Fighter Aviation Topics, Page 6
Fighter Aviation Topics, Page 6
ANALYSIS: Lockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
(Australian Aviation, May/June 2002, p 28-32, p 24-27.)July 15, 2002 1 Part 1 A Cold War Anachronism?
Judging from the media rhetoric in early January this year, one could almostbe forgiven for believing that the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was the anointedreplacement for Australia's F/A-18A and F-111 fleets - no doubt to the annoyance ofmany in Defence who are immersed in the complexities of AIR 6000 capabilitiesdefinition. The reality of the Joint Strike Fighter is much less sparkling as manywould like us to believe. In this month's analysis we will explore some of theissues.
The new LM F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has the distinction of being a `first' in more than one respect. It is the first combat aircraft to leverage the massive US Air Force research & development investment in the F-22 family of aircraft. It is also the first attempt since the 1960s TFX (F-111) program failure to produce a fighter which can meet the needs of all three US services with fighter fleets, as well as the needs of export clients. As the Joint Strike Fighter program includes both conventional, carrier capable and STOVL variants, it is the first ever attempt to create a fighter which spans three very distinct deployment regimes. Finally, it is the first attempt to produce a very low cost aircraft with genuine stealth characteristics.
With the prospect of around 3,000 Joint Strike Fighters for the US services, replacing the F-16A-D, A-10A, F/A-18A-D and AV-8B, and the potential to render all European fighter offerings wholly uncompetitive in the large F-16 and F/A-18 replacement markets, the hope of US manufacturers and their congressional supporters is that the Joint Strike Fighter will become the next F-16 and secure the US industry with an unbeatable advantage in the future `commodity' fighter market. Greed is a powerful motivator in the Joint Strike Fighter program and one which is likely to see most of the obstacles to this aircraft, and its inherent limitations, ignored in the quest for market dominance.
The history of the Joint Strike Fighter (formerly the Joint Advanced Strike Technology - JAST) program is by any measure colourful, its earliest origins tracing back to technology demonstration programs for a Harrier follow-on for the US Marine Corps and multirole fighter for the US Air Force (refer AA December 2001 and http://www.jsf.mil/). The shrinking US aerospace industrial base soon saw significant congressional pressure applied for the initial technology demonstration goal to be extended into a production fighter program. In its current shape the Joint Strike Fighter program could lead to the production of around 3,000 Joint Strike Fighter variants replacing US Air Force F-16Cs, A-10s, US Navy F/A-18Cs, and US Marine Corps and RAF/RN Harrier variants. The lead service in the Joint Strike Fighter program remains the US Air Force.
From the very outset the principal aim of the Joint Strike Fighter program was to produce a low cost mass production strike aircraft which exploits the latest avionic/computer, stealth and production technologies. Given the incessant political threats of F-22 program cancellation held over the US Air Force through most of the 1990s, limiting the air superiority capabilities of the Joint Strike Fighter was a political imperative - moreso given that air superiority capabilities such as high thrust/weight ratio and sustained supersonic cruise are not very compatible with very low unit cost. If the Joint Strike Fighter were to be too snappy a performer in the air superiority game, the F-22 would have been promptly axed thereby shifting USD 20B or more of production costs back by at least a decade much to the delight of vote buyers in the US Congress.
Indeed as recently as a year ago the US Air Force had to defend the F-22 against repeated political attacks, most of which clearly illustrated the almost total technical illiteracy of the F-22's critics. Invariably the argument is that the F-22 is `too big, too costly, too capable' or `built around Cold War needs, thus irrelevant to the modern environment' and that a Joint Strike Fighter can do the job well enough.
The US Air Force crafted the basic definition of the Joint Strike Fighter - its size, performance, load carrying ability and target cost around its principal tactical strike fighter, the Lockheed-Martin F-16CG/CJ. In the mid 1990s US Air Force force structure model the F-15C flew air superiority and air defence tasks, the F-111F, F-15E and F-117A performed the `deep strike' penetration tasks, with the latter used in more heavily defended environments. The venerable Fairchild-Republic A-10A Thunderbolt was used for battlefield interdiction and close air support, together with the F-16CG. Defence suppression was performed by the F-16CG, in concert with AGM-130 firing F-15Es, after the retirement of the formidable F-4G Weasel. In this model targets fall into two distinct bands - those within a 400 NMI radius of friendly runways, and those at 600 NMI and beyond.
This force structure model evolved during the latter part of the Cold War, and combined a relatively diverse mix of fighter capabilities. With the 1970s F-111F, A-10 and F-117A, 1980s F-15C/E and F-16C and a mix of weapons with lineages back to the 1960s, this model was a cumulative aggregation of almost three decades of technology and evolving doctrine. This was the force structure which the US Air Force applied with such devastating effect against the SovBloc modelled Iraqi defences in 1991 and it proved itself convincingly.
There is however one important division which can be drawn through this force structure model - size. With the exception of the small single engine single seat F-16, all of these aircraft are large twin engine fighters designed to push the performance envelope in their respective categories.
The ubiquitious F-16 was a uniquely Cold War phenomenon. With NATO and the Warsaw Pact geographically poised along either side of the Iron Curtain, presenting each other with a concentration of force and targets unprecedented in history, significant imperatives existed for both sides to saturate the theatre with high performance fighters. Whoever won the air superiority game over Central Europe held the decisive advantage in the Cold War standoff. Fighter combat radius and endurance over the target are not issues when the geographical environment puts the two largest military forces on the planet head-to-head across a single frontier.
The Light Weight Fighter (LWF) contest saw the GD YF-16 take the laurels and decisive build numbers over the YF-17. The production F-16A was a day-VFR light weight air combat fighter designed for exceptional transonic agility and good supersonic dash performance when clean, armed with Sidewinders and an internal gun. Its principal role was to destroy enmasse the Soviet and allied Warpac strike fighter fleets in close air combat, and then swing into day-VFR battlefield air interdiction and close air support to eradicate Soviet/Warpac land forces, the latter role to be shared with the F-15A, F-4E and F-111D/E/F. With the Soviet/Warpac fighter fleets dominated by the MiG-21, MiG-23/27 and Su-7/17/22 series, the F-16s would have enjoyed a decisively target rich environment.
With the impending retirement of the F-4E Phantom II, the US Air Force needed a substitute to fill the tactical fighter bomber role. The F-16C, equipped with the LANTIRN Terrain Following Radar and FLIR/laser targeting podset, was to fill this niche. With European theatre geography and threats driving this need, the radius of the F-16 airframe was yet again not an issue.
When the Soviet Empire collapsed, the US Air Force was forced into a massive downsizing program. Under significant budgetary pressure, the remaining F-4E and F-4G aircraft were retired, followed by the F-15A, much of the F-16A fleet and early model F-111A/D/E/G aircraft. By the mid to late nineties, the US Air Force fighter fleet comprised primarily the F-15C, F-16C variants, the F-15E and a small number of F-117As. Most of the massive B-52 fleet was retired and the buy of B-2A `batwing' bombers was chopped from 132 to 60 and then finally 21.
Expectations during this period were that the principal strategic problems the US would confront would be troublesome nations in the Balkans and the Middle East, with ethno-religious conflicts between smaller nation states dominating agenda. In this environment problem nations would be unable to threaten US basing, and the enormous political clout during the `Pax Americana' period would see easy access to basing. Concurrently the US Congress showed little interest in the defence budget, and the US Air Force faced the prospect of an aging and increasingly expensive to run fighter fleet, in a strategic environment where air superiority and safe in-theatre basing were virtually guaranteed.
This was the environment which shaped the Joint Strike Fighter program - a situation in which combat radius, endurance over the target, air superiority performance and availability of in-theatre basing were not principal design imperatives. Cost and industrial base survival pressures were the foremost drivers in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The US Air Force needed a cheap mass production bomb truck to provide a one-for-one replacement of its aging F-16C inventory. The US aerospace industry needed another F-16A with which to saturate export markets and retain their eroding market position against the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon.
Perhaps the greatest misconception about the Joint Strike Fighter program is that it represents a `repeat scenario' when compared to the YF-16/F-16A program - a low cost highly agile air superiority fighter designed to exploit cutting edge technology to provide a shorter ranging supplement to the top end twin engine large fighter (then F-15A, now F-22A) of the period. This misconception misrepresents the central design objectives of the Joint Strike Fighter program against the Light Weight Fighter program, and also ignores the decisive role shift in the F-16 fleet.
In its day the F-16A was perhaps the nastiest close-in air combat fighter in existance, requiring careful tactics by even the top end F-15A air superiority fighter. While the F-16C Block 40/50 is heavier, it is still a respectable air combat fighter even if a dubious bomb truck. The F-16's central design optimisation was the transonic dogfight, reflected in thrust/weight ratio, wing loading, turn rates, climb rates and acceleration. In these parameters it was competitive against the best in the field, even if it could not compete with the thrust/weight ratio, wing loading, climb rates and acceleration of the F-15A.
The Joint Strike Fighter's central design optimisation is in-theatre strike, battlefield interdiction and close air support, reflected in forward sector stealth, internal weapons/fuel capacity and cruise efficiency in clean configuration. In these parameters it outperforms the incumbent F-16C and F/A-18A/C, while providing relatively similar air superiority performance to these types. Against the current yardstick for air superiority performance, the F-22A, the Joint Strike Fighter is a non-contender - its 35 degree class transonic wing and 1:1 thrust/weight ratio are adequate for self-defensive purposes but not in the league for rapidly establishing air supremacy.
Just as the joint Tactical Fighter eXperimental (TFX) or F-111A/B program was cast at an early stage into a conceptual mold of a high speed long range bomb-truck, the Joint Strike Fighter has been cast into the mold of an incrementally improved F-16C / F/A-18C class light bomb-truck, exploiting stealth and modern avionics to provide a survivability edge over its predecessors. The TFX program crashed and burned on the evolving needs of the US Navy, who wanted more air superiority performance and lower carrier landing weights.
Some critics of the Joint Strike Fighter argue that it will `inevitably go the route of the TFX' experiencing cost growth, weight growth and performance loss as it undergoes development and its respective end users load it up with desired design extras to meet their specific needs. Indeed US reports suggest repeated political clashes in recent years, as the US Marine Corps and Navy sought performance and capability improvements which conflicted with US Air Force unit cost targets. Given that the maritime users of the Joint Strike Fighter do not have an F-22 equivalent to gain the high ground in an air battle, it is not inconceivable that we might see downstream disagreements in the Joint Strike Fighter program as these players try to fill this crucial gap in their basic capabilities.
The broader strategic issue for the Joint Strike Fighter will be its basic sizing in a world environment which sees two mutually supporting strategic trends - `problem nations' acquiring ballistic missiles, both mobile and semi-mobile, weapons of mass destruction, and a concurrent trend to implementing `shoot-and-scoot' SAM/AAA air defence tactics. In air power theoretic terms, the use of `shoot-and-scoot' SAM/AAA and ballistic missile/WMD technologies represent an `anti-access' strategy. Such strategies aim to deny the use of nearby runways by threatening ballistic missile or WMD attacks on runways as well as hosting nations, while providing a persistent and highly mobile air defence threat (A good summary of emerging ballistic missile capabilities in this area is at: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/missile/index.html, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/missile/index.html).
Prior to the 11th September, long term US Air Force envisaged a two tier force structure model: the Global Strike Task Force (GSTF) , an Air Expeditionary Force comprising 48 x F-22A and 12 x B-2A, would break the opponent's air defences and launch high tempo attacks on critical command/control/communications, WMD sites and ballistic missile forces. As the opponent's defences would crumble, a `sustainment' Air Expeditionary Force, comprising the Joint Strike Fighter, B-1B and B-52H, would then hammer the opponent to collapse. This model makes two implicit assumptions - the enemy cannot bombard friendly runways with ballistic missiles, and these runways are close enough to permit a viable sortie rate (missions/day) by the Joint Strike Fighter and F-22.
If the opponent chooses to play the ballistic missile bombardment game, then this model does get into some difficulty, since the 400-600 nautical mile range of evolved Scud class missiles presents difficulties for the Joint Strike Fighter - nearby nations might deny basing access and bases which are made available might be shut down by ballistic missile strikes. This is less of an issue for the supercruising F-22, as with decent tanker support it can sustain a high sortie rate from a much greater distance - the F-22 can transit to targets at roughly twice the speed of contemporary fighters and the Joint Strike Fighter.
This was a principal strategic argument against the whole concept of the Joint Strike Fighter prior to the September 11th events. Since then we have seen a pivotal shift in bombardment tactics, with long endurance `loitering bombardment' used to successfully engage and destroy fleeting and highly mobile ground targets. This in turn mitigates against smaller fighters and decisively favours aircraft which have larger bomb loads and endurance. The argument that Afghanistan was a `one-off' does not hold up to scrutiny - a campaign against Iran, Iraq, the PRC or more than one African problem nation could see the very same geographical problem issues arise yet again. Well spoken diplomacy is no match against the threat of domestic terrorism across porous Third World borders, or ballistic missile attacks with conventional or even WMD warheads - all being convincing disincentives to the basing of a US-led Air Expeditionary Force.
Whether one is hunting a high technology Russian mobile SAM system, a mobile ballistic missile system, or a bunch of terrorists in a four wheel drive or BTR-60, the inevitable reality is that the best technique is `loitering bombardment' which is not the forte of smaller fighters - including the Joint Strike Fighter.
The revived argument in the US promoting new build B-2C `batwings' and an F-111/FB-111A class `regional bomber' illustrates this important shift in the bombardment paradigm - and the increasing long term exposure of close-in based Air Expeditionary Forces to MRBM attacks. The argument pits direct operational needs for striking radius, sortie rates and bombloads in difficult to export or non-exportable top tier assets against the limited yet highly exportable and thus potentially profitable JSF.
Part 2 will compare the F-35/JSF against some in service and production fighter types.
Figure 1: The USAF intend to use the F-35/JSF as a `one-for-one' replacement aircraft fortheir aging fleets of F-16C strike fighters and A-10A battlefield interdictors. Against both typesthe F-35/JSF provides a significant survivability improvement by virtue of its stealth capability,while it outranges the F-16C on typical strike profiles. The air superiority and air defence tasksof the F-15C and deep penetration tasks of the F-15E and F-117A will be absorbed by thesupercruising stealthy F-22A Raptor (USAF).
Figure 2: The USN aim to use the F-35/JSF as a replacement for the older F/A-18A-D models,to provide a `survivable first day of the war strike fighter' to supplement the reduced observableF/A-18E/F in carrier air wings. The navalised JSF has larger wings, stabilators and marginallymore fuel than the USAF variant. It will provide a respectable combat radius gain over theF/A-18A-D but will not match the performance of the long departed A-6E Intruder (E.J. van Koningsveld).
Figure 3: The USMC, RN and RAF will use the STOVL F-35/JSF variant to replace a range ofHarrier variants for operation from unprepared FOBs and STOVL carriers. With a supersonicdash capability, significantly better radius performance and a modern radar, the F-35/JSFis a vast improvement over the sixties technology Harrier family. The Shaft Driven Lift Fantechnology will provide better hover performance than the Harrier (USMC).
Figure 4: Current USAF planning sees the establishment of the Global Strike Task Force(GSTF) comprising 48 F-22As and 12 B-2As. This `silver bullet' expeditionary force is intendedto demolish opposing air defences and critical WMD targets in the opening phase of an aircampaign, upon which a `sustainment force' of legacy B-52H/B-1B and F-35/JSF fighterscompletes the bombardment. The JSF is predicated upon having runways within a 400-600nautical mile class distance of intended targets, thus aligning the aircraft firmly with Cold Warperiod geographical assumptions - a precondition which may not be met in future conflicts(USAF).
Figure 5: A key issue for the JSF will be the proliferation of medium range ballistic missiles inthe 600+ nautical mile range class. With North Korea having supplied this technology to Iranand Pakistan the long term outlook is that proliferation will be very difficult if not impossibleto contain. While a supercruising F-22 can sustain a high sortie rate over such distances, thesubsonic cruise optimised JSF will suffer a debilitating reduction in sortie rates as distancespush out well beyond the design point of 600 nautical miles - both types requiring generousaerial refuelling support (Author/LM). Go to ANALYSIS: Lockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Page 2
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