The biggest problem facing the Air Force is that masses of uncrewed drones have now wrested command of the air away from manned aircraft in the skies above the modern battlefield. The drone revolution means that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the service to achieve air superiority in future conflicts — which has been the centerpiece of its mission for decades. Drones, not manned airplanes, now dominate the skies above ground forces fighting in Ukraine. The contested air littoral has emerged as a critical new subdomain of warfare. It stretches from the earth’s surface to several thousand feet, below the altitudes where most manned aircraft typically fly, and is now dominated by masses of drones. This is a paradigm shift of epic proportions, which will require the Air Force to fundamentally transform itself in a very short period of time.It boils down to dollars and cents:
The F-35A certainly remains an important platform for high-intensity conventional warfare. But the Air Force is planning to buy 1,763 of the aircraft, which will remain in service through the year 2070. These jets, which are wholly unsuited for countering proliferated low-cost enemy drones in the air littoral, present enormous opportunity costs for the service as a whole. In a set of comments posted on LinkedIn last month, defense analyst T.X. Hammes estimated the following. The delivered cost of a single F-35A is around $130 million, but buying and operating that plane throughout its lifecycle will cost at least $460 million. He estimated that a single Chinese Sunflower suicide drone costs about $30,000 — so you could purchase 16,000 Sunflowers for the cost of one F-35A. And since the full mission capable rate of the F-35A has hovered around 50 percent in recent years, you need two to ensure that all missions can be completed — for an opportunity cost of 32,000 Sunflowers. As Hammes concluded, “Which do you think creates more problems for air defense?”
I have heard that we are building out a fleet of around 1000 F-35s. For the same cost we could have 32 million drones. Sure, there's a question of mission flexibility but when you have millions of units to mess around with, that's a whole level of flexibility that you didn't have before. Quantity has a quality of its own, so to say.
This is a paradigm shift.
I'd be really interested in analysis from former military Fly Boys like OldAF Sarge or OldNFO.
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17 comments:
As Ward Carroll is fond of saying, Shoot the archers, not the arrows.
Taking out C&C, supply depots and transport hubs takes larger ordnance.
Stand off weapons from aircraft together with drones to suck up air defense will still be going strong for many more years. That is what going on in Syria today.
Well, an Eagle can carry 8 Air to air missiles per sortie. I don’t know what the radar return off these drones is, but assuming it gan get a radar lock and things work perfectly, (Right!!!) that’s 8 drones per sortie, and 250 F-15s in the USAF inventory. And assuming you could launch them all that’s 2000 drones per sortie. Which means a significant number of drones would get through. And there are an awful lot of assumptions on success in that number.
Seems to me that high rate of fire AAA and LOTS of it, would be a better idea.
Just my $.02
juvat
I'm not a big fan of either The Ukraine or Russia but it seems to be the case that in the black Sea Ukraine has defeated the Russian Navy with Drones and missiles and Ukraine doesn't even have a Navy. This is a major problem and represents exactly the kind of paradigm shift we need to consider.
One thing to remember with drones is that, unless they're autonomous, they need an operator. How many drones can one operator manipulate? Replacing X manned aircraft with X times Y drones is misleading. If the drone is autonomous, it's going to cost more. Also what's the payload of these drones? For them to carry a tactically significant weapons payload, they're going to be big. Again raising the cost. That being said, the drone is a game changer from what I've seen in Ukraine and elsewhere. And not just for their weapons carrying ability, such as it is. I'm thinking of their usefulness for tactical reconnaissance.
Another consideration is the need to communicate with those drones, what frequencies are used? Can they be readily jammed? Modern warfare changes daily, the lessons learned from the current Russo-Ukrainian need to be considered, though they might not be significant in all cases.
Just an old aircraft maintenance guy's thoughts.
Who'd a thunk it? Those pallid kids living in mom's basement playing video games instead of having productive lives might actually become front line warriors. Perhaps future MREs will contain Mountain Dew and Cheezits.
I called this problem out 15 years ago. No proof, of course.
Enlisted USAF Crewdog on AWACS for 18 years, me.
I was not a fan of Intrepid Birdmen Pilots, due to close proximity for years. Fighter jocks were selected for aggression, ego, and single mindedness - traits that conflict with what we look for in team-builders and leaders of men.
The USAF has its's Pilot's "union" and they cannot see beyond protecting their members careers and the jobs they have.
Drones (UAVs) are easily engineered to out-climb,, out-speed, out-loiter and carry a heavier load than a jet with a meat-sack and all the associated life support systems.
So we're gonna be playing catchup when the cluebat finally smacks them.
Glad I'm out.
Maybe in time but it’s a tough call. I would have thought the tank would be obsoleted in the war in the Kraine, and that the mighty Javelins would scrap every Russian tank and vehicle on the battlefield… but that hadn’t happened.
I suppose it will in time… but a lot of these wonder weapons are more hot air than anything else.
OldAFSarge is right. Jamming (e.g. F/A-18G) can knock down the drone 'packages', and the go fasters can home on the controllers. Take them out with appropriate package, and you've stopped the drones until they reconstitute the controller package. Also, drones are not 360 capable, and currently not high altitude units. There is a move to larger UAVs capable of 'supporting' strike packages, but they are years off. The true high altitude UAVs (Reaper, Triton, etc.) can be used for some of the functions of manned acft, but still are not 360 capable, yet. And no most of them are not autonomous. The one thing that scares the brass is a UAV that can think and act for itself, and that level of programming is fraught with complexity...
Drones vs drones is probably not going to work very well...we'll see.
And the USAF does need to embrace drone technology for the things it does
better than manned craft can ever do. The other thing that must happen
is to perfect an antidrone weapon system, probably a laser or other directed
energy system. Instead of spending thousands of dollars per missile to take
down drones costing hundreds of dollars we need lasers that cost $10 bucks
a shot...or less.
I see the various airbases used by the aggressive expensive planes being attacked 24/7 by hundreds of drones/day. Why not? I don't think the US has any plan for night attacks on airbases beyond hoping that they don't happen or at least not more than once or twice/month.
I think we're getting closer to The Diamond Age. It will be interesting.
You don't want 32 million of any one thing.
If someone cracks that code, you've got 32 million pieces of junk.
You want a million each of 32 different somethings, with the entire range of strengths and weaknesses, so you aren't putting all your eggs in one basket.
You also want to stop treating ADA like the red-headed stepchild of air defense, and come up with some robust solutions (plural) to The Other Guy's Drones.
Starting with fire-and-forget hunter-killer drones with video/IR/thermal/sound acquire-and-track, to become the white blood cells in this problem.
The best way to kill a submarine is with another submarine. The best way to kill a tank is with another tank. And the best way to kill a small, cheap drone is going to be with another small, cheap drone.
For future wars, I disagree with this paragraph:
The best way to kill a submarine is with another submarine. The best way to kill a tank is with another tank. And the best way to kill a small, cheap drone is going to be with another small, cheap drone.
A $5,300.00 cardboard drone is a much cheaper way to drop an explosive onto a tank.
They're also hard to detect.
Underwater drones - in their infancy. Stay tuned for Cheap killer drones attacking subs.
What terrifies me is that apparently no one has seen the movie Terminator and seeing the logical conclusion of developing independent attack systems.
The futures coming and it's pretty damn ugly.
Large, long range, expensive drones have their place. But the battlefield is being dominated by small, cheap, short ranged drones. Sure, you can jam them. Then the larger drones come out with the EM seekers. Heck, some smart cookie could program a drone to patrol a route using GPS until it notices GPS jamming, then home in on the jammer.
There's no reason why you can't have a large drone carrying a half dozen smaller drones, acting as a radio relay for them after launch. And really, what's the difference between a battlefield drone and a loitering missile? Which is cheaper, more effective, and easier to transport to the front: a couple FPV hunter-killer drones and their controller, or a 120mm mortar and a couple dozen shells?
Remember when you used to read about Home on Jam missiles. I thought they were looking for lunch. Then we stopped laughing when we read about "Blip Enhance" and found that yep, our little ship had one of those.
We have trouble detecting submarines with entire navies.
You come up with a drone that can detect a submarine, and half the world will want you dead, and the other half will be throwing pallets of money at you to buy the patent.
Tanks are relatively easy to see, and their strength has always been invincibility, to almost anything but another tank.
The main effect of drone warfare will be to start up-armoring the topside of tanks to match the front of the hull, rendering cardboard drones useless once again.
There's always another way to skin any cat, and that's the simplest one of all.
Meanwhile, drones are merely small, not undetectable, and ways to take them out multiply by the day. The first guy who makes it cheap and easy wins the prize.
Drones now are where airplanes were in 1917: a novelty, turned deadly. It gets harder for them from here on out, not easier.
Look at airplanes in 1947 to see where things are going for drones by 2054.
Drones are small, numerous and relatively fragile. Seems like an ideal target set for a yet-to-be-invented directed energy weapon system. Laser ? Particle Beam ? Something else ? It needs to be something that can be accurately aimed in fractions of a second, delivers a kill in the same time frame and moves on to the next target. Can't be dodged, never runs out of ammo. Make it so. ;-)
From my comment of Mar 26:
What terrifies me is that apparently no one has seen the movie Terminator and seeing the logical conclusion of developing independent attack systems.
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Coming to a police department or FBI office near you...
Drone kills infantryman scrambling around tank.
https://twitter.com/casualtanker23/status/1772851022601576728
We're screwed..
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