Mark Bowden has written some very compelling stuff, most famously Blackhawk Down. He is clearly a talented journalist. However, his latest essay for The Atlantic crosses the line between respectful reporting on military affairs, and full-on whoring for military contractors.
Follow me to see what I mean.
Bowden's latest Atlantic essay, titled The Last Ace, discusses at some length the current status of the U.S. Air Force air combat fighter force. Bowden argues that we are in serious danger of losing our traditional air combat supremacy. He claims that "Russia, China, India, North Korea and Pakistan all now fly fighter jets with capabilities equal or superior to those of the F-15". He goes on to argue the we really, really need to spend lots more money to buy a force of F-22 fighters sufficient to replace the F-15 one-for-one. Unless we do this, claims Bowden, foreign opponents will be "emboldened" by our weakness and more likely to challenge us militarily; and our pilots will "pay with their blood".
Well. I hardly know where to begin unpacking this load of fertilizer. First and foremost, he's simply wrong to claim that U.S. forces will be hard pressed unless we shell out a gazillion dollars for a huge force of F-22's. Bowden apparently has historical amnesia. It's a matter of record that U.S. success in aerial combat has generally had little to do with the quality of our fighter aircraft.
At the start of WWII, American fighters were significantly inferior to their Japanese and German contemporaries. Despite this, American forces almost immediately established highly favorable kill ratios and relentlessly achieved air dominance. This was due to superior pilot training, superior air combat tactics, and a ruthless focus on what mattered in combat. Japanese pilots recieved years of rigorous, extremely expensive training to become masters of dogfighting. American pilots recieved something like 16 weeks of intensive pilot training followed by tactical instruction. They were trained to fight as a unit, using ruthlessly effective wing tactics that totally negated any Japanese advantage in individual skill. The result was an escalating bloodbath for Japanese pilots. By the last two years of the war the U.S. was producing vast numbers of superior fighter designs, but the tide was turned by mediocre fighters using better tactics.
The same held true in Korea. The U.S. F-86 Saberjet was elegant. However, the Soviet Mig-15 could climb faster and higher, was better armed, and could engage or break off combat at will due to its superior performance. Yet air combat was extremely one-sided due to the vastly greater training, experience and skill of American pilots.
Or over Vietnam: U.S. pilots flew huge, clumsy, smoke-spewing F-4 Phantoms equipped with primitive air to air missiles that were almost impossible to use effectively. The North Vietnamese flew tiny, agile Russian built Mig-17, 19 and 21 fighters. Yet actual air combat was extremely one-sided.
Nothing has changed this equation. It is easy to create something that looks like an "air force"; all you need is enough cash to buy a bunch of jet fighters, with the associated air bases, missiles, fuel and ground control. There are nominal "air forces" like this all over the world. But without a massive and unglamorous investment in basic training, in tactical training to teach pilots how to fight, in ongoing realistic exercises conducted at great expense, those expensive airplanes are just clay pigeons. The actual capacity to train pilots to a high level of tactical skill, to employ an air force effectively, currently exists in only a handful of countries. This includes the U.S., Israel, and to a lesser extent Great Britain and France. It pointedly does not include Russia, China, North Korea, or any of our other European/NATO allies. Bowden inadvertently revealed this in his article; NATO air units operating over Bosnia/Kosovo were so tactically inferior to U.S. units that they were a liability in actual combat. Mull that one over a bit.
Mark Bowden argues that the improvements in the latest generation of Russian-built fighters has reduced the F-15's tactical superiority from a previous estimate of 8:1 down to a dangerously 'equal' 3:1, which may tempt our enemies to test us.
But the F-15 actually has a track record in real, honest to goodness air combat of 107 to zero. In the hands of U.S. and Israeli pilots (okay, and one Saudi pilot carefully guided by U.S. tactical controllers onto a pair of hapless Iraqi sitting duck targets), the F-15 has shot down 107 opponents for zero losses.
The F-22 has a "program cost" of $350 million per copy; that's the 'fly-away' cost of the airplane together with the research, development and manufacturing cost divided by the number of planes. Mark Bowden wants the Air Force to buy enough to replace all their F-15s. This would cost more than $150 billion. Think about the opportunity cost of that purchase; how much security we could buy with it by improving our schools, reducing poverty in the developing world...you name it.
Next, recognize that our military procurement system is an ongoing cesspool of corruption and incompetence. The Navy replaced the expensive but superb F-14 Tomcat with the F-18E: grossly overweight, grossly overpriced, lower speed, shorter range, vastly inferior radar and missile system, and disastrously bad handling characteristics. The dreadful shortcomings of the F-18E were recognized early on in its development; but an odious combination of corruption, institutional inertia, the lack of any competitor and the military/corporate revolving door has saddled the Navy with an overweight piece of crap. Then there's the F-15 itself: half the fleet has been grounded permanently after catastrophic structural failure destroyed one in flight. This was due to structurally deficient parts built into the aircraft at the time of construction. Penalty extracted from the contractor? Exactly zero dollars. Have a nice day.
Worst of all, the F-22 is a dinosaur. Yes, it's the most agile, the stealthiest, the fastest (cruising speed), the best equipped fighter ever built. But it will still be dogmeat for the next generation of drone fighters, which don't have to cater to a fragile human body when pulling 15 g's in combat.
Mark Bowden: jumped the shark.