An American admiral calls for new military thinking and questions stealth t

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An interesting article on future military technology:

from: Military technology: Trucks, not limos | The Economist

Military technology
Trucks, not limos
An American admiral calls for new military thinking and questions stealth technology
Jul 28th 2012 | from the print edition


Senior serving officers in any country’s armed forces tend to shun public controversy. But Admiral Jonathan Greenert, America’s chief of naval operations, has stoked it in the latest issue of a specialist journal. His article appeared to question the value of the stealth technologies that underpin the biggest weapons project in history, the vast and costly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme.

That is controversial enough: the F-35 is the Pentagon’s pride, exemplifying America’s technological lead and military supremacy. But the admiral’s argument, outlined in Proceedings, published by the United States Naval Institute, also has a wider theme. Military procurement is too focused on building ever-costlier new ships and aircraft of complex design, with built-in capabilities to meet specific threats. Instead of procurement being “platform-centric”, he wants it to be “payload-centric”: highly adaptable platforms able to carry weapons and sensors that can be added or removed, depending on the mission or on technological progress.

The “luxury-car” platforms designed in the last days of the cold war (and which still dominate much military procurement) have not adapted well to changes in security and technology, he says. Such platforms must always carry the sophisticated equipment to defeat a sophisticated foe. Yet much of this may be irrelevant to the navy’s typical missions in the past 20 years: counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, mine-clearing, maritime patrolling and carrier operations in support of counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the cost of building new platforms and the need to keep them in service for 30 to 50 years or even longer, Admiral Greenert wants them to be more like “trucks”: with plenty of space and power to accommodate different payloads. Some of the Pentagon’s oldest platforms have turned out to be much better trucks than their successors.

Because of its sheer size, its reserve electrical power and its small number of integral systems, at least compared with newer aircraft-carriers, the 50-year-old USS Enterprise has proved more adaptable than modern, densely packed designs. Unlike them, it has the space, storage and power-generating capacity to carry new aircraft types and new systems.

The same is true of the stalwart B-52 bomber. It first flew 60 years ago. It is now expected to stay in service until 2045. Conceived as a strategic bomber after the second world war, it has been recast many times. It is now proving to be a cost-effective platform for the latest precision-guided “stand-off” weapons (meaning those fired from afar). It is also more dependable than any of its more advanced successors.

Another advantage of high-tech payloads over platforms stems from Moore’s law: the doubling of computer-chip speed every two years or less. This embarrasses military planners. Even their latest and fabulously expensive equipment often lacks the processing power of cheap consumer gadgets. It takes at least 15 years to bring a new ship or aircraft from design to completion. That can be eight or more cycles of Moore’s law.

Mutiny amid bounty

For all its woes (chiefly cost overruns), the American navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is an attempt to build a modern “truck”, albeit a rather modest one. It can be reconfigured for each mission by adding or removing modules such as weapon systems, sensors, helicopters and drones. New modules are planned for anti-submarine warfare, minehunting, surface warfare, surveillance and special operations. Critics contend that the LCS is a jack of all trades that will be master of none, but its supporters are convinced its flexibility will make it a success.

Admiral Greenert has whipped up an even bigger storm by saying that advantages from America’s prized stealth technology will be “difficult to maintain”. The other side’s sensors, he argues, may operate at lower electromagnetic frequencies than stealth technologies are designed to frustrate, and may use exponentially increasing processing power to work out where the stealth platform is from different angles or aspects. In other words, in the continuing struggle between hiders and finders, America will increasingly labour to keep the advantage it has enjoyed for two decades.

The admiral therefore calls for a shift from relying solely on stealth to using stand-off weapons, fired from such a distance that adversaries cannot shoot back, or by unmanned systems; or employing electronic-warfare devices to confuse or jam the other side’s sensors, rather than trying to hide from them. The unstated implication is that there are other ways of doing the same job as the stealthy F-35 more cheaply and more successfully.

Some defence analysts took the article as a signal that the navy, never thrilled by the F-35, might intend to make a big cut in the 480 aircraft it is meant to be buying to free money for other things. A few days after the article appeared, a spokesman for Admiral Greenert felt compelled to explain that his boss still backed the F-35.

Mark Gunzinger, an authority on air power at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank based in Washington, thinks the admiral was not so much aiming a broadside at the F-35 than making the case for having the right mix of aircraft for future carriers. An advocate of both the long-range Next Generation Bomber and the navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System, he points out that both should feature the stealthy designs that are needed to survive in hostile environments, and that forecasts of the death of stealth are very premature.

Peter Singer, an expert on future weapons at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, is more sceptical. He fears that advances in Chinese and Russian air-defence systems are eroding the advantages of stealth, and that the F-35 is further hobbled by its limited range. “It has very short legs,” he says, shorter than some planes from the second world war. It may be better “to play a different game”, relying more on precision strikes from afar, perhaps using hybrid transport-bombers carrying cruise missiles or swarms of drones. Because the F-35 has turned out to be so costly (after years of delays and cost overruns, the bill is now $396 billion), he fears it could blight the development of more capable systems. But whatever reservations the navy may have about the F-35, he notes that the Pentagon has deemed the programme “too big to fail”. Agreeing with Admiral Greenert’s analysis, Mr Singer asks: “Will it lead to any change in policy? That is the test.”