{"id":110673,"date":"2017-11-30T15:49:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T15:49:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-01-08T11:02:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T11:02:52","slug":"your-monday-morning-briefing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/30\/your-monday-morning-briefing\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Monday Morning Briefing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\" itemprop=\"name\"><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post-header\"> <\/div>\n<p>Ran across this recent PowerPoint from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which paints <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csbaonline.org\/publications\/2014\/04\/toward-a-balanced-combat-air-force\/\">a grim picture of Air Force combat capabilities against more technically-advanced foes<\/a>.&nbsp;  The study, authored by (Ret) Lieutenant General Dave Deptula and the  center&#8217;s Mark Gunzinger, offers a sobering assessment of where we stand,  capability-wise, after the &#8220;procurement holiday&#8221; of the 1990s and more  than a decade of COIN-focused air operations.&nbsp; A few take-aways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><u>Our fighter and bomber fleets are dwindling and aging rapidly<\/u><\/em>;  the &#8220;typical&#8221; fighter aircraft in the USAF inventory was built&#8211;or  budgeted for&#8211;during the Reagan Administration, and&nbsp;has been in service  for 24 years<\/li>\n<li><em><u>Our average bomber is 38 years old<\/u><\/em>, reflecting continued reliance on the Eisenhower-era B-52, which still forms the backbone of our bomber fleet&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><em><u>The number of aircraft capable of penetrating an advanced air  defense network is small, and essentially consists of a handful of&nbsp;B-2s  and the 187 F-22 Raptors<\/u><\/em> that were produced before production  of that stealth platform was halted a couple of years ago.&nbsp; Other combat  platforms, such as the F-16, F-15C and F-15E, would be unable to  operate in a&nbsp;&#8220;dense&#8221; air defense environment, protected by modern  SAMs&nbsp;like the Russian-built SA-20, along with advanced surveillance  radars and&nbsp;modern command-and-control systems.<\/li>\n<li>While <em><u>the USAF has more than 11,000 unmanned airframes, most  are built for surveillance and virtually none can survive against  advanced air defense systems<\/u><\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><u>Air Force aircraft procurement budgets have hit an historic low<\/u>,  with no signs of reversing that trend over the near term; the service  is currently buying about&nbsp;100 each year, while the Navy is adding 350  new airframes a&nbsp;year and is actually spending more money on aircraft  procurement than shipbuilding.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><em><u>The USAF will need at least 174 of the long-range strike\/bomber, LRS-B platforms<\/u><\/em> now under development to provide needed penetration\/strike capabilities  needed&nbsp;through the middle of this century.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the first  LRS-B won&#8217;t be operational until the middle of the next decade&#8211;at the  earliest. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Deptula and Gunzinger also observe that restoring &#8220;balance&#8221; and  capabilities in the combat air forces (CAF) will&nbsp;require more than just  &#8220;iron on the ramp.&#8221;&nbsp; Future platforms&#8211;as well as legacy aircraft still  in service after 2025 (think B-2s and B-52s) will require a  secure&nbsp;combat &#8220;cloud,&#8221; providing &#8220;highly-interconnected capabilities to  conduct cross-domain, distributed and disaggregated operations over a  wide area.&#8221;&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>To be sure, the CSBA presentation was created with two goals in mind:  first,&nbsp;reinforce the case for the LRS-B, and secondly, illustrate the  precipitious decline in USAF procurement&nbsp;budgets and the erosion in  capabilities that has occurred over the last 10 years.&nbsp; In that sense,  the briefing&nbsp;easily achieves its objectives. <\/p>\n<p>But, as an advocacy pitch,&nbsp;the CSBA brief also ignores (or down-plays)  some&nbsp;essential elements.&nbsp;&nbsp;The first of these is cyber.&nbsp; There isn&#8217;t a  campaign plan on the books&#8211;or in development&#8211;that&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t integrate  cyber-warfare to some degree, and that &#8220;tool&#8221; would play a prominent  role in any conflict against an advanced&nbsp;adversary.&nbsp; How much damage  could a dedicated cyber campaign inflict on China&#8217;s air defense network,  or the power grid in Iran?&nbsp; Will it be sufficient to allow  less-stealthy platforms to attack targets inside the SAM belt, or even  neutralize entire defensive systems and networks.&nbsp; What impact will  those capabilities have on&nbsp;LRS-B procurement?&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Likewise, do we need&nbsp;the new long-range strike and bomber platform if  UAVs can be made stealthy and carry&nbsp;larger payloads?&nbsp; In fairness, the  Air Force is looking at&nbsp;manned (and unmanned) options for the LRS-B but  there&#8217;s a significant element in the service that&#8217;s actively rooting for  a man in the cockpit.&nbsp; But continued advances&nbsp;in UAV technology will  make those platforms more survivable and with&nbsp;lower training costs for  an unmanned platform,&nbsp;the USAF&nbsp;may be compelled to field LRS-B as a  UAV.&nbsp; That decision will also reduce unit costs, offering the potential  for a larger buy, at least in theory.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>To their credit, Deptula and Gunzinger observe that re-vitalizing the  CAF is more than an Air Force problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Navy has been  steadily&nbsp;buying new F\/A-18s for decades, giving its fighter and attack  squadrons a more advanced airframe and enhanced mission  performance.&nbsp;&nbsp;But the various Hornet models are not stealth platforms,  so much of Navy air would face the&nbsp;serious challenges against modern air  defenses, much like the &#8220;legacy fighters&#8221; still in service with the  USAF.&nbsp; That&#8217;s one reason the&nbsp;Navy&#8217;s UCAS program is so vital; against a  technically-advanced Asian foe (think: China), penetrating platforms  from carriers and bases east of Japan and south of Singapore would have  the ability to strike at great distances, from locations less vulnerable  to enemy attack.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Review the whole presentation; it&#8217;s well worth&nbsp;your time.&nbsp; And while  you&#8217;re flipping through the slides, note the aircraft that is  conspiciously absent from the entire discussion.&nbsp; We refer, of course,  to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the program that is blowing a&nbsp;hole  in&nbsp;DoD&#8217;s procurement process.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Obviously, the JSF isn&#8217;t designed for the types of missions described in  the&nbsp;PowerPoint, but it is relevant in this regard.&nbsp; With the F-35  program in trouble, will there be enough money to field a smaller number  of JSF airframes for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (plus foreign  customers) while, at the same time, fund develop the LRS-B?&nbsp; Cost  overruns in the F-35 have made many procurement officials leery of  another &#8220;big&#8221; aircraft program, despite the fact that the LRS-B &#8220;buy&#8221;  will represent only a small fraction of the JSF purchase.&nbsp;&nbsp;Consequently,  the biggest threat facing our next generation strike and bomber  aircraft may not be a new version of the SA-20, but all that money being  funneled into the F-35 program.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ran across this recent PowerPoint from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which paints a grim picture of Air Force combat capabilities against more technically-advanced foes.&nbsp; The study, authored by (Ret) Lieutenant General Dave Deptula and the center&#8217;s Mark Gunzinger, offers a sobering assessment of where we stand, capability-wise, after the &#8220;procurement holiday&#8221; of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}