This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
In the midst of a deeply entrenched identity crisis, the U.S. Air Force is turning to technology as the potential answer to some of its problems.
Air Force Chief Scientist Werner Dahm is conducting a sweeping “Technology Horizons” study to lay out technological opportunities that could produce useful applications for the service.
“I don’t think in the history of the Air Force we’ve been at a turning point like this. Maybe the closest was the Sputnik launch,” Dahm tells Aviation Week. “What does the Air Force do when it is faced with a radically different future? Part of what it does is reach into its science and technology domain.“
The study will look 20 years ahead, with an eye toward implementing near-term investment decisions aimed at producing relevant military systems. “We are not talking about pie in the sky,” Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said last month.
The Air Force spends roughly $2 billion annually on science and technology projects, as much as the rest of the Defense Dept. spends on similar research. The goal of Dahm’s review is to identify those projects that could realistically change how the Air Force accomplishes its missions — such as the advent of the GPS constellation. The results are expected in late February.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Schwartz entered office last year with a slew of immediate problems, including mismanagement of the nuclear arsenal and rampant procurement missteps. The global financial recession has also tightened the Pentagon’s budget amid the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan.
“We are going to have to envision and articulate things that are realistically doable in the likely budget environment that we are going to face in the next decade or two,” Dahm says. There has been much criticism of the Air Force’s sharp focus on air superiority, which led it to procure fifth-generation fighters at great expense. Some say this focus came at the sacrifice of other efforts, such as irregular warfare (IW) technologies.
“What we have to do is to figure out how do we augment [today’s capabilities] with some carefully chosen new capabilities that allow those systems to contribute to all of the threats that we face today — the IW threat, the cyber-threat and [operating] in the space environment,” Dahm says.
The study is being executed by 36 leaders from academia, the defense research community, major commands and industry. They are broken into three working groups — air, space and cyber. The groups began their efforts soon after in the study’s June 18 launch. The second phase begins this month and is “where a lot of gold will lie,” Dahm says. The participants will address “cross-domain” technologies that could enhance warfighting efforts in a number of areas and across the spectrum of major conflict operations and insurgent fights.
Read the rest of this story, see an ejection-seat view of the Parthenon, ponder why the Aussies are scared of subs down under and roll out the stars and stripes for Euro-Hawk with our friends at Aviation Week, exclusively on Military.com.
– Christian
Dennis we need to spend money on such research and development to always ensure we have the advantage in the future. This includes everything from very early work on “6th generation” fighter concepts to new hypersonic cruise missiles, new stealth and radar technologies, focused energy weapons (lasers) and many other fields. The USAF and USN are not as strong as they should be in terms of aircraft numbers, and USMC squadrons focus primarily on close support.
The USAF should have a a large fleet of F-35As, more F-22s, and possibly a fighter bomber like the FB-22 or the FB-23. Soon soon enough they will also need a new strategic bomber to replace our remaining B-52s.
The USN should have a “high-end” 5th generation fighter of their own to complement the F-35C and could use something like the “Common Support Aircraft” concept that has surfaces every couple of years. This could serve as a ASW aircraft, tanker, and in other roles.
Colonial-Marine,
I will not get into a flame war with you. When the USAF spends as much as the rest of DoD combined in R&D, you end up with solutions to non-problems. The cruise missile is a logical outgrowth of the V-1 buzz bomb Germany developed on a shoestring in WWII. Yes it is smarter, faster, and more accurate, but it is also about 10,000 times more expensive. The F-35 is the world’s most capable air superiority fighter, but how many aircraft in the world constitute even a potential threat to F-15s?
The USMC flies Harriers and the US National Guard flies A-10s. Both platforms provide critical roles in ground support. The USASOC is flying their AC-130s into the junkyard and their is a fight to get replacements. The USAF had to be forced to accept additional C-17s that are the backbone of supplying active theaters.
The USN is much more committed to building attack subs, littoral ships, and replacement Nuc Carriers than their aircraft. How many potential enemies operate blue water navies and of those how many have carriers?
Exactly how many “strategic bombers” do we need to provide deterance? With GPS guided munitions and cruise missile technology, cargo aircraft could provide the platforms for standoff attack of 95 percent of potential enemies.
Face it, the bad guys just aren’t that sophisticated and aren’t likely to become so for the rest of our children’s lifetimes. Why don’t we focus on the wars we have and are likely to have. Almost all projections are that these will require “Boots on the Ground”.
I suspect the $2 Billion R&D the USAF gets pays for an awful lot of contracting jobs for retiring USAF brass and keeps a bunch of engineers and board members off the unemployment roles.
“If you need five opinions, as three engineers.”
As far as the Irforce cutting back it needs to decide what it is for. Is it a strategic force ment for controling the highground and logistics? Or is it a everything that flies is mine force.
As ive stated before in my opinion the airforce should act as a logistical, air superiority, strategic bomber and ICBM command, satelight and near space force.
Leave the Navy the missile defense role that way we dont have missile locked down in one location when they can be used and redistributed acording to threat.
And as for carriers. The carrier contrary to most peoples idea is not as a anti carrier weapon.
It can be that. Its reason for being our choice for over 60 years now is this. Versatility.
It can:
Do ground attack
Do air superiority
Do ASW(when the navy remembers bad people have subs to)
Do amphib attacks with marines
And about a million other things.
That is why we have them. Do we rely on them to much. Probubly. But thats another story entirely.
While I agree that the air-force (And the Navy to some extent) tend to spend to much on the new kewl thing, rather than the things that work. I have to point out that $2billion is honestly not that much money. Microsoft for exacmple spends just under $10billion a year on R&D itself and it only has a much more narrow focus.
Good Evening Folks,
here we go again, the same people addressing the same problems, different answers, not very likely. Academics have no real interest in military affairs, and industry and the officers them selves can only see new business and after service careers.
The low awaited RMA is here, the Navy/Marines are well along the way with the “Green Hornet”, the X47, a Green Carrier Battle Group by 2016, and dumping legacy systems such as cutting the Virginia Class of SSN’s off at 30 and building a new class of SSN’s. Meanwhile the AF is still whining about the F-22.
The military world is moving away from weapons/system manned platform centric to network centric unmanned platforms. The AF is moving into redundancy and irreverence.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Coming up with fantasy new aircraft that is just what we need, but how much manpower, materials, and other equipment is needed to maintain them for the life cycle of the system. Take that money and fix what we have already.
1. We have ONE, UNO, SOLE, LONE and SINGLULAR AF that is now and has been seriously undercapitalized for quite a few years. the multiple AF trope is tiresome beyond belief.
2. Note to amateurs: Air Forces are not used to fight Air Forces. Armies are not to fight Armies, and Navies are not to fight Navies. Each is used to project force and deter or fight aggressors in any form.
3. All the services use aircraft in the execution of their ‘roles and missions’ (a now very inadequate terminology that has been perverted over time– a pesky problem with abstract concepts.)
Only one service, the AF, has the mission “to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyberspace”. The Army’s mission is to “fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders.” the Navy’s mission is to “maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas”. All services use aircraft in execution of their mission, but only one has a charter to ensure forces are available and capable of exploiting the aerospace continuum — the other two merely use aircraft/space in support of their primary mission.
Interestingly, only the Navy’s mission statement comes close to explicitly stating the service’s charters to “organize, train, and equip” forces for employment by the Combatant Command Commanders.
Just a few observations: 1) A lot of the Star Wars project (under Reagan) was developed with AF involvement. Many called that an amazing waste of money. But the research there–not used for military purposes ultimately–ended up enabling our entire modern tech capability and economy (e.g. photolithography), which annually dwarfs the entire program’s costs. So, I don’t see R&D as a waste. There are numerous other examples. 2)Considering the Russians and Chinese are ramping up AF capabilities–including designing 5th gen fighters–and are exporting fighters better than our F15, I don’t think we are too soon with the F22. If anything, our diminished production capability would suggest we need a far bigger head start. Consider how many and quickly China could make once they finalize their J-X. Last, whoever said the F35 is the most capable air superiority fighter obviously knows something that Congress does not. They are happy to sell the F35 to any ally. The F22, however, is considered too capable for even a down-graded plane to be sold to our closest allies.…
Right on Mac and Spatharios.
And the argument that USAF brass are only looking out for their after-service careers is unfair at best. Every organization, military, political, commercial, or otherwise is guilty of the same things.
@Stephen Russell:
Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about. First off, the whole fire-old-blood thing, already happened. About a tenth of the USAF got fired with the several oopsies we had with our nuclear assets. And the air force is more different now than you know.
Secondly, shut up about “beaurocracy”. nothing will change. are you gonna tell the most powerful people in the nation to suddenly hands-off all the r&d they’ve been approving billions for? i think not.
The ASVAB, dude? Really? The last guy in my squadron to get his career art15ed to death was a top scorer, and the best worker in my shop got like a 40. I got 90’s on mine, and I went to take the practice for kicks and giggles when I went home for RAP, and I bombed it. Guess what? I’m still in the Air Force.
Nobody knows what the future holds. Line up all the prognostictors end to end — and they will all be pointing in different directions.
Be flexible.
Innovate with low cost and off the shelf.
Trust people over systems.
For example:
We could use a new standoff bomber with an adapted commercial airframe with stealth missiles.
Purchase Obama OTS executive helicopters.
Good Morning SMSgt.Mac.,
You hit on the institutional problem. The mission of the AF is to win and secure the air, space, and cyberspace.
The AF did a bang up job on winning and securing the air and space theaters. Cyberspace is an intraservice command along with civilian agencies like the NRO, FBI, CIA and others. The cyberspace mission doesn’t require many fighters or bombers the last I looked.
In short MSSgt Mac., the AF has ran out of missions for it’s missiles, fighters and bombers. What’s next?
It is a waste of resources taking highly trained and expensive airmen/women and making them EOD or OJT Infantry as they are now doing. These people are highly skilled, in most cases educated beyond secondary school in a technical field and very trainable and need new missions that use their unique and expensive to create and maintain skills. The AF needs to find new missions that need doing for these talented women and men, not sending them out as bomb or sniper bait.
The AF is facing the same thing the Navies did at the turn of the last century, the dreadnought was the capital sip and the king of the waves, the in 1915 came Jutland. So long dreadnoughts, it was going to be the submarine as the next capital ship, not. Of course the out of the box thinkers then were on the other side of the world the Japanese.
The AF is in the same position, and relaying on the same minds and mind sets to come up with the creative thinking that will move the AF into the 21st. Century just is going to happen.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Dennis further cuts to our military like you propose are simply unacceptable. Our power has already declined enough since the end of the cold war, lets put a stop to the madness.
There is no good reason not to continue improving the USAF’s ability to fight conventional wars as well as COIN conflicts.