Battleforce-Organic
AEW: Keystone of Sea Control
As important as
carrier-based fighters will probably be to future U.S. Navy battleforce operations,
the most indispensible air wing element will likely be battleforce-organic AEW
aircraft. Since all radars are range-limited by the Earth’s curvature, an attacker
can approach from beneath a warship’s effective radar coverage or can fire weapons
from beyond it. This obviously minimizes the warship’s raid warning time and
defensive interception opportunities. Aircraft and sea-skimming anti-ship
missiles’ centimeter-band Radar Cross Section (RCS) reductions also can reduce shipboard
radars’ threat detection ranges. Additionally, an adversary can exploit the
defender’s shipboard radar emissions to cue its anti-ship
attacks. As perfected by the Cold War-era U.S. Navy, the use of a highly sensitive Ultra High Frequency AEW radar at high altitude addresses the above defensive problems in two ways. First, it enables long range, wide-area air and surface surveillance that exploits attackers’ less-reducible decimeter-band RCSs. Second, it supports a dispersed surface force’s prolonged use of highly-restrictive Radiofrequency (RF) Emission Control (EMCON) for concealment.
Battleforce-organic AEW has additional advantages. It maximizes the endurance of maritime surveillance patrols in remote areas. It allows for rapid-reaction maritime surveillance patrol sorties upon intelligence warning. Perhaps most importantly, it enables maritime surveillance coverage when enemy fires are suppressing friendly airbases ashore.
Battleforce-organic AEW’s historical role cueing friendly forces’ anti-air and anti-surface warfare actions remains central to sustaining naval operations within a hotly contested maritime area. Furthermore, as the core sensor within the emerging U.S. Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) capability, battleforce-organic AEW will enable Aegis surface combatants to engage low-RCS air threats flying well outside shipboard radar coverage.[i] The use of battleforce-organic AEW in this way supports operations on interior lines of networking, which if implemented smartly can make an opponent's efforts to intercept or exploit NIFC-CA extremely difficult.
A battleforce-organic AEW radar’s weight, power, and aperture-size requirements combined with the AEW mission’s endurance requirements create a need for a relatively large aircraft, which in turn requires a large-deck carrier. The main alternative to this, AEW radars on rotary-wing aircraft, simply cannot provide the on-station endurance, combat radius, radar height-of-eye, or radar gain necessary to detect (and guide engagements against) inbound threats long before the latter can confidently target the supported battleforce ships.
Carrier-based AEW aircraft are also extremely useful in performing battleforce-level Command, Control, and Communications (C3) roles. During the late Cold War, for example, the U.S. Navy came to appreciate how its E-2 Hawkeye AEW aircraft could support battleforce commanders’ tactical control over widely-dispersed subordinate units. This proved especially important when force-level countersurveillance and countertargeting efforts demanded that the battleforce's warships maintain protracted RF EMCON. This support could be indirect, as the E-2 was able to serve as a relay for difficult-to-intercept line-of-sight communications pathways.[ii] It could also be direct, with the battleforce commander delegating the E-2 crew the authority to tactically control battleforce units in accordance with his pre-disseminated intentions messages and command by negation doctrine. E-2 crews even routinely assumed their home carriers’ air traffic management and landing control duties while the latter maintained long-duration RF EMCON.[iii] All these C3 roles supported (and can still support) a battleforce's operations on interior lines of networking.
Tomorrow, carriers and Joint power projection
[i]
RDML Jim Syring, USN. “Navy IAMD Capabilities.” (PEO IWS Presentation to the
National Defense Industrial Association State of IAMD Symposium, 12 July 2024),
Slides 18-22, accessed 11/18/14, http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2012IAMD/Syring.pdf
[ii]
This role could also be assumed by future long-endurance unmanned aerial
systems. See Robert C. Rubel. “Pigeonholes or Paradigm Shifts.” Naval Institute Proceedings 138, No. 7
(July 2012): 44. Retaining the capability for airborne human-in-the-loop communications
relays, though, will be an important communications/operational security
measure.
[iii]
See 1. Norman Friedman. Network-Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight
Smarter Through Three World Wars. (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press,
2009), 237-238.; 2. “1985 Command History.” (Carrier Airborne Early Warning
Squadron-123, 31 January 2024), p. 5, accessed 11/18/14, http://www.history.navy.mil/sqdhist/vaw/vaw-123/1985.pdf
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