The Strategic Consequences of F-22 Termination (2009)
ausairpower.net
ausairpower.net
Australia is participating in the F-35 program, but there is a case to be made that with its limited range and loadout, the F-35 doesn't suit Australia's defensive requirements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111C
Apparently the criterion for range was the ability to bomb Jakarta. Sounds arbitrary but I have no idea.
No, range is more of an issue because Australia's current defensive posture is to try to stop any potential enemy in what is called the air-sea gap. That means interdiction at long distances off the coastline. With aircraft carriers being financially out of reach that leaves long range aircraft as the only viable option. The f-35 is going to be a disaster for Australia's defence, we can only hope that the US honours the goodwill that the purchase of those systems was supposed to procure. Of course, they're going to be flying the same crappy airframes, so meh.
Just one last thing in defence of the JSF though. It's unique capabilities in takeoff / landing make cheaper aircraft carriers a real possibility. Of course Australia hasn't actually tried to procure any such thing so it's only a theoretical, but if tensions were to start to mount in Asia that is something that could be rectified relatively quickly...
Yes.
Leaving to one side that Australia is in itself very large, we rely almost entirely on 3 lanes of approach for all our trade. Those lanes extend thousands of kilometres to the west, the north (which includes -- whisper it quietly because we are good friends and neighbours -- Indonesia) and the east.
To win a genuine shooting war, or merely to stalemate, we would need to be able to control those lanes. One critical element of controlling sea lanes is to control the air over those lanes. Since we don't have aircraft carriers, we need aircraft that can fly a long way, penetrate naval air defences and shoot at enemy planes and ships.
It also matters in case of a straight up land invasion. Australia's best defence in such a case is Australia. The sheer bulk of the landmass makes an invasion from any direction a long slow slog to occupy the rest of the country. Especially if that country possesses aircraft capable of very long flights from bases dispersed around the whole perimeter.
So in actual fact, aircraft range is worthy of consideration. Air tankers help, but while they multiply force, they also multiply vulnerability.
Any conflict they would be engaged in would also have a significant naval component, so range is valuable there as well -- it allows land-based planes to join battles far out at sea, so you can meet the enemy away from civilian population centers instead of right over them. The alternative is to use naval aviation (i.e. aircraft carriers) instead of land-based planes, but carriers are hugely expensive so the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) doesn't operate any.
Carlo Kopp & Peter Good were trying to get the RAAF to contract them to upgrade the F-111s into a 5th gen strategic strike fighter that was cheaper than the F-22.
The F-35A with aerial tanker support can meet Australia's requirements just fine. In full production, the F-35A will be cheaper than competing jets like the F-15 assuming they are still in production.
I don't feel sufficiently expert to say if that's so, but I note that Air Power Australia vehemently disagrees with you.
I'm no air defense expert, but why do I have a hard time believing this? Existing fighters, bombers and drones seem to work fine with most of the countries the US is dealing with right now. If the US has to go to war with a Russian or Chinese armed adversary, would small fighter planes play a huge offensive role anyway?
Missles can get in, but they have limited search capabilities.
It is important to control the air, or the adversary will be able to deny the air and probably the ground and/or sea to you. In that sense, whatever is playing a huge offensive role very likely depends on air superiority.
RAND runs studies on the effectiveness of the (quickly aging) US fighter fleet. There are quite a few of these out there and generally the conclusion is that US aircraft like F16s (cheap multirole fighter) and F15s (fighter/bomber or air superiority fighter) designed (and sometimes even built) in the 70s and 80s, even when equipped with modern electronics, don't have a clear advantage (assuming they don't fall apart on the way to the battle - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov...).
Most American experience with war in recent decades has come against technically unmatched opponents. If the US were to go to war against a better-equipped and better-trained foe, the ease with which the primary military campaigns succeeded would be blunted considerably.
The point is that you're always fighting the last war. In the meantime, technology changes, and the concrete details of what worked in the last war won't work in the next one. The lesson you should learn is not "air superiority is important", it's "being facile with the latest technology and understanding how it might apply on the battlefield is essential".
I would bet money that the next big war will be fought with cruise missiles, UAVs, microchips, satellites, and infantry on the streets.
Small fighters would indeed play a key role in that process, because they would be the ones who would have to sweep the skies clean of enemy fighters so that other aircraft (bombers, transports, etc.) could travel through them safely. If the battle zone is inside the adversary's air defense network, that would mean they'd have to be able to survive traveling through that network as well.
I would bet money that within thirty years this mission will be entirely handed over to UAVs/drones, since they're cheaper to operate and actually have some advantages over manned fighters -- a drone can turn harder than a manned plane can, for instance, because it doesn't have to worry about the G-forces killing the pilot. But technology is not quite there yet today.
Arguably the best illustration of this was the infamous "Millennium Challenge 2002", a massive war game involving 13,000 troops and $250M. Embarrassingly, the US army got "defeated" within just the first few days by a ragtag bunch of fighters, propeller plans, recreational boats and low-tech communication.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq
"At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and $250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.
What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's defence establishment and raised questions over the US military's readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper.
In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt.
What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US "victory"."
Intuitively speaking, too, I have great difficulty understanding how carriers could possibly repel massed attacks of low value craft/missiles. And that's not even counting the Dong Fengs, etc. I have a romantic nostalgia for carriers as much as anyone but I can't see how they are anything other than gigantic sitting ducks in the microchip era.
The moment open warfare is declared, America will loose its aircraft carriers, and trillions of dollars, thousands of lives. The only use for the Carrier fleet right now is for America to project its police force around the world.
They look imposing but modern tech (swarms in the former case and, well, enough Fairy Swordfish biplanes in the latter) defeats them.
Submarines are what we need IMO.
Edit: I did a few more web searches but am yet to come across any article that "debunks" the narrative that Van Riper "defeated" the US naval force. So, I'll wait for your sources.
Isn't that time frame incredibly conservative? Think about how much technology has changed since 1983. Drones were mostly unknown less than ten years ago and now they are autonomously bombing targets. I can't believe it will take 30 more years before drones become equally good (and already much cheaper!) than manned fighters. In five years seem more likely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_%28missile%29
Air superiority is pretty much mandatory for any US ground movement - they wouldn't step into any hostile territory unless they clear the air.
So, given that stealth is the F-22's entire reason for being, I'd categorically state that canceling the boondoggle was one of the smartest things our government has done in quite a while.
The F22 termination is a good thing, it means the US stops wasting money that could use to other things.
There is a "law of diminishing returns" in fighter aircraft that makes improving them extremely expensive.
They are also designed by committee, with such expensive things risks are minimized. It is big company thinking versus startups thinking.
In a real world those super expensive machines would me destroyed in a minute by UAVs that can accelerate and decelerate 4 to 5 times what any manned vehicle, and are 1000 times less expensive, and could be programmed for doing risky things by Johny the geek.
Remotely piloted drones can be used in a semi-disposable manner to access hostile airspace. Manned aircraft are going the way of horse cavalry. We have a lot of romantic attachment to fighter jocks, so we can't accept that they are no longer relevant.
Missiles and drones. Face it people.
Let's face it. Japan and China are feinting, in the way that nations do silly things that ultimately get settled through war, at some random rocks with natural gas nearby while only 10m gets spent on focus fusion development and 4trillion with a 'T' flows through the fossil fuels industry every year. Meanwhile we seem to still fight wars on the back of outright lies ("yellow cake?") and carry out dragnet surveillance to figure out Angela Merkel's plot to bomb the white house. Let's just say I have some problems with the overall priorities in this picture.
On the other hand, assuming defense(?) actually is important, we have carriers that cost billions and are complete sitting ducks to anti-ship ballistic missiles like that China has developed, which have stealthy, guided warheads apparently. Good thing we have Aegis cruisers guarding them to intercept any wayward missile bodies that might also impact the carriers. Military spending is worse than healthcare.gov.
Assumes facts not in evidence: That we will wage, threaten to wage, or deter against fighting a conventional war with either Russia or China, the only two nations on the planet who could theoretically develop the capability to thwart our current air power arsenal (F-15, F-18, etc). I mean: Really? A gunpowder war against Russia or China?
There is a large body of evidence, including but not limited to the past 50 years of U.S. military history, that we are more likely to end up in a war against guerillas, insurgents, terrorists, or third world regimes -- the strangely named "low intensity conflicts." For which these very expensive (and very cool, to teen boys) fighters are useless. Not suboptimal; useless.
And I haven't even begun to discuss how military power is only one component of "strategic posture." For example, China's enormous economic engine is far more important to its clout on the world stage than its military arsenal. Ask Pakistan or North Korea how much respect and real power a fearsome military buys globally.
This whole article is basically propaganda designed to puff up the importance of a weapons program held over from the cold war. It could have been written by Boeing (although even Boeing would have been more subtle). Its assertions are laughable. ("Unless the US deploys a minimum of 500-600 of these aircraft, it will lose the ability to access hostile airspace with acceptable losses in aircraft and aircrew." We access hostile aircraft every day.)
The vast majority of air defence systems the US has gone against are SA-2 which is late 1950s tech, SA-3, which is early 1960s tech and a few SA-5s and SA-6's, which are late 60s tech.
Over the past decade and a half, things have started to change. Russia has started exporting large numbers of modern air defence systems, and modern digital upgrades to older systems. Systems that were designed from the start to be highly resistant to jamming and decoys and to be highly mobile.
Air defences have suddenly got a lot more capable in many nations around the world, while western nations are by and large still using the same defence suppression tools they had during the first gulf war.
If the US needs to attack a nation like Iran or Syria, it will not be a rerun of 1991. Instead of the US having a 20 year technological advantage over enemy air defence, enemy air defences will have a 20 year technological advantage over the US air force.
It's nice that you know the NATO designation of a few old SAM systems, but that's mostly orthogonal to the question of whether we need F-22s. The U.S. system of establishing air superiority is just that: A system, of which air superiority fighters are just one piece. The system is unmatched in the world. And you've been watching too much Top Gun, kiddo.
Surely it must be easier/cheaper/faster to develop a pilot-less drone to perform these tasks.
This is really no different than past fighter replacements. Like the F80->F86->F104->F4 etc... (i'm intentionally skipping planes). Actually the F4 is a great example of where the accepted "future of air combat" was proven wrong. As it turns out missiles weren't the best idea for the only armament on an aircraft. Drones may end up in the same category and we still want manned fighters, we might not yet want to go whole hog into as yet unproven territory.