This doesn’t make financial sense. If the USAF lost a dozen F-16s trying to take out a Russian S-400, that would be a loss of maybe $400 million’ worth of aircraft.
By contrast, risking a $200 million Raptor - with much lower likelihood of being shot down - would *save *money.
These expensive ‘silver bullets’ - F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, etc. - *save *money.
I figured composite materials would take quite long times for each layer and that there would be many layers. If not, thanks for the correction.
Why titanium rather than aluminum? The high Gs it has to take? Lower electrical conductivity for stealth?
What are the main uses for the void-y billets and the scrap?
Stepping up airplane production would be difficult and slow. How about increasing the production rate of cruise missiles, smart gliding bombs, SAMs or the various EW items?
This documentary The Defender by Stephen Low - NFB tells the story of one brave man with a vision echoed in some posts here: to design a cheap plane that could be easily mass produced and so allow Canada (Canada!) to overwhelm an invader by sheer weight of numbers. Well, he probably hoped for foreign sales, too, to help make the nut.
Spoiler alert: it did not get off the ground. I admire his pluck in the face of adversity (aka the laws of physics) nonetheless.
Mass producing that kind of plane wouldn’t be all that difficult. Not anymore than cranking out modified Cessnas.
If a plane has a maximum cruise speed of 330km/h, a ceiling of 8km, a payload of 725kg and presumably basic avionics, there’s only so much sheer numbers can do.
20 of those planes against a modern fighter would be like 20 WWII submarines against a Virginia-class submarine or 20 toddlers against Bruce Lee.
Keep in mind that a good portion of the total cost of weapon systems is the labor to use & maintain them which doesn’t scale linearly with the acquisition cost. I’m sure more knowledgeable people can give us an idea of how the costs break down.
The Defender is a perfectly reasonable aircraft for what it’s for. Slow transport and peacetime surveillance in uncontested airspace. It’s unsexy, but it’s well suited for its role.
It’s not a bomber, it’s not a penetrating covert transport, it’s not an ASW attack platform. It’s certainly not a strike aircraft or air-to-air platform. Nor a refueler.
The crew to operate it costs the same per flight hour as does the crew to operate a C-17. The Defender’s crew cost per ton-mile is vastly higher than a C-17’s. Defender maintenance costs are probably a third of a C-17’s per flight hour but again much more per ton-mile. Ditto fuel.
Bottom line: Cheap, plentiful, low performance equipment doesn’t help a service with expensive, scarce, high quality labor all that much. Especially not on a per-output basis. Whether the output is ton-miles for freighters, fuel offloaded per day for tankers, or targets destroyed for strikers or counter-air fighters.
Late add: Here’s a semi-comparable aircraft the USAF did operate and the US Army still does: Short C-23 Sherpa - Wikipedia
Even this is about twice the capacity and range and 1.5x the speed of the Defender.
As with most large projects, I imagine you will find that the Government finds a long list of things that it wants to change to the original specifications. Some of these changes come after planes are actually flying, but those flying must be changed also.
If you are a manufacturer and constantly receiving changes, you spend a lot of time redoing stuff which has already been tested and approved, or, even, replace the stuff that has already been tested and approved.
That gets very expensive and delays production considerably.
The Government doesn’t care, though. The plane isn’t really needed yet and they have plenty of money.
Bob
There are 20 B2. 183 F22. In a war against Russia or China, B2’s are going to be held back and dispersed. They are too valuable to use, except for deep penetration nuclear strikes, when needed. The F22, used for Air Defense over valuable and vulnerable assets or in the occasional fighter sweeps. War is not a beauty contest. If Assets are being employed and used they will suffer losses through enemy action, attrition. They will be used sparingly. Please find me an example of a war when a side used its most advanced and limited in quantity systems as a first line, rather than hold them back in reserve. Even if the F22 earns a 10-1 kill ratio against MiG-29 and Su-27/30 (unlikely) the numbers are too small and losses too irreplaceable.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
This doesn’t make financial sense. If the USAF lost a dozen F-16s trying to take out a Russian S-400, that would be a loss of maybe $400 million’ worth of aircraft.
By contrast, risking a $200 million Raptor - with much lower likelihood of being shot down - would save money.
These expensive ‘silver bullets’ - F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, etc. - save money.
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Excuse me, but are you saying that the USAF will use strategic bombers and Air Superiority fighters* to destroy SAM sites?*? What other bright ideas do you have, Aircraft Carriers on Anti-piracy missions? ICBM’s to take out enemy logistic dumps?
There are thousands of F16 (and with many in reserve in the desert, they are replaceable), there are only a few B2 and less than 200 F22 (the F35 will be a large number fighter, if it ever gets into service).
A single B2 or F22 shot down is a much larger loss than a dozen F16’s. In the real world of Operation Linebacker II, the loss rate, approximately 1 B52 shot down and 1 damaged per night; was considered unsustainable; and this at a time when the US had hundreds of B52’s
And since there haven’t been deep penetration nuclear strikes since 1945, that means the B-2 has never been used, right?
Yes, SEAD is one of the uses for the “high” aircraft in the high-low mix. They reduce the effectiveness of enemy anti-air assets so that the more numerous, less expensive aircraft can then be more freely employed.
That is your assumption, not a fact, and I have no reason to believe that anyone in the war planning business agrees with your opinion. B-2s are the only airplane capable of delivering the Massive Ordanace Penetrator, for example, so your assertion that their only utility is nuclear strikes is simply incorrect.
F-117s in Panama 1989 and Iraq 1991, and Serbia 1999; B-2s in Afghanistan 2001 and on, Iraq 2003, and Libya 2011; F-22s in Libya 2011 and Syria 2014.
Since I answered your questions, please cite your assertions that advanced aircraft will not likely be used in an advanced conflict.
You should not mock others when you present a weak argument. It is quite likely that any aircraft will be called upon to do missions you don’t think that those aircraft should do. Here is a cite that one particular F-22 has undertaken about 10 air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria and/or Iraq.
https://theaviationist.com/2016/05/16/f-22-raptor-stealth-fighter-sports-low-visibility-bomb-markings/
Low-observable aircraft are quite likely to take strikes against advanced air defenses, as it it very reasonable to assume that a fourth generation aircraft will have significant problems getting close enough to a modern integrated air defense site to launch a weapon. For example, an advanced anti-radiation missile may have a range of something north of 50 miles, but an S-300 will have significantly more range to shoot down approaching aircraft. Sending a stealthy aircraft that can enter its weapons engagement zone undetected is far more likely to survive (with or without electronic warfare support) than sending in dozens of fourth generation fighters.
The pilots are not as replaceable, as others have mentioned. Your opinions remind me of the story about Lincoln responding to the Confederate capture of a general and several horses. He responded something to the effect of, he can make anyone a general, but it takes time to replace a horse.
Which is why I mentioned a war against Peer adversaries. Like Russia and China. The US has not fought either since 1945 (Korean War was restricted to Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland was untouched).
[QUOTE=Ravenman]
You should not mock others when you present a weak argument. It is quite likely that any aircraft will be called upon to do missions you don’t think that those aircraft should do. Here is a cite that one particular F-22 has undertaken about 10 air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria and/or Iraq.
https://theaviationist.com/2016/05/1...bomb-markings/
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Any aircraft can carry and drop bombs, does not mean its a good idea in the environment they are in.Please tell me you are not comparing the current strikes on ISIS in the desert to be an example of how an F22 might be used in a land war in Eastern Europe against Russia or in Far East again China. I mean; there might be a slight difference in strategic situation. Tactical scenarios. Enemy capabilities. F22’s will have their hands full with enemy aircraft to bother about ground strikes.
The F22 cannot carry the HARM missile in its weapons bay (cite), and if it carriers them externally, then its no longer a stealth aircraft.
ANd I disagree that an F16 is specifically toast in a war against S300/400, flying low, using ECM would improve survivibility, especially with stanbdoff jamming.
F22’w would be far better employed against Tu22’s, Tu160 and Su-34 and their escorts (Su30 can escort a strike package all the way to the UK from West Russia).
Exactly my point. There are thousands of F16 qualified pilots in the USAF/USANG. Not nearly as many F22 drivers. And its not like they will have F22 airframes to spare come wartime to train newbies
Only, that stuff isn’t simple at all. Hiring and training the personnel needed would take several months. You can’t just say “ok boys, from now on everybody will work an 80hr week” - not if you want to get any kind of positive response. And quite often, the supply chains are quite maddeningly complex nowadays: not only are different parts made and assembled in different locations, but there is no single location that’s prepared to make and assemble the whole thing. Shipping times aren’t necessarily compressible: once you’ve ramped up manufacture, you can have multiple shipments traveling to the next step simultaneously, but if it’s a time of war those travel routes may be getting attacked as well.
Gotcha. Still no cites with experts saying that advanced aircraft won’t be used in a major war. I’ll check in now and then to see if you can source some of your opinions.
I meant “simple” in the sense of easily identified and relatively simple. The devil’s in the details of course, but ramping up for three shifts and optimizing supply chains is a whole lot easier than redesigning the aircraft to be produced easier.
In many cases, that redesign would amount to an entirely new aircraft, with all the time and headaches that would imply.
Redesign for produceability won’t happen. Because they’re already designed to be as produceable as possible given the performance criteria.
What’s different from WWII is we can now operate a lot closer to the limits of our materials and tech. A P-51 was state of the art at the time. But unbeknownst to them they cold have left half the aluminum out of the wing and it’d still have worked fine; in fact better. If only they’d known which half. Now we know. So we design accordingly. With the result that much closer tolerances and more sophisticated fasteners, etc., are needed. Which drives up build effort.
We can’t reduce the build effort until/unless we reduce the structural performance requirement. But if we once again build heavier bulkier structures then the fuel capacity, G forces, etc. all go south.
Comparing building a P-51 with building an F-35 is like comparing a modern suspension bridge to a 2x12 board laying across a stream. They’re both bridges, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
Near peer warfare:
In my day we were outnumbered 3-10x by the Warsaw Pact depending on what we were counting. We thought we had a 3-5x quality advantage that would lead to rough parity on who’d run out of what first.
The expectation was we’d go all out with our best stuff from moment one.
In naval warfare, especially in the battleship/cruiser era, there was a recognition that battle damage is an exponential process. A bit of damage reduces your ship’s remaining defensive capability some. But more importantly, it reduces your ship’s offensive capability relatively a lot. Which very quickly translates into “you’re helpless and the enemy is still strong; he’ll sail up close and sink your ship at his leisure”.
This led to a couple of rules of thumb:
The value of the “crossing the T” maneuver was the roughtly 2:1 advantage in gunnery it temporarily afforded the crosser vs. the crossee.
The same logic now applies to near-peer warfare in all combat arenas. Lethality is so high that the exponential decline curve applies to all your weapon systems. Yes, you’re going to suffer large irreplaceable losses of your F-22s in that initial wave. But the only alternative is lose them anyhow in a few hours without them having taken a big bite out of the enemy first.
Folks used to talk of “wargasm” as a metaphor for strategic nuclear war. If we get in a near-peer conventional shooting war IMO it’ll be pretty wargastic. Both sides will suffer catastrophic attrition within 24-48 hours. The only surviving forces in anything like good condition will be those located too far away to have participated. Yet.
As the more expeditionary power, this balance of lethality does not favor the US forces who’re going to be thinly stretched when operating near the enemy. OTOH, it makes it more likely the battle will be fought more on/over enemy terrain and seas than on/over our homeland and waters.
This also implies that as both sides approach unsustainable damage, the US will be looking at a choice between withdrawing having lost much of the Navy & strategic USAF, but with the homeland almost entirely intact, while the enemy will be looking at having suffered a bunch of peripheral homeland or close ally damage. The asymmetry of that situation makes negotiating a truce at that point unlikely, leading more or less directly to strategic nuclear warfare.
Again the only way to win a near-peer war is not to play.
I agree with this, emphasizing the analogy to WWI capital ships, rather than taking the implication that few and difficult to replace assets would never be used as other responses seem to.
Dreadnought types didn’t go totally unused in WWI, but there was a manifest reluctance to put them at great risk, because they were so valuable and difficult to replace. For example the Germans sacked their fleet commander von Ingenohl basically for losing one semi-battle cruiser (at Dogger Bank in 1915) after a mainly shadow boxing campaign v the RN, followed by a leader von Pohl who wouldn’t risk the fleet at all, then working their way up to a series of bolder operations under Scheer which resulted in one large but inconclusive battle, Jutland, and basically nothing after that (not counting Baltic operations against a Russian fleet which its leaders wouldn’t risk…). And the Germans were not in general irresolute in war in the 20th century.
I think it follows pretty directly actually from the cost/irreplaceability of B-2’s (carriers, etc also) there’d be similar risk aversion in their use, relative to those platforms’ vulnerabilities. As long as the risk is low, sure they’d be used, again as German dreadnoughts were in the Baltic after Jutland. Against top Russian or Chinese defenses which may have gained a realistic capability against them, I doubt B-2’s would be used aggressively, or for long after any losses.
Or to put it in terms of another historical analogy, unlikely IMO B-2’s be used against defenses expected to have capabilities against them similar to what the S-75 (aka Sa-2) system did v B-52’s over North Vietnam, inflict 2% per sortie losses. Of course they’d be used if the relative threat to them was what faced B-52’s over South Vietnam (essentially none), or even perhaps over Laos and the NV panhandle (where they might come within range of S-75 and one B-52 was eventually lost to them in spring 1972, prior to the campaign in the Hanoi/Haiphong area at the end of that year).
Again I think this is obvious once everyone is on the same page as to the meaning of the original statement. The B-52 was long out of production in 1972 but there was a surplus of them relative to the strategic nuclear mission. There’s no surplus of B-2’s. A chance loss here or there wouldn’t be a disaster, a series of them would be, unless a very decisive result could be achieved first (as in nuclear*, but I assume we’re speaking of conventional use). And it’s totally different from exposing B-17’s and B-24’s to constant losses for years, where 2% loss rate was favorable: there were 1,000’s of new ones coming off production lines.
Nor IMO should it get into a technical discussion of the B-2’s capabilities v air defenses because the capabilities of future defenses aren’t known, even current ones not certain.
*and another aspect with strategic bomber losses in conventional operations is the possibility of undermining their deterrent threat in nuclear conflict. This arose with heavy B-29 losses to Mig-15’s in some daylight raids over North Korea in 1951 for example, among the concerns besides the losses themselves, even though the B-29 wasn’t the main nuclear bomber anymore.
This is in short the Battle of France scenario, what the UK faced in 1940 and which De Gaulle felt would happen in a WW3. Once defeat in France looked likely (and not even assured), the British withdrew fighters and severely curtailed their air commitment from the UK and did not accept French pleas for more aircraft. Famously the Spitfires were not committed (too technologically advanced and few in number, and at that time, basically irreplaceable), and squadrons in France were withdrawn and used only for Dunkirk evac. The UK was concerned about t6he defense of its homeland and Empire and felt they had to preserve strength for the coming fight.
Do you think US political and military leadership would not act similarly? What you describe leaves N America basically defenseless unless nuclear reprisals are threatened and makes operations in other theaters basically impossible.
If the Russians are on the Rhine, would it not be more likely that the leadership decides to preserve what is left or even earlier be reluctant to commit top of the line assets too freely?
What types of targets would B-2, F-22 and such go for at first? I have a few hypotheses but I’d like to hear you first.
What did the Israelis tend to go after first from '67 onward?
The Iraq-Iran war had something like that happen over a longer stretch of time, right? They both ran out of advanced weapons then had to slow the tempo way down to WWI levels with extensive trench warfare, artillery and “over the top, boys!” assaults across no man’s land.
Provided it didn’t go nuclear, could it follow the same pattern?
Official public USAF doctrine is SEAD and high value C3 nodes. Essentially those things which then enable the rest of the lower-stealth forces to be sent in on no-suicidal missions. The tagline is “‘Kick down the door’ ops”.
Probably not, at least not for the US.
Iran and Iraq share a border. The US has no common borders with its near-peers. That’s a fundamental difference. The closest US scenario is as AK84 described just above. i.e. ground combat in Europe with significant Russian salient(s) into NATO territory. To remain in the fight we’d have to do logistic support of the ground forces from across the Atlantic. That won’t last long. And, as **AK84 **also astutely described, we’ll have the option to bail out to preserve our homeland defense capability. A choice not afforded to the Germans, French, or nearly so well to the British.
If the Russians and Chinese ever decided to go at it tooth and claw I’d agree the scenario *could *decline to basic beans and bullets warfare as things did in Iran & Iraq. Until / Unless either side decided to toss a nuke into the fire.
Another difference between Russia v China compared to Iran v. Iraq is both sides were receiving at least some support from their allies. On both sides it was not as much as they wanted and served more to sustain the carnage rather than to allow a decisive grasp of the upper hand. neither side has anyone to turn to for material help. Said another way, both sides are fighting alone with their backs to the wall. That is not fertile ground for contained sustained attrition warfare while there are escalation options available.
The cynic in me believed at the time if Iran v. Iraq that the US & Russia had made a deal, implicit or explicit, to run this as a proxy war fought to the last Iranian / Iraqi with the hope of pacifying that part of the ME region for decades to come. For sure neither the US nor the Russians was keen to put so much logistic support into the war as to trigger counter-escalation from the other side. A cozy fire is nice; a blazing inferno is not.