Here’s a round-up of news from Air Force Magazine and other sources that got my attention.
The Tuskegee Airmen just got a nice shout-out from the Air Force.
The Boeing T-X advanced trainer will bear the designation and name T-7A “Red Hawk,” Air Force Acting Secretary Matt Donovan announced Sept. 16 at AFA's 2019 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, evoking and honoring the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II—who were known as the “Red Tails”—and the P-40 Warhawk fighter that the group flew when they began combat operations in Europe…
...In making the announcement at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md., Donovan was joined onstage by Tuskegee Airman Col. Charles McGee. Three more Tuskegee Airmen were also present in the audience for the naming. The T-7A, he said, will be the “new staple” of the Air Force pilot training experience, and its advanced technologies are symbolic of the service’s march toward a more sophisticated technological future. Donovan noted the T-7A’s “simulated radar, defensive management systems and other synthetic training capabilities” to prepare pilots for duty in a range of combat aircraft.
The Red Hawk was the winning entry in a competition to build a new advanced trainer for the Air Force that will make transitioning to Fifth Generation fighters easier. It is a joint venture from Boeing and SAAB. It will be replacing the aging T-38 Talons.
While designed to fill a training role, there is already interest in a variant fitted out for combat; the airframe has been designed for growth. That is speculation at the moment, as the focus will be getting the new aircraft into production as a trainer. At some point the Air Force Thunderbirds might swap out their F-16s for the Red Hawk. They’ve flown T-38’s in the past, so it would not be unprecedented — the F-16 fleet is not getting any younger.
Meanwhile, About the Heavies...
In other news, the Air Force Association 2019 Air, Space & Cyber Conference had a report from Global Strike Command chief Gen. Timothy Ray on the need for the Air Force to increase its bomber fleet numbers.
Ray pointed out that while there are “vast resources” among US allies in airlift, fighters, ISR and other missions, only the US brings bombers to the fight.
“There are thousands of allied fighters. There’s allied fifth-gen. My point isn’t fighter versus bomber, my point is, there are no allied bombers. The last allied bomber retired in 1984.”
The US alone has bombers and ICBMs, and while there are allies with Sea-Launched Ballistic Missiles, “those are for their own personal use, their own sovereign application. There are no allied ICBMs” and “there’s no production line” for a new one yet. Likewise, though the B-21 is “doing great” it’s “years away.” The US should therefore be careful to ensure that it doesn’t shortchange the bomber and ICBM recapitalization, given their importance.
Among other things, that means evaluating the condition of the B-1 bomber fleet which has been used hard.
“We’ve been flying the plane in a way we shouldn’t have been flying it. And we did it for far too long,” he said. An Air Force official said the B-1 has been flying too many missions with wings swept forward for slow flight, as a “flying vending machine” of weapons for troops requiring support on the ground, when it was designed to fly fast at low altitudes with its wings swept back. That caused too much stress on the wings, and on their attach and sweep mechanisms.
The B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber is one of the most distinctive aircraft flying — but there are only a handful of them. They’ve been around for 30 years — this infographic pdf has chapter and verse on them.
Only 21 B-2s were built, and just 20 remain. They comprise a tailor-made fleet of handcrafted aircraft, each ever-so-slightly different from the next, each able to carry a flexible arsenal of firepower in a two-man aircraft capable of flying unnoticed halfway around the world. One B-2 can strike 43 percent more long-range targets than an entire Arleigh Burke-class Navy destroyer.
Today’s B-2s are not the same airplanes that first attracted attention in the 1990s. These jets feature enhanced targeting and threat-identification systems, precision weapons, improved stealth, and the capacity to deliver the biggest bombs in the US arsenal.
There’s some choices ahead. The B-1 fleet may be cut (for why, see above) and the money saved used to buy more B-21 Raiders. The aircraft has yet to make its first flight. While it is similar in appearance to the B-2, the B-21 will hopefully prove to be easier to buy, maintain, and fly.
The B-21 is eventually expected to replace the stealthy B-2 over the coming decades. Northrop plans to use the Spirit program’s focus on supportability, sustainability, and mission-capable rate as the blueprint for maintaining the B-21 as well.
Northrop officials say they are taking lessons learned in the development and sustainment of low-observable technology, a key to the B-2’s stealth, and applying them to these “other programs,” Pamiljans said.
“The B-2 is setting the path, course for the B-21,” Pamiljans said. “What we’ve learned on B-2, we’re finding baselined into the design of the B-21.”
Eighth Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. James Dawkins told reporters in Palmdale that aspects of B-2 sustainment like computers, maintenance, and materials can naturally be leveraged for the B-21.
The “Raider” name is a tribute to the Doolittle Raiders. One of the goals of the aircraft is the ability to penetrate into enemy territory — with some help; the wikipedia entry on it has a brief mention of
a new long-range fighter, known as “Penetrating Counter-Air", that would accompany the B-21 Raider deep into enemy territory.
The buzz on what is being described as a 6th generation fighter is interesting...
The venerable B-52 Stratofortress is expected to be in service for decades to come — and the Air Force is looking seriously at equipping them with new engines. This would have a number of benefits. Keeping the old engines running is becoming increasingly expensive. New designs are more reliable, and more fuel efficient. That last is important because A) it means the planes would be able to fly farther without refueling and B) would cut the number of tankers needed for refueling in flight. The Air Force is the largest user of fuel in the DOD — they have a lot of room to improve. Faster, higher, farther takes up a lot of energy.
Speaking of which, the K-46 Pegasus
tanker/freighter/transport intended to refuel all of the above heavies, their fighter friends, and some transports continues to have issues. Boeing has taken a lot of heat over the Pegasus, which nearly got canned because of a procurement scandal. Years late and with cost issues, the Air Force came down hard on Boeing after discovering serious quality control issues with K-46 production, a problem also seen with other Boeing aircraft.
The latest issue is a problem with securing cargo within the airplane. The floor is designed with a system of rollers and locks which are supposed to make it easy to load pallets of equipment on and off the airplane while also securing them in flight. The Air Force has suspended carrying cargo and personnel after a disturbing incident with a K-46 on a recent operation.
“Prior to departing for each of these missions, aircrew fully installed, locked and thoroughly inspected each restraint, and performed routine inspections of the restraints in flight,” Pickart said. “Despite these safety measures, the unlocking of cargo floor restraints occurred during flight, although no cargo or equipment moved and there was no specific risk to the aircraft or crew.”
A source with knowledge of the issue told Defense News that if all restraints on a particular pallet had become unlocked, it would be able to roll freely throughout the cabin. If all cargo became unlatched, it could pose a safety risk to aircrew or even unbalance the aircraft — making the plane “difficult, if not impossible” to control.
That is not good, to say the least. However, the Air Force badly needs new tankers.
“There is no other option at this point,” explains Todd Harrison, the director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “The Air Force needs new tankers, and Boeing is the only one making them.”…
...“The Air Force has been building the KC-46 tankers to do midair refueling so we can extend our reach,” Barrett said. “We need greater reach by our fighters and bombers to be able to access that area.” She added that while there were a goodly number of the tankers in the pipeline, “at the moment we have a great dearth.”
K-46 issues are keeping the KC-135 Stratotanker fleet from being retired. The Air Force is shifting money from the K-46 program to keep them available. Based on the Boeing 707, they first entered service in 1957. They are becoming increasingly expensive to operate, but the critical need for tankers means they’ll be around for a while yet.
The GAO, in a June 12 report to the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee, states that Boeing remains three years behind schedule on the program and plans to deliver the first 18 aircraft with all three refueling subsystems by June 2020. Three “Category One” deficiencies remain: lack of visual clarity in the remote vision system, undetected contacts with receiver aircraft, and boom stiffness while refueling lighter aircraft.
As long as we rely on our ability to project force around the world to maintain dominance, we are going to need tankers to give the fighters and bombers the range to ‘reach out and touch someone’.
A Few Thoughts
At any given time the Air Force has to evaluate what it needs to do its current missions as well as trying to make a best guess for future needs. As it now takes years to develop an aircraft and get all the bugs out of the design, it’s more akin to a black art than a science. Given how political considerations can change in that time frame, it’s even more of a crap shoot.
The trend in recent years to try to substitute air power for boots on the ground wherever possible has increased the load on the Air Force. (Not to mention Navy, Marine, and Army aviators as well.) Aircraft wear out. So do people. Operations have to be balanced against the need for training and maintenance; there’s only so much money to go around and neglecting any one of those impacts the others.
While drone technology is advancing, there are still constraints on their capabilities. Although cheaper than manned aircraft for some missions, as performance and capabilities are ramped up, so are the costs. If they are being remotely piloted, the problems of maintaining secure links and preventing hacking or spoofing become critical. Autonomous aircraft come with operational and moral concerns. Who do we hold responsible if a robot killing machine makes a mistake? And do we really want to go here?
Having humans in the loop also has this consideration. It acts as a constraint on leaders with a propensity to go to war if they have to take responsibility for casualties. The World War II allied bomber operations over Europe relied on our ability to send out bombers and their crews faster than the Germans could shoot them down (chillingly described in The Cold Blue). That would be difficult to implement today. Let’s hope it never comes to that again.