl    RE:The Changing Face of Electronic Warfare   11/30/2003 9:09:17 PM
Re: Tornado ECR The fact is that virtually every country in the world has trouble paying for what it believes is enough high tech, including the US. Time and time again, programs are stretched out, projected buys are reduced, etc.. America finds itself short of EW aircraft, and with a bad choice of platform for AF missions, since the AF was forced to drop it's F-111s and adopt the Navy A-6-based EW platform. Right now, the Navy virtually drools over adapting F-18 E/Fs for EW, but can't find money in it's budget for the project anywhere out into the future.
 
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Thomas    RE:Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing - Davenport.   12/1/2003 9:30:29 AM
To bsl, heorot, horse soldier and others. Thanks for answering for me, I'm flappergasted being called anti-american - and not a little amused. Not wanting to start US civil war II, I must clarify: My experience is limited to exercises during the cold war, where it was evident, that the US had met a competent hostile air defence - it took some convincing before they saw what a pitifull country could do with antiques. I recall one exercise - we volunteers were expecting the usual dreary whole day exercise with 2 lumbering track over the table. But that day they had scraped together most of NATO aircraft in Europe and threw them at us - we were busy, but not desperate. The exercise started with the F-15 as friendly (a common trick in those days: Put the F-15 on the loosing side). After one hour the devious yanks switched sides, as our old starfighters and drakens obviously were killing left, right and center. You don't believe the grumbling we had from the observer posts over the changed orders: "What the "#¤&% does the higher ups think - can't they make up their F#¤%&/&/ mind ????" The good farmers, housewifes, students and others never realised they had recieved the sincerest compliment ever paid in danish military history! The reds could not sneak anything in under the carpet. The point is that the US has extensive experience in ESCORT air defence, but next to none in the teeth of somebody knowing what they are doing. North Vietnams air defence was not that impressive - or the US would not have the B-52 today. It was unbalanced, not enough fighters, to poor coordination between the various branches guns, missiles, fighters, radar and observers (that is difficult). All the other air defences since Vietnam have been a joke. I do not hold the Soviet in high esteem, as the multitude of missiles (a full quarter (as far as I recall) of the russian division), would have been next to impossible to coordinate (especially under movement) - and they wouldn't have spotted the Tornadoes and F-111 before their armour was that much scrap metal. Luckily we were on the same side at that time also, but my gravest fear for the western nations in general and the US in particular is over-confidence. JUst because you have been able to relegate the airdefences you have met to a footnote, does not mean You can count on that for ever!
 
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Thomas    RE:WWDavenport   12/1/2003 9:37:51 AM
Missiles: I would have light forces on the ground give priority to those targets. But you missed the point: Im not so much worried about the safety of US airdefence, as for the lives of the offensive aircraft. If the US attacks the other side will be on the defensive, and if they coordinate the various branches, offensive US aircraft will not attack radars standing still long enough, and the offensive aircraft will be met with overlapping missile/gun zones (overlapping in 3 dimentions) and fighters able to fly in their own anti-aircraft fire with relative impunity.
 
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Thomas    RE:Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing -- competent is an innuendo   12/1/2003 9:39:16 AM
Besides - The Luftwaffe was not incompetent - it took a couple of very costly years to crack that nut.
 
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Thomas    RE:Horse soldier   12/1/2003 9:42:50 AM
I don't think sending your fighters AWAY from the fight will achieve very much.
 
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919    Thomas   12/4/2003 6:43:03 PM
Compared to the USAF there is only one other air force that can give them problems. That is the Israeli Air Force, and they are too small in the logistics tail to give them real trouble. You can forget about the Chinese and their 10,000 obsolete anti-ship missiles. They cannot get more then a dozen or so in the air before the launchers/platforms become terminally obsolete, except as scrap metal. And all the Soviet systems designed to defeat the B-2 have the same problem. By the time they detect the B-2 they are well within the weapons envelope of the B-2. Find "The Air Campaign" by Col.John A. Warden III. It was the 'bible' used in DS1 and is still a good picture of American thoughts on the winning of an air campaign(Operational level). And as far a Bosnia goes, we won. While it wasn't as smooth as the Air Force wanted it to be, we won. I'm not sure if you have ever heard this before, 'No plan survives contact with the enemy'. This has been a major component in conflict resolution (warfare) for the last few thousand years. The American media hasn't figured this out yet, maybe you can clue them in. Meanwhile, I'm not sure what the point of this is. The Europeans could field a real Air force if they had 500 or 600 billion to spend on it over the next decade or so. But they don't. The Soviet union went tits up trying. Read the Chinese military press and you will see that they are not even going to try. They consider it a trap, and they might be right. By the time anyone else gets anything close to the same technology level that the US is at now, we will have moved on to the next one. By 2010 the US Air Force will have several battle systems on line that use Laser technology. I really havn't seen a good apreciation of just how important this is. Light Speed weapons just might be the RMA evey one is looking for. It will certainly be a bigger change then gunpowder, and have more of an effect on air ops then the forward firing machine gun did. It will also make stealth the only posible way to survive in the air. 919 919
 
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sentinel28a    RE:Thomas   12/5/2003 12:20:17 PM
Thomas has a point. We should never underestimate a foe because he doesn't spend a lot of money. Remember that Serbia was able to knock down a F-117 using 1960s technology. It was something of a lucky bullet, but it still worked. North Vietnam had an extremely sophisticated air defense system, and by 1972, Hanoi was the most fiercely defended spot on the planet. Yet American losses during the Linebacker campaigns *fell* from those taken during Rolling Thunder, despite the fact that the North Vietnamese had only improved their coordination and technology. The reason for this was tactics and a different political environment. The Wild Weasel program was in place and experienced, we had the beginnings of true standoff capability, ECM was improved, Iron Hand suppression flights were made larger, and most importantly, the USAF and the USN was allowed to strike targets without prior provocation. Before, a SAM site had to shoot at you for you to attack it, and MiG bases were strictly off limits because Johnson and McNamara were terrified that a Chinese or Russian advisor might get hurt. It's worth remembering that, while the Iraqis used Soviet missiles, their air defense system was built by the French. It was not quite as formidable as Vietnam's, because it was more spread out, but by that time the Iraqis were taking on a force with 20 years experience in taking apart air defense networks. Serbia is another example--despite a relatively modern defense network, we lost two aircraft over Serbia (the F-117 and a F-16). I too have no confidence in the Soviet air defense system, but I don't see any other air defense system that might be any better.
 
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