Chinese Maritime Strike Capabilities and the Fragility of U.S. Sea Lines of Communication Along the First Island Chain

On 30 March, the People’s Liberation Air Force conducted a long-range bomber exercise sortie into the northern half of the Luzon Strait. It isn’t clear from the media reporting whether the bombers flew further east into the open Western Pacific as part of the drill. The pictures accompanying the PLA’s press announcement on the exercise suggest H-6K bombers were employed—essentially a modernized version of the 1950s-era Soviet Tu-16 Badger. H-6K’s combat range is rumored to be approximately 1900 nautical miles. When one adds on an H-6K’s YJ-62 subsonic or YJ-12 supersonic ASCMs, the maximum anti-ship striking reach extends by roughly 180 or 250 nautical miles respectively.

In effect, and assuming an airfield relatively close to China’s coast, the PLAAF demonstrated a H-6K maritime strike at approximately 20% of the bomber’s notional maximum combat radius. This reach may seem underwhelming at first glance. However, if one were to draw that 20% as an arc extending outward along China’s entire coastline, then tack on the YJ-12’s assumed range, the entirety of the maritime approaches to Taiwan, the Ryukyus, the northern and western coasts of Luzon, the west coast of Kyushu, and the southern coast of South Korea lie inside the perimeter with plenty of standoff room.  20% can be more than enough.

It is quite possible that the effective range of those missiles against a given ship or surface grouping under wartime conditions would be significantly less than the advertised maximum range. Nevertheless, U.S. commanders would not only have to take the missiles’ maximum theoretical range into consideration when designing campaigns and operations, but would also have to account for the H-6Ks’ maximum theoretical range. Not to mention J-11 fighters carrying YJ-12s. Rest assured that these kinds of risk calculations are very much on the mind of U.S. treaty allies in the region.

The U.S. Navy has not faced an analogous “blue water” air threat since the Cold War days of Bears, Badgers, and Backfires. These Soviet bombers were not tasked with pressuring the trans-Atlantic flow of reinforcements and supplies to Western Europe, however (and Badger couldn’t reach far enough south in any event). Nor were there Soviet fighters capable of escorting them all the way out to those sea lanes. The principal theoretical threat to these flows was therefore Soviet submarines (even though that really wasn’t their primary mission either), which in turn drove design requirements for convoy escorts like the Knox and Perry-class frigates.

As alluded to above, Western Pacific geography presents a completely different story. Let’s use the Ryukyus as an example. It is highly desirable to deploy U.S. air and missile defense systems, Japanese anti-ship cruise missile batteries, and U.S. and Japanese fighters capable of dispersed operations from ad hoc airfields to these islands in order to pressure Chinese air and naval surface forces’ wartime abilities to break out into the Western Pacific. These systems are also highly important to complicating PLA air and naval surface operations within the East China Sea, as well as defending the Ryukyus from direct PLA strikes or expeditionary assaults. They might contribute significantly to bogging down a Chinese war-opening offensive long enough to prevent a fait accompli under certain circumstances.

How, though, will these forces be logistically sustained if PLAAF fighters can use their numerical superiority to disrupt or deny U.S. airlift efforts, and the striking reach of its H-6Ks and J-11s to pressure U.S. sealift efforts? How will transport aircraft and convoyed shipping be able to unload their cargoes if the requisite airfields and seaports have been subjected to debilitating air and missile bombardments (or mine-laying), or if PLA forces can direct fires against these facilities on short notice? Now let’s take this one step further: how will the U.S. and Japan protect the flow of basic economic sustenance to the islands’ civilian populations under such conditions? Also bear in mind that unlike the Cold War-era Soviet maritime bomber threat, H-6Ks can be escorted thousands of miles out to sea by J-11s (and many other PLAAF fighters for overwater missions closer to home), thereby providing a modicum of protection from U.S. and Japanese fighters. Now factor PLAN submarine capabilities into the mix. The difficulty of these challenges should be apparent. What’s more, the same challenges would apply in conflicts involving the Philippines, South Korea, and of course Taiwan.

This is why I say land-based forces positioned along the First Island Chain can “pressure” PLAAF and PLAN breakouts through the First Island Chain, not block them altogether. “Pressuring” them is very useful in that it can support friendly naval forces and convoys operating in the open ocean by providing some warning of an outbound raid as well as knocking out some of the raiders during both the outbound and inbound legs. It also would entice China to expend a disproportionate effort trying to locate and suppress the ‘gatekeepers’ early in a major war. Similar logic applies to the use of such forces for pressuring Chinese use of the East or South China Seas in the vicinity of allied islands, including the direct defense of the islands themselves.

As I’ve noted before, unless the maritime lines of communication to these islands are kept open, the maritime denial forces on them essentially become “wasting assets” if not sacrificial speedbumps. Yes, ammunition and food can be stockpiled to allow such forces to hold out for protracted periods—if such a foresighted step is taken during peacetime. And even if it is, the stockpile will only last for a finite period. Munitions expenditures will likely be higher than anticipated in peacetime planning. There will be combat losses and a corresponding need (or at least desire) to funnel in replacements. Can replenishment and reinforcement be done with confidence under the circumstances I’ve outlined?

Nor does any of this even begin to cover the islands’ populations’ needs for basic staples like food, medical supplies, fuel, whatever external trade can be sustained, and so on. Imagine the political pressures upon an embattled ally’s government—and thereby upon U.S. political leadership—to break a Chinese maritime siege. Imagine the political and strategic consequences if the siege could not be broken. This could, in fact, be a principal Chinese objective in a notional conflict of limited aims.

Such issues are seldom raised in public proposals of or commentaries on strategic concepts for deterring—and if necessary waging—a war against Chinese aggression in East Asia. There are a few indications that this fog may be lifting, though. I certainly hope that’s the case, as any strategic concept for East Asia that doesn’t address these questions is seriously incomplete.

It’s important to keep in mind that the challenges I’ve described are hardly insurmountable. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of measures that could contribute towards solutions:

• Contingency plans could emphasize offensive and defensive operations aimed at protecting critical maritime lines of communication to allied territories and forward forces.

•  Contingency plans could also incorporate entire sets of sequential or parallel operations in the physical, electromagnetic, cyber, and space domains to temporarily if not permanently degrade the surveillance-reconnaissance apparatus that PLA maritime strike aircraft, submarines, surface groups, and land-based missiles depend upon for over-the-horizon targeting cues.

• Combined arms operating concepts and tactics could be developed for screening convoys from air and submarine attack using existing (or forthcoming) platforms and systems.

• New logistics concepts for using existing or forthcoming transport platforms to keep dispersed forces supplied from afar when large airfields and seaports are unavailable.

• Medium-range air defense missiles could be added to the forthcoming LCS-derived frigate so that it could perform convoy escort in high air threat environments.

• A long-legged large weapons payload fighter (F/A-XX?) and a wide-area anti-submarine aircraft could be added to the future carrier air wing.

Bottom line: land-based maritime denial forces in the First Island Chain can do many things that complement naval battleforces at the campaign-level. They cannot substitute for them. 

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

Airpower in Libya

I was wondering whether my latest column on airpower and Libya amounted to strawman burning, but it turns out not. Michael Auslin, in the WSJ:

Moammar Gadhafi was killed last week by Libyan rebel forces on the ground, but his regime would never have met its end if not for the Western air power that targeted his troops from the skies. As Washington considers slashing $500 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, the lessons of Libya should give pause to anyone whose plans will reduce the U.S. military's ability to control the air. The United States cannot fight in the future with a hollow Air Force.

Allied air power saved the Libyan revolt from being crushed at least once, if not twice, this past summer. Nearly 8,000 allied strike sorties kept Gadhafi's forces on the defensive, destroyed their command-and-control network, and eliminated much of their supply infrastructure. Much of the direct air-combat activity was borne by the British and French but, as then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted, without U.S. air-refueling tankers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets, the NATO missions would have been severely hampered and largely ineffective.

Considering the broad range of U.S. interests and commitments around the globe, the capabilities offered by the U.S. Air Force will remain essential national assets. As Mr. Gates argued shortly before leaving office, in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan future, the U.S. is more likely than not to be unable or unwilling to commit large numbers of ground forces to overseas campaigns.

Note the two-step; in a conflict where the contribution of the USAF was important but far from the central, the chief lesson learned is that the United States needs to invest more heavily in Air Force modernization, implicitly at the expense of the other two services. As I argue in my column, the Libya intervention shouldn't be understood as a victory for the institutional interest of any branch, although it will inevitably be interpreted as such:

Moreover, the actual use of airpower in Libya highlights the fact that “airpower” is not necessarily the same thing as a country’s air force. Tomahawk missiles launched by American and British submarines “broke open the door” to the air campaign over Libya with a barrage on the first day of the war. The French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle subsequently proved instrumental for carrying out much of the campaign, launching a significant percentage of French strike sorties. U.S. Marine Corps Harriers undertook strikes from the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge. Finally, in order to carry out close air support missions, attack helicopters flew from the decks of the British assault carrier HMS Ocean and the French Tonnerre. Meanwhile, British and French special forces supplied expert advice to Libyan rebel commanders and targeting intelligence to NATO strike planners, allowing bombs to find their mark and facilitating combined arms offensives. Finally, American Predator drones scoured the country searching for targets of military and political importance. The NATO operation in Libya was very much a joint undertaking, both in terms of its multinational character and its organizational diversity.

So Stealthy the Libyans Wouldn't Even Have Known They Weren't There...

I'm just gonna come out and say that this argument hasn't aged well:

Employing a squadron of stealth fifth-generation F-22s along with other select capabilities would help reduce the need to expend significantly more resources while reducing operational risk. Coercive diplomacy backed by naval presence, decisive air power, and accurate weapons in the region would allow the U.S. and others to negate Libyan air defenses and air forces. The world-class capability inherent in the F-22 also bears a psychological-intimidation factor that sends a clear message that no Libyan aircraft will fly without consequences.

Simply talking about a no-fly zone should highlight the urgent need to recapitalize the U.S. Air Force with modern aircraft (in addition to upgrades of the legacy fleets). Using fifth-generation F-22 aircraft for a no-fly zone mission would allow the Air Force to operate above the Libyan skies with impunity. An F-22 Raptor does not need to destroy enemy air defenses first, because it is not vulnerable to this threat, unlike some fourth-generation aircraft.

I suspect that the four month grounding of the F-22 in the midst of the campaign might have made things... awkward. I wouldn't bother with this (obviously, replacement aircraft could have been found) were it not for the fact that the op-ed was such a bald effort to shill for the institutional interest of the USAF.

Libya Lessons: Supremacy of the SOF-Airpower Team… Or, why do We Still Need a Huge Army?

A number of interesting learning points have arisen from the Libyan conflict. Foremost among them for me is the need to massively downsize the United States Army. More about that heresy in a minute… Galrahn and Robert Farley have discussed the merits and shortcomings of airpower in relation to the US/NATO/various third-party countries' campaign against the Gadhafi regime. They both make some interesting points. However, what the Libya campaign best demonstrates, or more appropriately, reiterates, is the utility of the special ops-airpower team. And by airpower, I’m referring to service-agnostic airpower in all its’ forms, although biased towards the flexibility sea-based aircraft provide.

This lesson was best demonstrated in 2001 in Afghanistan, when relatively small numbers of US Special Forces combined with guerilla fighters and precisely applied airpower over-ran the Taliban. A similar unconventional warfare campaign was executed in Northern Iraq in 2003 when conventional US Army forces were prohibited from gaining access there via Turkey. Instead, Army Special Forces working in conjunction with Kurdish Pesh Merga fighters deftly defeated Saddam’s ground forces, including mechanized armor formations.

No US military boots deployed on the ground during Libya, but other nations’ SOF are reported to have participated, including those of the Gulf States, which by the way, have worked and trained extensively with US SOF the past several years. The rag-tag TNC rebels, supported by (primarily) US ISR, multi-national strike sorties, and foreign SOF - which came to the party somewhat late - were able to defeat a rather heavily armed force. Needless to say, had US SOF been involved, the game would have been over for Gadhafi many months ago.

So what is the role of the Navy in this construct? First, SOF’s capabilities are amplified when they are inserted, supported, and sustained from the sea (see Sep. 2005 Proceedings for elaboration), and Navy-SOF interoperability is as critical now as ever. Second, and more importantly, is that the United States has designed and nearly perfected a capability to defeat large conventional armies without employing our own conventional ground forces has huge budgetary implications that can be seen as favorable to the Navy (and Air Force).

Look at the range of expected combat missions over the next few decades:
-Overthrowing a dictatorial regime? Use SOF married to an indigenous force of irregulars supported by naval forces and air power.
-Want to defeat a large conventional army? SOF and ISR will target enemy ground formations for destruction by air power and naval fires.
-Need to counter an irregular threat? Apply SOF, naval, and air power. Rinse. Repeat.
-Steady state shaping operations? SOF excels at these, and the navy's forward deployed forces are always positioned to respond to emerging crises.

What’s missing from the above scenarios? The conventional army. In other words, there is little role for a large standing army in supporting the national security of the United States once we have pulled out of our manpower-intensive counterinsurgency fights. What does an armored force give us against an opposing armored force when air dominance allows us to slice and dice enemy armored divisions? (And if we didn’t have air supremacy, we wouldn’t commit large numbers of conventional ground troops to be slaughtered by an opposing air force anyway). How often do we use artillery to suppress threats in a collateral damage adverse world now that we have on call ISR over-watch and precision guided munitions? And why on earth would we deploy a large conventional infantry force for constabulary duty in another protracted ground war given the lessons (relearned) in Iraq and Afghanistan?

What about Iraq, you say? The routing of Saddam's army took over 100,000 US troops and GEN Shinseki said we should have used several hundred thousand more. Yes, but with a little more patience, a few battalions of US Special Forces supported from the air could have deposed Saddam's regime through an unconventional warfare campaign. This sort of effort probably wouldn't have destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and army to the point of bringing the complete disarray to the country that our "shock and awe" campaign required. But that sort of operation wouldn't have been appreciated by the conventional army generals running the war, would it?

Naturally, there are drawbacks to instituting major cuts to the army's force structure. Primary among these are the secondary effects on USASOC, which recruits the majority of its special operators from the conventional army. But unlike platform-intensive air and naval forces, or mature and highly trained special operations forces, conventional army formations can be reconstituted rather rapidly. And admittedly, there are times when a US ground force is necessary to conduct a larger unilateral raid or punitive expedition ashore than SOF alone could execute. Fortunately though, there is a magnificently self-sufficient, expeditionary, and flexible group of warriors known as US Marines, who are well-equipped and forward deployed to handle these sorts of operations; again, supported by naval and air power.

I realize the above concepts are controversial, but I also know that the US became a secure and strong nation and will remain powerful because of sea power, not land power. And a globally deployed Navy/Marine Corps team, combined with a robust range of airpower and special operators is the force we need to defeat just about any conceivable future threat. So why shouldn't the Army take a disproportionate share of the impending DOD budget cuts?

UPDATE: To save readers from going through 80+ postings and provide some clarity: what do I mean by "massive" cuts to USA force structure? How about at least 25% of active duty force structure? Honestly, I won't venture to put out an exact number, but I do know that 5% cuts applied to all services across the board is a disservice to national security. Designing a future force for "most likely" scenarios, as well as black swans doesn't mandate that we do things the way we always (or at least recently) have done them. And while 25% may not seem like a large number, when you put it in dollars and manpower, it's pretty "massive."

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

Airpower Over Libya Revisited

First, I need to apologize for not engaging with the comments to some of my recent posts here at ID. In particular, the comment thread to this post on a Tokyo Naval Treaty is quite good, and I've also received some good e-mails on the idea. I'm bashing my way through the final stages of a book, however, which has drained the life out of everything else I've been doing. In any case, here are my thoughts on the recent success of the Libyan rebels:

One of the crucial military questions that emerged from the campaign involves the effectiveness of airpower. With one long ground war winding down and another in full swing, the United States and its allies are extremely reluctant to deploy ground forces. The leaders of the major intervening countries made clear that ground troops would not play a major role in the Libyan intervention, with U.S. President Barack Obama most emphatic on this point. With ground troops unavailable, the burden of military intervention falls on air and naval forces. The Libyan campaign began with a no-fly zone that quickly morphed into a large-scale campaign to support rebel efforts to destroy the Gadhafi regime. The early course of the campaign recalled the first months of the Afghanistan War, in which the United States overthrew the Taliban with airpower, special forces and Northern Alliance ground forces.

Galrahn was making the anti-airpower case on Twitter yesterday; it's unusual for me to be more bullish on airpower than just about anyone, but I think I'm slightly more optimistic than he.

Airpower Over Libya

My WPR column this week is an extension of this post from last week:

What has been absent thus far, however, has been the strategic use of airpower: airstrikes designed to induce the regime to concede or collapse without reliance on ground forces. The absence of a strategic airpower element to the Libya campaign is odd, given that most recent air campaigns have included strategically oriented targeting and operations. Air planners in the Vietnam War, Gulf War I and the Kosovo War all hoped that the enemy would concede without the deployment of ground troops. This idea still animates much thinking in the United States Air Force (.pdf).

Incidentally, John Andreas Olsen's biography of John Warden is really quite good. I particularly recommend the chapters on Warden's participation in air campaign planning during the Gulf War, and his tenure as Commandant of the Air Command and Staff College. When I get a chance, I'll have something productive to say about Tom Rick's series on education at the Air War College.

Politics of the F-22 in Libya

Somebody is being misleading:

Instead, political reasons likely kept the most advanced jet on Earth out of the fight, according to Deptula, an early advocate of using the jet to enforce the no-fly zone in Libya. Basically, the F-22’s stealth would have negated much of the official need for coalition help since the jet is almost completely immune to Libya’s ancient air defenses, argues the Deptula, who retired last October.

“Because of the high degree of stealth of the F-22, its supercruise and ISR capabilities, it would not have required the destruction of the Libyan enemy air defense system to operate inside Libyan airspace,” writes Deptula in an email to DoDBuzz. This is especially true “given the make-up of the current Libyan air defenses (predominantly made up of SA-2, 3, 5, and 6s). Accordingly, F-22s would be free to either engage any Libyan aircraft that took-off, or they could destroy LAF aircraft and/or helicopters on the ground at will.”

Fortunately, later in the piece Reed points out why this is quite misleading:

While the F-22 is “optimized” for air-to-air combat as Air Force Secretary Michael Donley pointed out last week, they can carry two 1,000 pound JDAMs for air-to-ground missions. No, this isn’t nearly as good as a bomber or strike fighters like the F-15E but it still packs a punch and could have hit ground targets.

Still, other jets such as the Strike Eagle and Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier carry a lot more of the air-to-ground munitions that have been used to chase down Gadhafi’s ground forces. Keeping them in the air unmolested means taking out Libyan air defenses, not just Libyan fighters. Some aviation experts also argue that the F-22s would require nearly as many “enablers” (support aircraft) as legacy fighters to carry out the Libyan mission.

Precisely; the F-22 might render other aircraft unnecessary if the no fly zone was actually a no fly zone, but of course it's not. Because the mission apparently includes direct ground support for Libyan rebels, it necessitates the participation of non-F-22 aircraft, which necessitates the destruction of the Libyan air defense network.

The other issue I have with Deptula is the corruption of the term "political." Even if Deptula were correct on the merits, and the F-22 could perform the mission without assistance from other aircraft, creating conditions for the inclusion of coalition partners is an entirely sensible political objective. Indeed, for my part anything that forces Britain, France, and the rest to take on as much of the heavy lifting as possible in genuinely sensible from an American point of view.

Strategy and Airpower

Reading and listening to political scientists discuss policy for Libya, I was sure I had been exposed to everything stupid that could be stated in a strategic context regarding airpower.

I was wrong.

It turns out the fantasy land filled with political science majors touting decisive airpower tactics like No-Fly Zones in foreign civil wars is potentially more coherent than what is being printed these days in Air and Space Journal, Air University Press.

Strategy and Airpower (PDF)
Col John A. Warden III, USAF, Retired
Air University's Air and Space Power Journal
Spring 2011
Vol XXV, No. 1

Selected Excerpts:

"Airpower enables us to think about conflict from a future-back, end-game-first perspective as opposed to one based on the battle obsession of Clausewitz and his followers. It also opens another very exciting possibility: conflict with little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood."

"So here is a proposition: let us resolve to expunge the words fighting, battle, shape the battlefield, battlespace, and the war fighter from our vocabulary, to relegate the "means" of war to the last thing we think about, and to elevate the "end" to the pedestal of our consideration. In other words, let's bury thousands of years of bloody battle stories, as heroic as they were, and start looking at war-and eventually airpower-from its end point, which by definition means from a strategic perspective."

"Movement from the parallel domain to the serial domain causes the probability of success to begin to fall dramatically. Taking a very long time decreases the chances considerably. It isn't impossible to win a long war, but the odds are very low-and this applies to both sides, despite significant differences in their centers of gravity. Since good strategy depends heavily on understanding probabilities, deliberately embarking on a low-probability, long serial war does not make much sense."

"Very simply, whether in war or business, our normal approach to the time element is exactly backward: we ask ourselves how long something will take rather than decide how long it should take in order to create parallel effects and succeed at an acceptable cost."

"We should take a page from business, which long ago learned that selling a product had to involve much more than touting its technical goodness. Products sell because customers see them as filling a real need in their lives; airpower advocates have not done well in this regard. If airpower is something different, we must highlight its differences and show convincingly that it fills a vital need."

"Airpower exponents not only need to connect airpower directly to strategy and market their product well, but also need to start believing in it. Those who begin a discussion by noting that airpower "can't do everything" do themselves and their listeners a real disservice."

"Of course, espousing the unlimited concept of airpower exposes the advocate to charges of airpower zealotry, a lack of "jointness," or some other nasty label. But we need to become confident enough to shrug off these labels."

Everything I want to say about this article is negative, so I'll let readers lead the analysis here.

But I will make a side observation, particularly in light of that last paragraph which has been thrown at me lately in another discussion regarding the advocacy of seapower...

With professional articles like this, the United States Air Force continues to project themselves as unlearned Borg drones carpet bombing legitimate strategic thought with absurdity in the name of self relevance. Air Defense Press is struggling for legitimacy primarily because they have sacrificed everything to the alter of airpower advocacy.

Don't laugh Navy thinker, because if the Navy leadership ignores the Board of Directors at the US Naval Institute, this type of self-service incoherent bullshit sold to the alter of cash cow interests is exactly what people following USNI closely legitimately believe will begin happening to Proceedings starting this year. If you doubt what I am saying, you had better do your own research into the subject - indeed I encourage it.

The Navy cannot under any condition allow their strategic thought institutions, both inside and outside the Navy, become focused content shops shaping the message towards a specific point of view. To understand why, simply look at the Air Force.

All Budgets Are Not Equal

I constantly pick on the Air Force, but because it is Friday and I have a three day weekend coming up - today I'm going to give them some rare attention by playing the role of an Air Force blogger.

The DEW Line has a nice little blog post on aviation, which is actually a live feed of reporting from the other day when the DoD budget was released. While they are covering aviation in all three services, I was mostly looking to see if there was anything interesting happening in Naval Aviation.

In his post, Stephen Trimble makes a comment I want to expand on a bit.

Top-line budget documents show how the DoD has requested $44 billion to spend on aircraft procurement next year. It's always amazing to me that the navy spends more money on aircraft than the air force!

Yep, every year the Navy spends more on aircraft than the Air Force, but it is important to note that the Air Force budget has long been like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. If you ever dig into the Air Force budget you will find there is a mini-budget that is about as transparent as the Peoples Liberation Army budget, and it has been like that for several years.

The Air Force FY12 baseline budget is $166.3 billion. For comparison, the Navy baseline FY12 budget is $161.4 billion. Wow, the Air Force gets more money, right? Not really. If you go to page 7 of this Air Force Budget rollout brief (PDF), you can get a good idea of what I'm talking about. There are basically three Air Force budgets; Blue, Non-Blue, and OCO. Just so everyone knows, OCO stands for Overseas Contingency Operations and every military service has an OCO budget, which for the Air Force is $16.4 billion in FY12.

The Blue budget is the vast majority of the actual Air Force budget, and in FY 2012 the Air Force has budgeted $119 billion in the blue budget. This budget include Military Personnel Costs, R&D, Procurement, Military Construction, Health Care, Housing, Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), and Operations and Maintenance.

Lets think about something for a second.

The Navy budget is $161.4 billion.. Of that, the Navy is spending $18.775 billion on Navy and Marine Corps aviation, which comes to about 11.6% of the Navy budget being spent on aviation.

The Air Force budget is $166.3 billion. However, the Air Force also has a "Non-Blue" budget of $30.9 billion that must be subtracted, leaving the Air Force with a "Blue" budget of $135.4 billion. Of that, the Air Force is spending $17.897 billion on Air Force aviation, which comes to about 13.2% of the Air Force budget being spent on aviation.

By numbers alone the Navy does spend more money on aviation than the Air Force, but by percentage of budget the Air Force spends more money on aviation. By now you are probably wondering what the "Non Blue" budget is.

Well, I think we all would love to know. The "Non-Blue" budget in the FY 12 Air Force budget is $30.9 billion. Historically, about 15% of the "Non-Blue" budget is spend on Health programs and Special Operations. The other 85% is where the Office of the Secretary of Defense has traditionally put all their classified stuff in the DoD budget (most of which is intel, so it is said), and the funding directive for that money in the Air Force budget isn't actually the Air Force, rather historically OSD decides what to spend that money on.

So in FY 2012, based on historical patterns, there is a bit over $26 billion worth of classified goodies hidden in the Air Force "Non Blue" budget. It has been suggested this is how the Air Force pays for mystery space planes, but also why even though the Air Force baseline budget is higher than the Navy's baseline budget, the Navy has a higher top line to work from and can spend more money on aircraft than the Air Force every year.

The J-20 is What You Want it to Be

Bill Sweetman's post on the J-20 and the perils of interpretation is a must-read; we are likely to see in the J-20 what we expect and (not always the same thing) what we want to see. However, I'd also like to direct everyone to his old article on the Tu-22, which he linked in the above post. Simply put, this is a masterpiece of military writing. It includes close technical analysis based on available intelligence, an elaboration of the strategic consequences of tactical development, and an evaluation of the causes and consequences of misunderstandings about the capabilities of the Tu-22. It's a brilliant piece of work, and I'm glad he gave everyone the opportunity to read it.

Speaking of which, I've been slowly but surely working my way through this list of the "Best Magazine Articles Ever." There are a fair number of military themed articles (including R.A. Radford's Economic Organization of a POW Camp, SLA Marshall's First Wave at Omaha Beach, and others), but I suspect that this group could come up with a good list of excellent military themed magazine articles. Thoughts?

Let Enlisted Personnel Fly UAVs?

This is interesting:

[UAVs] are significantly cheaper to purchase and operate than manned aircraft, and they do not require officer pilots. Officer pilots are necessary in manned aircraft because they make decisions independent of a commander's control, due to distance and communications limitations. UAVs remove these impediments. Today a team of enlisted personnel can remotely operate numerous aircraft under the supervision of a single officer. Currently, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all use enlisted personnel to fly some UAVs. Yet the Air Force insists on maintaining antiquated requirements that all pilots -- including of UAVs -- be officers.

A recent internal audit of the Air Force's UAV training pipelines found that if properly structured, the training cost could be decreased to $135,000 per pilot, an impressive number when compared with the more than $2.6 million the service spends to train a fighter pilot. Of the approximately 1,200 individuals entering the Air Force's pilot training pipeline last year, roughly half will pilot UAVs. It costs the United States Air Force Academy $403,000 per officer graduate, while it costs less than $45,000 to recruit and train an enlisted service member. If a switch from officer to enlisted UAV pilots were made in the Air Force alone the total recruiting and training savings could amount to over $1.5 billion each year. If all of the services were to begin replacing officers in flight training pipelines with experienced enlisted personnel, such programs could yield several billion dollars in savings each year.

These would not be one-time savings, as maintaining an officer on active duty costs far more than maintaining enlisted personnel. Last year, for the first time, a Navy Petty Officer First Class completed the basic flight standards course, the first step in the Navy's pilot training pipeline. Before flight pay, bonuses, and allowances this individual is paid $2801.40 a month, compared with the $5117.10 a lieutenant is paid for the same month's work. These soldiers, sailors, and marines complete highly technical operations with extremely high levels of efficiency and do so at a fraction of the cost of an officer.

Thoughts?

Did US Aerospace Hire George Costanza to Manage the USAF Tanker Contract?

This is almost surreal. The company that's trying to put forward a Ukranian Antonov aircraft as the new USAF tanker is protesting a decision to reject its bid on account of tardiness. Here's the story:

At issue is when USAF took control of the proposal documents submitted by U.S. Aerospace. All of the following detail was provide from an industry executive who wished to be anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The company claims its messenger, which was delivering the proposal was at the Wright-Patterson Area B gate before 1:30 p.m. July 9. The deadline was 2 p.m. that day.

According to the company, Air Force personnel at the gate "initially denied the messenger entry to the base, then gave incorrect direction to the 1755 Eleventh Street Building 570," where the proposal was headed. The messenger apparently became lost, and Air Force personnel told him to wait while they came to him.

By the time the papers reached their destination, the Air Force stamped the proposal as being received at 2:05 p.m.

U.S. Aerospace was notified July 22 via a letter from the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patt that the company's bid was late and would not be considered as part of the source selection.

So, one of the questions that is likely to be addressed as GAO reviews the protest is at what point the USAF had "control" over the proposal.

Was it when the messenger stepped onto the base? I'd suspect that when it comes to matters of security, the Air Force would say its personnel have control over all people on their bases. When it comes to a contracting matter, it may be different.

Apparently, Air Force officials subsequently told a company representative that delays at installation gates are common (and they are -- I've been subject to more than a few), and that the company should have anticipated this potential snag and planned appropriately.

Dodging Bullets

I'm working through some research from my London trip of two months ago, and still making some interesting finds. From an August 1917 British Cabinet meeting establishing the legal foundation for the Royal Air Force (most likely authored by Jan Smuts):

There remains the question of the new Air Service and the absorption of the R.N.A.S and R.F.C into it. Should the Navy and Army retain their own special Air Services in addition to the Air forces which will be controlled by the Air Ministry? This will make the confusion hopeless and render the solution of the Air problem impossible. The maintenance of three Air Services is out of the question, no indeed does the War Office make any claim to a separate Air Service of its own.

The more work I do on the question, the more I'm confident that the United States military dodged a truly nasty bullet when it kept aviation within the US Army at the end of World War I. By the time the USAF was established, Marine and Naval Aviation were too deeply embedded within their services to suffer directly from the tender mercies of the airpower evangelists...

Airpower Missions in the Maritime Domain

In the course of writing an article about the organizational politics of airpower, I'm defining the most common missions expected of air units. These include close air support, reconnaissance, air mobility, interdiction, air superiority, decapitation, and the various types of strategic bombing. In the context of this typology I've run into a problem describing airpower missions in the maritime domain; should commerce protection (primarily anti-submarine warfare) and anti-surface air operations be considered independent missions, or do they fall into the more general airpower missions described above (including any general missions that I may have missed)?

I would appreciate any thoughts on the question from commenters, as well as pointers to publications that deal with these definitional questions.

USMC Expands CAS Capabilities

The Marine Corps is upgrading its J-model Hercs with a low collateral damage, precision guided missile. The 3 foot long, 44 pound Viper Strike brings additional organic firepower to Marine IW missions with the ability to engage moving and stationary targets. Adopting a strap-on Harvest Hawk-like ISR and SOPGM package for the Navy's C-2s would expand long range, persistent carrier-based ISR and provide an affordable stand-off option to support CT missions and engage fast attack craft.

Additionally, small PGMs like Viper Strike, its' cousin Griffin, and the even tinier Spike will revolutionize firepower in the littorals when deployed on small sea-based UAVs and patrol craft.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Defense or any of its agencies.

Filling Navy ISR Gaps

This will be a wonderful capability some day, but when, and at what price?

Without timely and accurate intelligence, regardless of source, an operator cannot maneuver his fleet or employ his weapons. Whether we want to find, fix, and finish terrorists from the sea, or engage in long range maritime scouting against a belligerent Navy, a sufficient quality and quantity of "multi-int" capable air platforms is essential. The SECDEF realized in 2008 that a shortage of airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms was hurting our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following some prodding, the Air Force finally shifted into gear and began to build, borrow, and contract dozens of new aircraft, which are being employed to good effect on those two battlefields and elsewhere today. As Navy and Marine units find themselves dispersed wider sea and littoral areas, a sufficient quantity of supporting ISR becomes even more important.

A couple of decades ago, a typical carrier air wing had a number of organic platforms capable of collecting intelligence, including fast movers with TARPS and ES-3A Shadows for ELINT. These aircraft were supplemented by a robust ground-based P-3 fleet along with numerous FLIR and radar capable LAMPS on the small boys. Contrast this capability with today's much-reduced organic ISR capability and some long-in-the-tooth P-3s which are often being employed overland. Today's global naval missions require extraordinary amounts of ISR, but the resources just aren't adequate to source them properly.

ISR seems to be getting short shrift in the Navy's ever-changing procurement plans. Outside of the naval special operations community, the energy and funding to increase the fleet's airborne ISR capabilities seems lacking. The Navy is slowly introducing rotary and fixed-wing UAVs such as Fire Scout and BAMs, but lacks more robust collection capabilities that could be provided by manned sea-based aircraft. The P-8 will eventually bring a capable P-3 replacement to the fleet, albeit a big, expensive, noisy, and manpower intensive one. But there are numerous smaller prop-driven aircraft in use over battlefields today that provide similar, and in some cases better capabilities than the P-3 or P-8 in many ISR roles, at a significantly lower price point.

Is a Navy ISR "surge" in order to fill some of the current capability gaps in this area until more advanced programs are brought online? A major R&D or procurement effort is not necessarily required. Rather, the Navy should leverage the work of the Air Force and SOCOM to rapidly acquire both manned and unmanned platforms and adapt them for sea service. Is there a reason that an aircraft similar to the Air Force's "Project Liberty" MC-12W couldn't be retrofitted with stronger landing gear and tail hook for use from carriers or even large deck amphibs? This sort of platform would provide a number of tactical and operational advantages over our current ISR fleet, giving the Navy the ability to collect volumes of intelligence over land and water from sovereign US territory without a large expeditionary footprint ashore.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or any of its agencies.

My Visit to the Air Command and Staff College

Apparently, it's now cool to ask why the country needs an independent Air Force. Last week, I traveled to the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama to participate on a panel about the future of air power. I had been invited because of an article I wrote several years ago titled "Abolish the Air Force". Also on the panel were two gentlemen from RAND who had much more first hand experience with air power than myself. The audience consisted of the faculty and student body of the ACSC, roughly 400 or so mid-career officers. Most of the attendees were USAF, but there were also generous contingents from the Army, USN, USMC, and a variety of foreign military organizations.

I didn't use slides, and I didn't deliver precisely this lecture, but the linked presentation nevertheless represents a good summary of my remarks. After introductory remarks of 12-15 minutes each, the panel got down to the serious business of answering audience questions. In addition to the panel, I sat in on morning and afternoon classes focusing on roughly the same topic, where I answered more questions.

Below is a very rough summary of the questions I fielded and the answers I gave:

Are you serious?
As a heart attack. Some articles are written as part of a particular debate, and can only really be understood in the context of that debate; the claims made intelligible to the participants in a way that they're not available to outsiders. In this case, however, it means what it means; I think that the Air Force should be folded into the other two services. However, if I fail to snuff out the Air Force, I won't consider the article a failure; part of the point is to get people to think about the contingency and malleability of our institutions.

Relations between the traditional Army and the USAAF were pretty bad prior to and during World War II; wouldn't a return to that structure simply recreate those debates?
Possibly, but I think that many of the questions that animated those debates have become obsolete. The debate in the interwar period became very polarized, with air advocates arguing that the ground army was literally useless, and ground advocates allocating only a very small role to aerial forces. While I'm suspicious of "history teaches us" arguments, I nevertheless think that history has taught us that ground and air units must work together in order to have tactical, operational, and strategic effect. The current arrangement, in my view, makes that more rather than less difficult. Moreover, I think that aerial forces were improperly allocated between the services during the interwar period, and that this allocation caused some of the tension. In particular, strategic air components, especially today but even then, are more at home in the Navy than in the Army.

You argue that the career of military officer isn't as specialized now as it was in the past. This seems crazy to me. Explain why you say such crazy things.
I think it's clear that individual military careers are more specialized now than they have ever been; the technical requirements of flying an aircraft or operating sophisticated computer equipment or doing dozens of other tasks take years to learn. However, this specialization is largely independent of branch organization; a USAF lieutenant could be trained in most of the tasks of a USN ensign without really missing a beat. This is to say that while military professionals specialize in lots of things, they don't really specialize in being an "Air Force officer," or at least not in a way that is meaningfully distinct from being a "Naval officer."

Why pick on the Air Force? Why not just create a unified military, like Canada or China?
Because I think that there's some logic to the "mission" justification for independent services. I think that it's possible for both the Army and the Navy to think about conducting war independent of each other, or at least that it's much more possible for the Army and Navy to do so than for the Air Force. Apart from strategic bombing, every mission that the Air Force conducts by nature involves tight cooperation with one of the other two services. It seems to me that, if this is the case, the use of airpower ought to be conceived of as an organic element of how the Army and the Navy manage military force.

But what about strategic bombing?
Like Robert Pape, I'm very skeptical of the effectiveness of strategic bombing campaigns. I think that they violate an essential Clauswitzian prescription by failing to disarm the enemy, and that consequently they inevitably leave the decision whether to concede or endure in the hands of the enemy. Moreover, I think that the existence of an independent Air Force creates a situation in which civilians are faced with bad, destructive options about the use of military force. The Air Force, like every single other bureaucratic institution in existence, by nature tries to acquire more resources and improve its competitive stance. Consequently, the Air Force has a vested interest in presenting its best case for military intervention, just as do the Army and the Navy. In the case of the Air Force, this best case appears to the untrained civilian eye to be a cheap, easy, and effective way to wage war. This leads, in my view, to poor decisions about military engagement.

But what of the Air Force's elite service tradition?Service traditions should be taken seriously; military organizations reinforce and emphasize tradition for a reason. Tradition and esprit de corps allow a military organization to function. I'm just not convinced that the Air Force elite service tradition is that much more effective than, say, the elite service tradition of the Marines or of naval aviators. This is to say that branch independence doesn't seem to be strictly necessary to the maintenance of an elite service tradition.

This is only a partial recap of the questions I answered; all of the questions were good, some I answered more than once, and most I answered less cogently than I suggest here. I was impressed, but not surprised, by the professionalism of the student body and the incisiveness of their questions.

Finally, I recently received a grant to work on an expanded version of this argument. Hopefully it will lead to some form of publication, although I don't yet have a sense of where or in what form. This project has, however, helped push back my work on the history of anti-submarine warfare.