X-36 drone - Weapons Systems - Offense/Defense

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-18 19:41:13

For kbd512 ...

The story at the link below is about a gent who might be of interest to you .... he is an entrepreneur in the Air Adversary business ...

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/this … ket-newtab

Edit 2022/04/22 >> The title of this topic is available to be modified, so I'm changing it to fit the flow of discussion.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-04-19 01:09:25

tahanson43206,

I've read quite a bit about them. The USAF and USN use them for training. They're all former military pilots. It'd be better for the aggressor squadron to have more modern aircraft, though.

I wish someone would pick up on my micro fighter concept and develop a small but relatively low-cost stealthy airframe that has the latest and greatest sensor tech and small weapons tech. Ukraine has taught us how effective Stinger / Starstreak and Javelin / NLAW can be when properly employed.

X-36 tailless airframe capable of high-subsonic speeds and 9g maneuverability
Williams FJ-44 turbofan
Short range AESA radar for weather / navigation / target search only
Full electro-optical suite, miniaturized version of DAS
Martin-Baker ultralight ejection seat
Link 22 for communicating targeting data to other units
750 pounds of internally carried smart munitions

2 AIM-92 Stinger or its replacement (for self-defense)
And
2 AIM-260 (Lockheed-Martin Cuda or Raytheon Peregrine for air combat missions)
Or
2 GBU-53 StormBreaker small diameter bombs (tanks or other armored moving battlefield targets, parked aircraft, small bunkers, fuel dumps, ammo depots- high value stuff)
Or
8 AGM-176A Griffin guided munitions (all manner of small stationary or moving excluding tanks)
Or
2 7-round LAU-68 launchers with APKWS-II (small unarmored targets like machine gun or mortar nests, parked trucks, towed artillery)
Or
Dozens of Pyros guided anti-personnel munitions (so accurate that they're capable of physically striking a moving human target)

Meet the X-36 drone that this concept is modeled after:

Edit #1:

Edit #2:

Edit #3:

Edit #4:

That is what I wish to scale up to a max takeoff weight target similar to Aero Vodochody's L-39NG empty weight, which also uses the Williams FJ-44-4M turbofan. L-39NG carries 3.5X more external stores, 2 crew members, and is primarily made from conventional Aluminum alloys rather than composites, so it's substantially heavier and somewhat larger than what I have in mind. Rather than mandating tactically useless supersonic speeds or large payloads, this micro jet will be small, agile, and exceptionally difficult to track. I'm after lower landing speeds, lower operational costs, and more pilot flight hours so that our pilots each receive at least 250 hours per year, preferably 400 hours per year (equates to at about 4 2-hour long training missions per week with 48 work weeks per year). FJ-44's fuel burn rate is a minor fraction of the F-135, the engine is far less costly to maintain, and it's a much simpler jet that does not demand extreme performance, so less wear and tear.

A jet like this is clearly not a strike fighter like the F-35. It probably can't go head-to-head with something as capable as a F-35 in the sensors and avionics realm. It's not intended for suppression of enemy air defenses or attacking large ships or hardened bunkers, either, but that's what the F-35s are for. However, it's fast enough to be a credible threat and agile enough to avoid most MANPADS and AAA. It can successfully attack virtually any type of land vehicle or infantry formation or a small ship not protected by IADS. No other type of fighter aircraft will ever win a turning engagement against one.

This is what a modernized and stealthy A-4 Skyhawk would look like. It will cruise at high subsonic speeds, has a slightly higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the old Skyhawk, and all the characteristics that made our A-4s the go-to general purpose attack aircraft and adversary trainers at Naval Fighter Weapons School would apply to these jets. I figure we can cap our F-35 fleet size at around 2,000 instead of 2,500. Each F-35 would be roughly equivalent in purchase price to an entire squadron of these jets.

A carrier air wing could either double the number of attack jets carried, or simply have a lot more space for maintenance and movement of aircraft. The hangar and flight deck will be less space-constrained with two squadrons of F-35Cs for fleet air defense and 4 squadrons of FA-36 attack jets. There will be less pressure on the Air Wing's MQ-25 tanker squadron and fleet oilers supplying the battle group with fuel as well.

Our European and Asian allies can affordably arm themselves with the latest generation sensor and weapons tech while saving enough money for fuel / maintenance / weapons. Many of our allies can't realistically afford F-35s. Quality is important, but so is quantity. Poland is already struggling to keep up with the constant scrambles to intercept Russian fighters operating near their borders. They'd have no ability to use their fighters for anything except fighter sweeps / combat air patrol if the Russians invaded. You can't win a war if you have no ability to go on offense, which is what we're seeing in Ukraine. The same would apply to Taiwan to an even greater degree. Russia is learning from their mistakes and you can bet your last dollar that China is also learning.

Last edited by kbd512 (2022-04-21 13:34:57)

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-19 06:39:09

For kbd512 re #511...

So! Is this guy hiring?

He absolutely ** must ** need IT support, and of very high quality.... All those fighters he's picking up need to be tracked to the bolt and washer, and he's (apparently) planning to put them all into service. Plus, he may need help with the actual repair and maintenance.

Plus, he (obviously) knows how to rustle the funding for equipment, personnel and support services, and I don't see the need for Adversary services going away any time soon.

Does he he have any facilities in Houston?

Re your proposal for a superior fighter ... I had to chuckle at the idea of an Adversary Service designing a better fighter than the best the US has to offer, but this guy might be receptive to well thought out proposals. I have no way of knowing how your proposals would stand up to the Real Universe, but they do sound at least plausible.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-04-19 10:33:30

tahanson43206,

Good question. I have no idea, but probably not.

However, I do know that they need a modern fighter jet that keeps pace with what our military actually needs:

Adversary Air Contract For Nellis Air Force Base Won’t Be Renewed

After years of providing Nellis with ‘red air’ capabilities, Draken International will cease operations at the base in June.
After years of praise for helping the Air Force fulfill a huge training gap at its most prestigious training installation — Nellis Air Force Base, the home of the USAF's elite Weapons School, a large part of the Operational Test community, and the service's massive Red Flag aerial wargames — Draken International's permanent presence there will end in early June.
As it sits now, Nellis won't execute an option to renew its adversary air (ADAIR) contract for another year with Draken International. The private adversary company, which is one of the largest in the fast-growing marketplace, flies a large mix of aircraft in the aggressor role from the base, including everything from straight-winged L-159 Honey Badgers to radar-equipped A-4 Skyhawks to supersonic Mirage F1s. Draken has been flying from Nellis since the dawn of the USAF's private contractor aggressor initiative and the current contract for ADAIR operations at Nellis ends on June 4th, 2022, according to the company.
...
It seems clear that Nellis wants higher-end capabilities than what is currently being made available by Draken's fleet. This is not all that surprising. The migration to a more advanced, true 4th generation fighter capability equipped with datalinks, advanced radars, and things like infrared search and track systems has always been in the works. But the Air Force itself has stressed that it wanted to take a crawl-walk-run approach to ADAIR. These capabilities don't just appear on-demand in a matter of months.
Fielding 4th generation fighters with the various upgrades to meet the Air Force's future needs requires massive amounts of capital and time to acquire and deploy operationally. Even then, the price per hour will be significantly higher compared to lower-end older jets that are currently being used in ADAIR roles. How attractive that cost proposition is to the Air Force is yet to be seen.
...
ADAIR providers are quickly moving to more advanced platform choices to meet the Air Force's emerging demand.

Fielding a lower-cost but highly effective 5th generation fighter would provide far more realistic adversary training to our pilots. I see no point to continuing to goof off with 4th generation platforms. Every report from every air service, both here in America and abroad, all come back with the same message. If the enemy is competent and has integrated air defenses, then expect to lose about 50% of your 4th generation jets per mission, or about 1 loss for every 25 to 50 missions using a 5th generation jet.

So... Even if our own air services and enemy air services still have a good number of aging 4th generation jets, why bother training against something that's child's play for a 5th generation jet to dispatch?

Even the Eagle drivers with the fancy new AESA radars, touted as the most powerful in our fleet (more powerful than the radars on the F-22s and F-35s, simply because they're a newer iterative development of the technology aboard the F-22 and F-35), only managed to jump F-22s or F-35s by chance or in an engagement that intentionally started with the Eagle within visual range of the newer jets. Setup-type engagements are for DACT, BCM, and weapons employment practice only. They do not accurately represent what happens when one jet has to get 10X closer to a stealthy jet for the stealth fighter to be detected by radar.

If a 4th gen jet is sweeping the airspace using its own radar, then any similarly-equipped 5th gen jet can almost instantly pinpoint its location without ever turning its own radar on. Such a course of action inevitably means that any attempt to "find" the stealthy jet using high power radar sweeps will inevitably result in being detected and a missile sent back to the source of the offending radar signals by the stealthy defender. It's a losing proposition. 4th gen technology is obsolete when pitted against 5th gen technology. It's time to admit to reality.

If we have insufficient training, then we are going to lose. The Russians 4th gen jets were pummeled by very dated or limited air defense systems. The Ukrainians are highly competent defenders who use ingenuity and tactics to overcome technical or numerical inferiority. If they had sufficient weapons and training before the war started, it would've been a literal bloodbath for the Russian aggressors. The Russians sill would've exacted revenge for their losses, but as-is they're slowly being pushed back into Russia.

Important Factors for Winning Modern Combined Arms Maneuver Warfare:
1. Air Dominance (SEAD / DEAD, enemy aircraft destruction, tactics that avoid or prevent shoot-downs)
2. Battlefield Surveillance (locate and track enemy vehicle or ship movements, send missiles to eliminate them)
3. Timely Secure Communication with Supporting Units (relaying enemy positions to hunter-killer teams and fratricide avoidance)

We have the following fairly well covered:
F-22s or their 6th gen successor for interception and air combat
F-35s for general purpose strike with target prioritization and mission coordination capabilities baked into the software
MQ-25s for stealthy tanking support and opportunistic strike in relatively benign environments
MQ-28s and XQ-58s for air defense penetration strikes into areas heavily defended by IADS, where risk of loss is exceptionally high
B-2s and B-21s for long range strategic heavy bombing or drone swarm attacks

We need but don't have:
FA-36 light attack jet to replace our aging or obsolete A-10s, F-16s, FA-18s
US Army can retain the A-10s for attack, or we can provide them to allies like Ukraine or Taiwan or South Korea

There are no non-permissive environments where B-1s, B-52s, A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, or FA-18s can survive. Every exercise we conduct confirms that, and Russian experience against far less sophisticated Ukrainian air defenses also confirms it in a real shooting war with semi-modern weapons. All of our probable adversaries now field very modern IADS and AESA radar equipped fighters, either 4th gen or 5th. We need to accept that a lower cost alternative to F-22s / F-35s / B-21s is required to maintain aircrew competency and platform lethality in an affordable way.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-19 12:30:32

For kbd512 re #513

Your report of the closing of the contract at Nellis is a (to me surprising) development, after I had just reported the news that the company had purchased the entire air fleet of a smaller country (or something similar).

It would appear that the venture capitalists behind this expensive initiative are at some risk.

It sure comes across via your posts in this forum, that you'd be a valuable member of the Air Adversary establishment, if they are looking for advice at this point.

The only solution that I can see, to maintain the current business model for Air Adversary, is to exceed the capabilities of the US Air Force, the US Navy and whichever other US forces are in need of training.

And (of course) ** that ** is on the challenging side, since every other nation is hard at work trying to do the exact same thing.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-04-20 02:00:28

tahanson43206,

Chasing After Modernization
They've purchased a variety of jets based upon cost and availability. However, we don't need to train against jets that lack stealth or sensor fusion capabilities. If you're training to go head-to-head with other heavy weight fighters, then you don't do that by sparring with a bunch of bantam weight fighters. If you're not punching at or above your weight class, then you're not competitive. All fights work that way. I guess the Air Force and Navy are finally acting like they're going to face very similarly armed and equipped opponents. That's a good thing, to my way of thinking.

The Nature of the Problem
To be frank, even if our latest F-15s squared off with these stealthy micro fighters, that would be equivalent to clubbing baby seals for the micro fighters. The F-15s would broadcast their position to every other air asset within the entire theater, assuming they have modern RWR / ECM suites. The micro fighters would fire a pair of Cuda or Peregrine missiles at them, and that would be all she wrote for the Eagles. If the Eagles close to within visual range, then they're going to get their rear ends handed to them in any kind of yank-n-bank dogfight, unless they manage to punch off Sidewinders to chase down the micro fighters.

The High Cost of Inaction
A-10 maintenance costs run around $1.9B per year, so the $12B we'll spend is only 6 years of maintenance costs for a single type. F-15 / F-16 / FA-18 maintenance costs are well beyond those figures. They're all aging rapidly, with most of our existing airframes being older than their pilots. All of those fleets should be retired or handed off to willing customers to fund development work. Korea would like our F-15s and Taiwan would like our F-16s. Poland wants more F-16s as well. We've sunk enough money into them and there's simply not much more that can be squeezed out of them without serious refurbishment or new builds. We can throw money at their sensors and avionics until the cows come home, but that won't change their survival rates in combat. It won't lower airframe maintenance costs, either. All the years of service and the scope creep have taken their toll. F-15s and F-16s are wildly beyond what their designers had in mind. Block 70/72 models are $64M. For another $82M, you can have a F-35A. A Gripen is $85M. A strike Eagle is $88M. Eurofighter and Rafale are both considerably more expensive. You can see how costly this business has become. How do you create a pipeline for these people when individual jets cost as much as some of the WWII aircraft carriers? We need more affordable jets.

DACT for Heavy Fighters
Phantom, Tomcat, and even Eagle drivers had to be taught that they should never try to maneuver with more nimble opponents like the A-4s or T-38s, because they'll turn inside of you most of time. Instead, they're taught to use their superior speed and acceleration to take the fight into the vertical so that their superior thrust carries them over the top of less powerful fighters and into a guns or Sidewinder firing solution. All-aspect seekers, high off-boresight launch, and lock-on-after-launch capabilities have somewhat mitigated the need to maneuver to achieve a firing solution. If you manage to get that close, then you also want to give your missile the shortest / easiest flight path to the target that you can give it. Then and only then would you rely on the rest of that whiz-bangery to do what it does.

DACT for Dogfighters
Unsuspecting Viper drivers who have tangled with Warthogs have learned the hard way that even though they may have one of the most maneuverable purpose-built dogfighters in the sky, every F-16 vs A-10 turning engagement against a competent Hog driver only ends one way- your Viper is transformed into Aluminum confetti by the Avenger cannon in the Hog's nose or you have a close encounter with a Sidewinder. That might seem a bit strange, but it's not. Every Cessna 172 ever made will easily turn inside of a F-16 or A-10 for that matter, all day, every day. That still doesn't make a 172 any more suitable for air combat than the Hog. All smart Viper drivers will put some distance between themselves and said Hog, send a Sidewinder after it, and then that game is over. The Hog has little hope of winning that kind of fight when its loaded the way it normally is. It's not fast enough to run away from a missile or to chase down a Viper. Slower but more maneuverable jets are limited to defensive maneuvers, and should never attempt a vertical fight with a faster / higher-thrust opponent. If both pilots really know how to use their jet, it's interesting to watch. Remaining fuel quantity is also a factor.

This is mentioned, twice even, because in the future encounters between jets are likely to be very close and something of a matter of chance without the benefit of radar vectoring. You're going to fight a very powerful interceptor-like aircraft that you can't run away from or a general purpose strike fighter that engages because you happen to be there or in the way. There will be a lot of shots taken against unaware opponents who then have to rapidly respond appropriately, else you lose.

Anyway, some basic design characteristics to begin to define the concept (sort of still jumbled up in my head)...

Operationally Proven Engine Selection
The Williams FJ-44 series turbofans I want to use have logged over 13 million flight hours across more than 5,700 copies of the engine. I don't see much of an issue with the Air Force and Navy pressing another 2,000 FJ-44s into service, and possibly up to 1,000 additional engines for our allies. These engines have 2,500 hour HSI intervals and 5,000 hour TBOs. They're thoroughly proven civil and military engine technology that's already in service with various airline services and air forces around the world. We're taking full advantage of the engine development done on this engine. Sold individually, they're around $2M per copy. I'm guessing Uncle Sam can get block buy discounts.

Modern CFRP Airframe Tech
I figure the airframe will run around $1M using Lamborghini's "carbon forging" technology. Avionics and sensors will account for another $2M to $3M, dependent upon how much COTS technology is utilized. I'd like to shoot for a fly-away cost of $6M per copy, or $12B for our entire fleet. Boeing spent $111M ($67M back then) to develop their Bird of Prey stealth fighter jet / technology test bed into a flyable prototype. I'm going to figure on a $250M development program that makes no attempt to reinvent the wheel and only includes a handful of weapons integrations.

Modern Avionics and Sensors Capabilties
We didn't have the technology a mere 10 years ago to miniaturize all the sensors and avionics, but now we do. That's why a bomb like Pyros that you can easily pick up with one hand actually has 3 different sensor inputs for guidance, and is so accurate that it can make direct contact with a moving human from miles away. We're going to apply the same technology to the sensor suite and avionics. The sensor and avionics capabilities that we can stuff into a micro jet are completely beyond anything we could do at the time when Boeing originally came up with the micro fighter idea. The electronics capabilities are what make the jet useful. We no longer need a jet the size of a F-22 or F-35 to cram in most of what we want, exclusive of a large and powerful radar to advertise our position to everyone else. The warhead sizes are also far less critical to achieving kills, which is why we no longer have to carry large payloads that were a function of the relative inaccuracy of previous generations of munitions and missiles.

Basic Airframe Design and Materials Selection
The airframe will be entirely composite material, so very little in the way of metal machining is required. Carbon forging uses high heat and extreme pressure to produce fully formed CFRP parts in seconds. No autoclaving or curing process is required. The flight control surface actuators will be electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs; electrically-controlled hydraulics). There will be no external fuel tanks, no fuel stored in the wings, and no external hardpoints, so minimal wiring and complexity. X-36 is a lifting body design, much like the F-117, B-2, F-22, YF-23, X-32, F-35, YF-118G, virtually all of the stealthy drones, and all Gen 6 designs, so less lift is required from the wings. The total absence of vertical tail surfaces both eliminates components and another large flat surface to reflect radar. The wings will be foldable for stowage aboard an aircraft carrier. Ford and Nimitz class elevators are so long that an entire squadron could conceivably fit onto a single elevator without undue effort. Even if all jets were fully armed and fueled, which would be unusual, they would still be under the load limit.

Arming Planes Without Equipment
Since all weapons carried are very light, 2 men can lift the munitions by hand while 1 man pins the ordnance to the ejector. Some of the munitions are so light that 1 man can both lift and pin, though I expect this will be disallowed by regulation. Perhaps some sort of friction lock or magnetic lock is also feasible. Either way, this is a major benefit for carrier operations. No special equipment is required to arm the plane. At 7,000 to 7,500 pounds max gross, it should also be relatively easy to move the aircraft by hand. This is not frequently done aboard ship, but back on land it's done in or around the hangars whenever the tractors are not available. I haven't seen the hangars at every last Naval Air Station, but back at NAS Whidbey we could've easily fit all 24 birds from 2 squadrons into our hangar with plenty of room to spare, in the event of a major storm.

Head Count Reduction and Organizational Changes
I don't know how practical it would be to run a reduced manpower squadron, but we had about 180 assigned personnel. That's 15 per jet, which seems reasonable for the large multi-engined jets that we were assigned. However, this is a drastically smaller single-engined jet so there must be some economy of manpower to be had. Each squadron is a self-contained command that also includes various support personnel. The maintainers work in shifts whenever our jets are not flying, as there's always something broken or leaking (more than usual) on Navy fighters. The avionics, machinists (engines / lube / fuel / driven accessories), and airframers (structural and hydraulics) were always busy. Maybe we could cut down on the number of ADs since there are half as many engines to repair, possibly fewer AMs / AMEs since these are smaller airframes with fewer seats, but the same number of landing gear as any other type. You need just as many PRs and just as many ATs, possibly more. I don't know if having fewer AOs to arm planes is a good idea or not. The weapons are smaller so they're easier to work with using fewer people, but just as many are carried and all of these things require some maintenance. I know the least about their job, because only AOs were allowed in their shop (probably for good reason). All in all, it should be a bit more like maintaining a hard-use business jet that someone was a bit rough with.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-20 05:32:09

For kbd512 re #517

SearchTerm:dogfight fighter aircraft history perspective best practices reality of battle engagements

The gent who built up a significant adversary capability to save the US Air Force just lost his contract (according to an article posted earlier in the forum).

The implication (to me at least) is that the US Air Force is looking for a better training opponent than is currently available.

It is one thing to provide knowledge and insight to readers of an obscure Internet forum with few readers.

It is quite another thing to help a proven American Entrepreneur to adapt to the needs of the US Air Force.

This is Bet Your Company time for the entrepreneur.

Massive investment is needed, and the venture capitalists are going to have to take major risks.

The quality of advice they receive, and the quality of their evaluation of that advice, will determine whether taxpayer dollars flow to the entrepreneur, and whether the investments succeed.

It is far easier to stay on the sidelines (where most of us are by necessity).

Only the ** really ** capable will join the fight to save the prior investments.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-20 17:44:42

kbd512 image makes me want one now.....

kbd512 · 2022-04-21 14:57:09

The real reason we need these fighters is so that we can also field a very large number of inexpensive Sea Control Ships based upon our LPD-17 San Antonio class.

Sea Control Ship (SCS) Concept Art (a visualization for the SCS concept):
US%20CVS%20Sea%20Control%20Ship%20gas%20turbine%20powered%20versions.GIF

LPD-17 San Antonio class ship (the actual / "real life" hull form that our SCS will be based upon):

LPD-17 is a 25,000 ton amphibious ship. The San Antonio class was originally intended to carry and launch Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) landing craft carrying tanks / trucks / other vehicles and Marine Corps infantry to shore, so this class of ship has a cavernous well deck.

For comparison purposes...
LPD-17 Tonnage: 25,000; Length: 684ft; Beam: 105ft, 97ft at waterline; Draft 23ft; Power: 40,000shp; Cost: $1.7B
CVN-68 Tonnage: 100,000; Length 1,092ft; Beam: 252ft, 134ft at waterline; Draft: 37ft-41ft; Power: 260,000shp; Cost: $9.7B
CVN-78 Tonnage: 100,000; Length 1,092ft; Beam: 252ft, 134ft at waterline; Draft: 39ft; Power: unknown; Cost: $13B

We can see how much larger and more expensive these nuclear powered aircraft carriers are, and have to be, in order to carry significant numbers of very large long-range aircraft. These SCSs can't and won't replace CVNs, but they don't have to. America needs an affordable aircraft carrier that does not require an enormous capital investment into very costly nuclear powered technology. The US Navy's own assessment states that the price of oil has to exceed and remain at $140/bbl in order for nuclear power to break even with diesel or gas turbine power over the expected life of both ships. Having a larger number of drastically lower cost aircraft carriers, equipped with large numbers of low cost micro fighters, can enable SCS carrier air wings to provide 4 squadrons of general purpose attack aircraft to support amphibious landings by clearing battlefields of vehicles that oppose our forces. This is particularly useful for countering the incredible numbers of armored vehicles and infantry fielded by our adversaries.

Most importantly, the sortie generation rate from a pair of these aircraft carriers could meet or exceed that of our Nimitz class (120 sorties per day) or even the new Ford class (160 sorties per day). If 96 micro fighters (2 air wings from 2 SCSs) flew a pair of 2 hour missions per day, then that equates to 192 sorties per day. This assumes the standard 12-hour flight schedule, since that is what we actually ran in combat, in Afghanistan. I recognize that there are greater surge capabilities, but these are not sustainable for more than a day or two at most.

If we presume that we can afford to purchase 4 SCSs plus air wings, per Nimitz or Ford class super carrier, then we can see how our actual combat capabilities- our ability to generate additional sorties used to hunt down and kill enemy vehicles, small ships, or submarines drastically increases. If we send 4 SCSs in lieu of a single super carrier, then we're talking about 384 sorties per day, providing 24/7 flight ops capabilities to assure that we always have aircraft in the air, presenting a credible threat of attack to enemy forces. More importantly, we can limit flight ops to just 6 hours per SCS, so the other 18 hours are available for maintenance.

The draft of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer is 30 feet and the draft of a Ticonderoga class cruiser is 34, so these SCSs can operate in waters that are too shallow for any of our nuclear powered aircraft carriers, which means just-over-the-horizon sneak attacks are also feasible if the carriers are protected in the littorals by similar ships carrying appropriate air defense weapons and sensors.

To control costs, built-in sensors would be limited to air and surface search radars and 4 of the 21-cell RAM point defense missile systems. Basically, we double-up on the number of RAMs that provide point defense capabilities, delete the Mk41 VLS of the existing LPD-17s, and remove the requirement for more sophisticated combat systems to direct ESSM or other missile systems stored in the Mk41. This is a purpose-built light carrier and the air wing provides the offensive firepower. It's not a general-purpose ship with a mix of capabilities, since that drives up cost and complexity. We have dozens of destroyers and cruisers for providing air / surface / submarine defense.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-21 15:21:46

For kbd512....re 9

Having read your detailed report and analysis/forecast on near term future US Navy options for peer conflict, a question came to mind that I don't recall your discussing in the past. I catch most of your military related posts, but might have missed this...

Have you discussed automated eye-ball defense systems?

I would expect that by now, with advances in computer optical input (largely in the commercial and scientific realms) I'm wondering if defensive systems for US ships that might have relied on radar in the past might be extended into the optical wavelengths.

My understanding is that our peer level opponents have achieved some success in preventing detection by radar, and eyeballs are not useful except for short range engagement, but for ** that ** regime, they work well enough.

Looking back to WW II, we had eyeball tracking with searchlight illumination, but (of course) those were manual systems and the error rate was significant.

Modern electronic "eyeballs" may be more efficient in short distance engagement.

I don't know what any of this has to do with the X-36 drone, but it is interesting, so let's keep going!

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-04-22 00:36:03

tahanson43206,

It would be great to have an electro-optical suite that could discern target type, although I don't think we have anything that sophisticated on most ships. A system that could identify friendly aircraft based upon shape, tail markings, and IR or UV signatures would be nice to have so that you're less concerned about fratricide. We could put special LED arrays on aircraft that transmit bar codes that can be changed every day, for example. When weather permits, that would be a great way to "know" that whatever you're engaging doesn't belong to your ship or to another ship in your battlegroup. We have cameras that film everything in case an accident happens, but they're low quality and not even digital. Most more sophisticated EO sensors are tied to specific weapon systems. A sophisticated EO suite paired with a high resolution short range MMW radar would help limit emissions that would help the enemy fix the positions of our carriers.

While much hay has been made over the not-so-recent appearance of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), to use any kind of missile against a ship at sea, you first have to find it and track it. Despite the proliferation of satellite imagery technology, that is still easier said than done. A ship moving at a mere 20mph will be over the visible horizon in less than 1 hour. If your search tool is 150 feet above sea level, meaning on the mast of another ship, then your EO device can see a maximum of 16 miles. At 1 mile above sea level, the visible horizon is 96 miles away. Want to track it from space? You'll be searching enormous areas, some of which may be entirely obscured by cloud cover. Say you found it by chance, but it took 1 hour to do that. Well, now you need to find it again, possibly using another satellite. You need very large constellations in very low orbits so that you can hand-off the moving target to the next satellite. Want to use a giant telescope that greatly magnifies the image? That's like looking through a soda straw, so good luck with that. You'll need it. Satellites that monitor fixed or relatively fixed land targets from lower orbits are a different game altogether. Finding an enemy air base isn't that difficult. Why on Earth would we develop balloons and near-satellite aircraft if it was so easy to spot something from space? It's obviously not, and horrendously costly to do. The closer you can get, the less costly your sensor equipment becomes.

Say you figure all of that out or simply spend enough money to track anything you wish to track. Great, but that was the "easy part", as compared to the next part. Now you have to deliver that information to these HGVs, and probably at least two or three weapons if we're talking about sinking a carrier without using nuclear warheads. It's moving so fast that it's literally hotter than an oven. Your ability to use IR or UV for terminal guidance is almost out of the question. Without active cooling, the only thing you'll pick up is the thermal soak into the sensor aperture, acquired from attaining and then maintaining hypersonic speeds over significant distances within the sensible atmosphere. That only leaves a radar system or remote command guidance that relays the target information to the weapon. The missile's terminal homing radar array has to be mounted within a heat-resistant material that's also transparent to the frequency you're using for guidance. Most of the missile's body can be made from a stainless steel with a thin ceramic thermal barrier coating, but that radome over the terminal guidance radar certainly won't be steel. What if we fired a low (10s to 100s of kilowatts) power laser at the incoming missile to blind any attempt to use IR / UV / laser terminal guidance? Now we're truly limited to radar or command guidance from a remote platform that can more easily track the targeted ship and missile or missiles fired at it, without resorting to using exceptionally expensive onboard heat-resistant or actively-cooled sensors that can also survive 25g pull-up maneuvers of the sort that the DF-21D "carrier killer" uses to "glide" back through the atmosphere towards its target after a brief exo-atmospheric excursion.

Let's say you figure all that out as well, and I'll assume you have. Your missile is still moving so fast that it has to acquire and track its target in mere seconds. Very high speed data links or onboard processors must be paired with exceptionally precise maneuvering capabilities, or the missile could miss the target entirely without any "help" from the enemy. Sure, you can feed in inertial guidance data before the missile is launched, but then it has to be updated mid-flight or it might be off course by miles.

Are we beginning to understand that hitting moving targets at mile-per-second closure rates is not trivial? It's obviously doable, but the brief time interval in which to make course corrections mandates exceptionally sophisticated and costly guidance schemes. There's only so many of these weapons our enemies can afford to purchase and deploy before they start affecting silly little things like realistic training or military pay or providing MREs to their soldiers that aren't 10+ years out-of-date. Sound a bit like Russia's folly to anyone else here? Worse still, America may effectively neutralize all of these weapons by being inside the minimum range or outside the maximum range. A long range strike drone may still be able to attack their forces because all of their coastal anti-ship missile batteries, hypersonic or otherwise, are too far away. It'll always be cheaper to refuel a drone in-flight than it is to significantly increase the range of a missile system. All of these HGV "wunderwaffe" start around $10M per copy. It's very easy to spend serious money on ICBM-like weapons without much to show for it, meaning as much or more than a nuclear weapons program.

The DF-21D has a minimum range of 300 miles and a maximum range of 900 miles or so. So flight time will be a minimum of 180 seconds if the missile flew in a straight line to the target, but that's not how it works. It first boosts to the edge of the atmosphere and then plunges back in, glides for a distance, and then dives onto its target. I figure it's flight time is at least 4 minutes at minimum range. At a mere 20mph, the carrier has already moved 7,040 feet in 4 minutes. Since we're relying upon a near-vertical diving attack to maintain hypersonic speeds, that means the weapon has to acquire the target during the terminal phase over an area of approximately 4 square miles. Once the dive phase begins, the weapon has just over 12 seconds to impact from a height of 100,000 feet. If the range of the terminal phase tracking radar is any less than 15 miles or so, then it has even less time to acquire and guide to impact. Your inertial guidance had better stuff that weapon into an exceptionally well-defined "basket of airspace" above its intended target.

Those are the fundamental design problems facing any HGVs capable of hitting a moving ship.

Now we will consider what the defenders can do:

If we're continuously tracking all the radar and IR signatures above our ships, then we can easily "see" the weapon both during its glide phase and during its terminal dive phase. Minimally, there's no such thing as "hiding" the IR signature of a HGV. It's quite literally hotter than an oven. Its leading edges are hotter than jet engine exhaust. The background of upper atmosphere / space is much colder than any part of the weapon is. It's also moving so fast that it can only be a meteor or a HGV. If it's on an intercept path with our ship, then we can start feeding data to our entire battlegroup's weapon systems. Our first line of defense is our SM-3 theater ballistic missile interceptors. If we catch the missile during its boost or glide phases, then it's a sitting duck since all guidance will be inertial. It can't maneuver because if it does then it'll likely be too far off-course to hit our ship. If it attempts to maneuver then it bleeds speed like mad and it's not powered at all during its glide phase so it already has all the speed that it's ever going to have. Forcing any hard avoidance maneuvers will rapidly reduce velocity and range. The weapon would also have to be "aware" that it was being threatened with interception in the first place. Think that'll be easy to counter?

Perhaps the glide vehicle's overall shape can help with minimizing its radar signature, but all practical refractory materials will be good to excellent radar reflectors. Recall how we have been able to track incoming MIRVs / MARVs on radar and by IR for multiple decades now, and these are already made from refractory materials that survive reentry. Incoming HGVs are instant "attention-getters". Should the fact that we can remotely monitor all of these HGV tests, from start to finish, tell you exactly how "aware" we are when one is fired off, even if we can't or won't do anything about it? Aegis already tracks satellites in space, so what makes people think tracking a HGV will be substantially more challenging than that?

Aegis fires its own hypersonic RIM-161 / SM-3 missiles at speeds up to Mach 18 at orbiting satellites and provides in-flight command guidance to track and kill orbiting satellites. Our IADS can track something in LEO and then successfully kill it using a hit-to-kill vehicle. Are there any compelling reasons to assume that the same thing can't be done to counter HGVs, or is that propaganda to obtain more military spending to defend against something we can already defend against after some software changes? Incidentally, SM-3s have been in-service since 2014. While SM-3s weren't designed to kill HGVs, but to suggest that they couldn't be modified to do so is rather ludicrous in light of the fact that both THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 are purpose-built high altitude "hit-to-kill" interceptors that destroy incoming ICBM warheads. Since SM-3s are already fast and accurate enough to kill targets moving more than twice as fast, it's a safe bet that a comparatively sluggish HGV can also be intercepted.

If our SM-3s fail, then our SM-2s or SM-6s get a crack at it. They're not as fast, yet they can still intercept targets between 80,000 and 110,000 feet. If that fails, then we also have ESSM / RIM-162. Apart from SM-3s, SM-2s / SM-6s / ESSMs are moving between Mach 3.5 and Mach 4 at rocket motor burnout. If all attempts to engage at a significant distance fail, then we still have RAM / RIM-116s and possibly 57mm guns with programmable fuses. We have 3 different radar guided interceptor missile systems, 1 IR guided interceptor missile system, and 57mm cannon fire arrayed against thes HGVs, along with radar systems accurate enough to track and guide SM-3s to kill satellites in space. I think this HGV threat has already been taken pretty seriously, and is something we have spent decades working on defending against. No single solution can guarantee survival, but our defense-in-depth is pretty well established at this point. The same applies to the US Army with their deployment of THAAD, Patriot PAC-3, MEADS, and SHORAD (Sidewinder and Stinger).

Russia spent crazy money on super-high-end offensive missile systems, but they're using them to attack civilian apartment buildings that can't pose any real threat. They didn't spend nearly as much money on practical battlefield surveillance and targeting capabilities the way we did. We don't waste $10M to level an apartment building because we spend $21,000 on a $3,000 iron bomb with a GPS guidance kit attached to it- our exceptionally accurate "JDAM" / Joint Direct Attack Munition. The Navy spends money to train pilots to accurately drop iron bombs, so they can affordably drop 2 to 7 iron bombs, for the same or less money, on said apartment building and assure that there is nothing left. If JDAMs are available, then we use JDAMs. If not, then our jets have to get closer and dive on the target. For a few dollars more, you can release a winged glide bomb from about 20 miles away, the enemy never sees or hears a jet overhead, nor the weapon coming in for that matter, and then it's a total surprise to everyone when it hits. That long range glide bomb kill chain includes battlefield surveillance to acquire enemy targets worthy of shooting at, positive target identification, communication of the target to the nearest "shooter", and a very high precision weapon system with onboard sensor fusion capabilities.

America prefers bombs over missiles whenever possible- lower cost most of the time, fewer catastrophic failure modes without rocket motors, fewer ground crew hazards to deal with, bigger warheads relative to total weapon weight so more can be carried per platform, lower signatures for enemies to track and trace back to the release platform, and fewer issues with storing ordnance for long periods of time in less-than-ideal environments. The lower cost, sometimes drastically lower when development costs are included, tends to ensure that greater numbers of these types of weapons are available when required. Missiles are only required to either chase down fast and maneuverable targets or to reduce exposure time to enemy air defenses. There are appropriate applications for both types of weapons. Destroying an apartment complex using a multi-million dollar hypersonic missile is an absurdity that's only amenable to Russian warfare doctrine. America would accept the cost of a hypersonic missile for destruction of integrated air defense systems, some types of aircraft such as strategic bombers, or warships, but no other type of target.

China's approach, at least outwardly, appears a bit more reasonable. They put a lot more money into surveillance drones, sensors, and communications capabilities. China's Air Force has a lot of planes that, broadly speaking, are similar in capabilities to our 4th gen fighters. Specifically, J-10 fighters are very similar to our F-16s in role and performance. JF-17 is similar in concept to Northrop's lower-cost F-20 Tigershark or the earlier / cheaper Gripen variants, except China actually built their take on the F-20 and it was / is very successful. China's 5th gen fighters still seem to be somewhat experimental in nature. J-20s are similar to our F-22s, but more akin to stealthy F-15E Strike Eagles than purpose-built air superiority fighters like our F-15Cs and F-22s. J-20 is a solid first-attempt at producing a stealth fighter, nonetheless. However, I think their first attempt, much like our own, will ultimately prove impractical / cost-ineffective. They could produce many more J-20s if they wanted to spend the money, but their FC-31, which is more akin to our F-35 in design and role, will most likely be their mass-produced strike fighter.

We can see that the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon, Shenyang FC-31 Gyrfalcon, Sukhoi Su-75 Checkmate, Mitsubishi X-2 Shinshin, KAI KF-21 Boramae, HAL AMCA, TAI TF-X, BAE Tempest, and FCAS, all seem to share remarkably similar design elements to our F-22 Raptor, YF-23 Black Widow II, and F-35 Lightning II. That's probably more a function of "only so many ways to skin a cat", rather than an attempt to blindly copy whatever Lockheed-Martin or Northrop-Grumman have done. Western stealth fighter programs have certainly benefited greatly from the work done on F-22 / F-35 technology development, and possibly through espionage for China's part.

Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter (our likely F-22 replacement):
NGAD.jpg?fit=1487%2C801&ssl=1

Well, that's a bit on how next gen platforms are using or enhancing the capabilities developed for the F-35. For now, our drone programs are complementary in nature. One day all aviation assets will be drones, but today is not that day. HGVs potentially add another dimension to the array of threats faced on modern battlefields and in modern naval warfare, but it's very premature to draw any conclusions about their true capabilities or potential from static tests that do not test every link in the kill chain required to find, fix, and destroy moving ships. A highly sophisticated AI-enabled EO suite would certainly enhance our defense-in-depth strategy for protection of our ships. How much of a "game changer" or lack thereof? Hard to say. That all depends upon what you can do with it.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-22 05:28:14

For kbd512 re #11

SearchTerm:Weapon systems analysis comprehensive

The IR sensor presentation was (to me for sure) particularly interesting, although it may be less useful if the approaching threat is subsonic and well designed to avoid radar detection by reflection.

It may turn out that the most cost effective defense is to provide VR headsets to on-ship personnel, to guide munitions toward incoming targets. If I could think of that, then folks in the offense/defense business must have thought of it as well, so there may be some investment in that area.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-22 20:11:37

Thanks for digging up those extra images in post # 2 kbd512 they do look promising in that it should be developed into reality for use.

kbd512 · 2022-04-23 09:39:52

tahanson43206,

The most significant reason that America has put so much money and effort into stealthy vs fast aircraft and weapons development is that fast aircraft and weapons, while superficially attractive, present severe and expensive design requirements that make them more useful for nuclear than conventional weapons delivery for most use cases.

If one of these HGVs is ever mistaken for a nuclear ICBM attack, and the subsequent response involves the launching of ICBMs, then can you see how any nation concerned about its continued existence might find such weapons, which only have valid uses against peer-level opponents, to be less attractive than either cruise missiles or simpler-to-guide MIRVs or MARVs that come back down at even greater speeds?

An ICBM can fly to another continent in 15 minutes or less. If you could effectively track an aircraft carrier from over the horizon and took no issue with destroying it using a nuclear weapon, then there's little to no point to lowering the delivery vehicle's speed by gliding back through the atmosphere. The assertion is that the weapon gives the target less reaction time or is "less visible" because it doesn't follow a ballistic trajectory the way a conventional ICBM warhead does. It's still flying at 100,000 feet or more. Simple math / geometry says that whatever benefit that gliding supposedly provides is very slight or possibly non-existent. At 1 mile above sea level, the visible horizon is 96 miles away. An object at 100,000 feet is 18.93 miles above the surface.

Assuming your sensors have the range, and Aegis can "see" more than 2,500km IIRC, then you're going to "see" a HGV either during its boost phase or the moment it transitions to a glide, providing as much or more reaction time for interception as a conventional ballistic arc reentry vehicle that's moving much faster. Alternatively, a supersonic wave-skimming missile may be more desirable if its stealth characteristics appreciably reduce detection distance. If you're close enough for a ballistic or a glide trajectory to take more time, then you're probably better off using greater numbers of cheaper supersonic cruise missiles flying just above the waves. Wave skimming drastically reduces the time that an incoming weapon is visible if you're on the surface of the water it also presents wave clutter issues for signal processors to deal with.

If a missile flies at 10 feet above the water as many of them do these days, then the visible horizon is only 4.18 miles away. Even if the ship's radar suite is situated 100 feet above the water line in a mast and could technically see as far as 12.23 miles, stealth features may reduce that to a half or even a third. Merely detecting the presence of an inbound object is not the same as guiding a missile to destroy it. Modern stealth features do not attempt to "hide" the aircraft or missile from all radar frequencies, and instead focus on frequencies that provide resolution sufficient to accurately guide a weapon onto a target. Apart from using nuclear warheads, you can't simply put an interceptor missile into a 1km^3 basket of airspace and actually hit anything. Practical engagement distances are always less than theoretical maximum detection ranges because reaction times are at play. Even if the air defense system is completely automated, the way Aegis can be, it still takes additional time to engage. That said, the greater the detection distance, the greater the opportunity to neutralize the threat. HGVs tend to maximize detection distances for suitably capable radar arrays and EO sensors, even if they partially offset that by reducing engagement timeframes.

The net net is that a target ship may never get the opportunity to deploy its most capable radar-guided weapons against stealthy or supersonic sea-skimmers, because they may be inside minimum engagement range by the time you can react and fire an interceptor weapon. ESSM can probably still be fired, but at the very short distances involved, RAM is your friend.

Now you know why we've spent so much money on stealthy sea-skimmers that fly mere feet off the wave tops. A stealthy subsonic cruise missile may not become "killable" by a ship's defensive radar-guided missile systems until its less than 10 seconds from impact. At that point, having a larger warhead typical of most anti-ship cruise missiles, relative to an affordable HGV solution that can saturate air defense capabilities, will become a factor. 10 subsonic sea skimmers, even ones that are not particularly stealthy, at $1M each, vs 1 HGV at $10M each, is far more problematic for the defending ship. The enemy has 10 chances to hit your ship for the same cost to them, and if they can coordinate attacks from multiple directions then one of those weapons may very well get through.

The Russian loss of the Moskva is a great case in point. Theoretically, Moskva was endowed with a very capable integrated air defense system with fairly recent tech upgrades that should've made short work of a pair of subsonic sea skimmers. We don't know how many missiles the Ukrainians actually fired, nor how many were intercepted or failed to guide to the target, but at least 2 of their home-brew missiles hit Moskva, and despite causing survivable damage, the ship had to be abandoned after a serious fire broke out. Perhaps American warship design and training could've saved a ship struck by a pair of missiles, but maybe not. USS FFG-31 Stark was hit with a pair of Exocet missiles and nearly sunk. One of the missile warheads failed to detonate but started a serious fire. If both warheads had detonated, then that's probably all she wrote for Stark. Either way, USS Stark was an instant mission kill. USS Cole was struck by a decidedly less sophisticated "weapon system" consisting of a few guys in a small boat loaded with explosives. Both ships survived as a function of being near to other friendly ships and the incredible efforts made on their behalf to save lives and salvage damaged equipment. Any all-out shooting war with a heavily armed opponent like China or a highly determined opponent like Ukraine could be catastrophic based upon numbers alone. That's why we need more fighters.

Seemingly very sophisticated weapons like guided missile destroyers fail when low-tech weapons are employed against them. Their vulnerabilities to enemy action may not be a function of any inherent capabilities or lack thereof. As Russia has proven, if you fail to employ a highly sophisticated weapon like a Su-35 or guided missile cruiser properly, then the end result can be a total loss. It was inevitable that some aircraft would be lost to accident or enemy action, but you can't afford to lose very many guided missile cruisers. That's why we need less expensive aircraft carriers and more heavily armed escorts. Larger ships typically require more hits to sink, but any hit will probably remove it from action for the remainder of a war.

I think we should center our core naval strategy around modestly slower but drastically less expensive platforms like LPD-17 San Antonio and LHA-6 America class ships. We should build and retain 4 of the new CVN-78 Ford class aircraft carriers for fielding F-35Cs and MQ-25s for long range strikes against enemy air defenses, air fields, and command and control infrastructure.

We should retire the aging CVN-68 Nimitz, DDG-51 Arleigh Burke, and CG-47 Ticonderoga classes. We will replace the nuclear powered super carriers with a smaller fleet of similar vessels and a much larger fleet of Sea Control Ships / light carriers. There were simply no targets in Afghanistan that could justify the expense of stationing 2 nuclear powered aircraft carrier battlegroups there, let alone the wear-n-tear on the ships and aircraft. We consumed irreplaceable fast jet air frame service life hours on missions that a modernized OV-10 could've undertaken without issue. After the first month of operations against Iraq, same deal. A modernized OV-10 would be little more than an expensive target for IADS, which is why buying such a thing would be every bit as inappropriate as attacking pirates with F-22s.

The destroyers and cruisers will both be retired in favor of a lesser number of more capable LPD-17 or LHA-6 hulls that can easily mount quadruple the number of VLS cells carried by a Ticonderoga class ship. The volume of space that can be devoted to weaponry is many times that of our Arleigh Burkes or Ticonderogas. Since these battle cruisers only need to keep up with a carrier based upon the same hull and with the same engines, 30kt+ top speed is largely irrelevant. Those extra 10 knots of speed over the LPD / LHA hulls were purchased at the cost of seaworthiness, survival after taking hits from missiles or suicide squads, and fuel burn rates. The gas turbine engines are much lighter than diesels of equivalent power output, but that advantage is immediately offset by fuel burn rate and maintenance costs. It's not a good trade unless there's no space for larger engines.

I figure we need a force of 24 light carriers and 48 battlecruisers. That will do more to assure that there are always aircraft carriers on station than pretty much anything else we could reasonably do. The drastic reduction in the number of commissioned warships doesn't translate to a decrease in capabilities. Deploying greater numbers of less capable escort ships does little to assure a battlegroup's survival. The Navy treats its destroyers and cruisers as a kind of high-end expendable assets that they never have been. Basing dozens of hulls on the same proven hull and engine designs will also reduce shipbuilding costs and reduce the need for re-training for a different class of ship. A sailor who transitions from an amphibious ship to a light carrier to a battlecruiser would already be familiar with the ship's general layout, propulsion, and combat systems. This is important for us because some cross-training is expected, both inside and outside of our rating (job specialization). Someone in the Air Force or Army can and in my experience frequently would say, "Well, I don't work on that." That doesn't fly in the Navy. If you work on gas turbines or diesels, then you work on engines, period, and whatever engine comes into your shop is the one you'll need to repair. Carrying fewer different kinds of spare parts is another very real benefit that increases spares availability.

The weapons and radar systems will be retrofitted into the new hulls. We don't need to buy new equipment. We will instead refurbish the existing equipment and retrofit it. An Aegis destroyer or cruiser has 4 arrays. This ship will have 4 larger arrays or 8 arrays by combining equipment from two different ships. After the retrofit and hull conversions have been completed, we will focus the bulk of our funding on keeping the computers, sensors, and weapons modernized and capable of defeating the latest generation of threats. Basically, thou shalt not have specialized combat systems fitted to a single classes of ship, such as the bewildering array of nonsense created for our failed DDG-1000 Zumwalt class of "stealth" destroyers, the electric-everything craze that plagues the CVN-78 Ford class of aircraft carriers, and Freedom / Independence classes of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which was a made-up designator for a ship that was improperly configured to be a real guided missile frigate (FFG) like the FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates that Freedom / Independence failed to replace.

Zumwalts are as large as battlecruisers but nowhere near as capable, especially in terms of magazine capacity, as an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. $22.5B was spent on those stealth destroyers, without usable guided-missile Destroyers. The Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) were supposed to replace our existing FFGs. Navy tried to make LCS a "jack-of-all-trades", but ended up without usable guided-missile Fast Frigates. Both classes of LCS were perfectly capable of mounting Mk41 VLS loaded with ESSM, and indeed the Independence class does have a single VLS mounted, 8X stealthy Naval Strike Missiles, and a SeaRAM instead of a 21-cell RAM. The issue is that Independence could have mounted 2X VLS mounts by removing the Mk110 57mm, moving the same 8X stealthy Naval Strike Missiles behind the superstructure, and at least one 21-cell RAM launcher instead of the SeaRAM (Phalanx + lesser number of RAM on the same mount). Weight would not be increased at all, and in fact CG would be closer to the waterline. Frigates screen incoming missiles and prosecute submarines. LCS does not do that, therefore it's not usable as a frigate. Instead the Navy experimented with Army weapons (Hellfire / Griffin / Stinger / 30mm Bushmaster cannon turrets) and the new (to America) 57mm cannons. The weapons themselves were successful and potent against smaller vessels after protracted developmental issues, but the Navy never had a reason to operate frigates that can't defend against near-peer adversaries. If we keep LCS, then we need to retrofit more VLS cells containing ESSM / RIM-162, RAM / RIM-116 point defense, drop the 57mm, beef up their NSM armaments, and drop the 30mm Mk44 Bushmaster / Griffin / Hellfire that do nothing against incoming missiles or large ships. We will put the removed 57mm cannons on the SCS / light carriers for added point-defense because they have enough space for guns. Space is not a luxury that frigates have. The aircraft in the air wing will carry Griffin or Hellfire.

The 30mm Mk44 Bushmaster (A-10 cannon rounds vs AH-64 cannon rounds) has no practical application in naval warfare. We mounted the 25mm M242 (M2 Bradley APC / IFV cannon) and 30mm Mk44 Bushmaster used by the Army decades ago as stop-gap solutions against drone boats / suicide squads, but most ships (amphibious / destroyers / cruisers / aircraft carriers) mounted them much closer to the waterline so any vessel more than a few yards from the hull could be hit. M242 / Mk44 can easily chew up small boats, but the gun's depression limitations are too great because it's mounted so high in the superstructure on both LCS classes. If we need point defense against drone boats or suicide squads, that's what Javelins are for. Min launch distance for a Javelin is actually below that of the Mk44 mount's depression limit, the missile tube is sealed for less maintenance than any kind of gun which requires constant cleaning to prevent corrosion, ammo handling is greatly simplified, and the Javelin's CLU can be used by the ship's self-defense team to monitor the area around the ship, day or night, thanks to the CLU's thermal imager. That's exactly how they get used in the Army, even when a squad opts not to carry any missiles with them. If the Navy still wants a 30mm option, then we can use the drastically lighter / smaller 30mm M230LF. These will be mounted to the ship's gunwales so they can depress to fire upon targets at very close-range. The M242 and Mk44 are a little awkward to use because you can't point them by hand the way you can with M2s or M230s. 3 men can carry a M230LF to the main deck from the ship's armory. You need 1 for the barrel (45lbs), 1 for the receiver (76lbs), 1 for the feeder / de-linker device (39lbs). That's the same number of crew for a M242 or M2 Browning, except that the M230 can be stored below decks the way the M2 Brownings are stored. The M230's ammo supply can be stored in a lockbox on the mount, similar to the M242.

If Navy wants it to punch holes, rather than see miniature explosions with explosive rounds, so that self-defense cannons can be used at point-blank range, which is arguably a better use of small caliber cannons against suicide attackers, then they can use the lower cost M788 Training / Practice rounds (~$25/ctg for M788 vs ~$125/ctg for M789) for combat (these will still penetrate a quarter inch of steel like it's not there), which are no more dangerous than .50 BMG in practice. We pay around ~$5/ctg for .50 cal ammo, and civilian ammo sales are about the same as that. The training ammo budget would have to increase, but total cost would be very similar since fewer guns are used and fewer but more accurate rounds are fired. M242 crews hit most of the time because it was so easy to see where the rounds fell. M230LF has also proven to be a very accurate weapon out to 1km or so, despite its low 200rpm cyclic rate, able to reliably pop dinner plates. From personal experience, we had to walk our fire into the "killer tomato" targets using the .50 cal M2s because the wind even affected .50 caliber bullets at typical engagement distances. You could easily fire 50 rounds of .50 cal before you were on target. The larger caliber cannons might fire 10 rounds before they were on target. Single 25mm / 30mm shots hitting the water could easily be seen that far, so adjustment was faster (and you could actually do single shots using the electrically-operated chain guns). Actually hitting targets is what matters. We did have red dots on the M242s, and that would certainly help M2 gunners at closer ranges (but all M2s were iron-sight only). By 1km, you're running into wind-related issues with Ma Deuce. The M2 is a great gun, but full auto only / no red dot / heavy recoiling barrel made accurate fire difficult. M2s are not particularly cheap to build, either. M2 are not anywhere near as reliable as the chain guns, either.

Long story short, the Navy has purchased a lot of absurdly expensive hardware of no practical warfighting utility, in order to fight types of enemies that simply don't exist. What kind of "pirates" are we going to fly F-22s against (as suggested by SECDEF Gates under President Obama) or shoot A-10 cannon rounds at them from weapons that can't depress far enough to hit them except at consider distances? Which enemies have frigates or destroyers or cruisers that will be sunk or seriously damaged by Griffin or Hellfire missiles, and how are we getting close enough to them to use such weapons without them returning the favor? Who needs a $4.25B "stealth destroyer" to get close enough to an enemy coastline to deliver 155mm cannon fire from a pair of turrets firing "guided cannon rounds", each costing as much as a Tomahawk cruise missile?

We need smaller or more appropriate weapons that we can affordably acquire in mass quantities to use our superior quality sensors and training to prosecute war against a peer-level adversary in an economical but asymmetric manner. If someone builds a more heavily armored tank, that doesn't mean you put more gunpowder behind a cannon projectile. You attack it from the top where its armor is the weakest and then your enemy's multi-million dollar tank is destroyed by a former civilian armed with a $78,000 missile that he or she spent 1 hour learning how to use. All the weeks of time and tens of thousands of dollars of money spent to teach civilians how to march in straight lines was instead devoted to training them to kill tanks using appropriate weapons. The tank and its trained crew go up in smoke, and the guy or gal who fired the fatal shot simply grabs another missile, finds another suitable ambush location, and repeats that process until the enemy runs out of tanks or tank crews. Whether that's ideal or not, it obviously worked well enough to repel an invasion force assembled by a military with 10X more money to spend. That was the lesson we should take away from Ukraine. Having any kind of combat jet in the air is infinitely more desirable than no jets at all.

My naval strategy is all about having jets in the air at all times, holding all enemy targets within range at risk at all times. Waiting for carriers or jets to arrive because you don't have enough of them are why wars take longer than they should. A war between professional military forces should be over with in a month or less. We shouldn't be fighting against insurgents or any country that does not have a professional military for us to fight against. There are only four nations we would conceivably fight against by that metric- Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. We have no business meddling in the affairs of any other nations, or starting / continuing any wars there. Russia, North Korea, and Iran don't have military forces capable of effectively countering any aircraft carriers of whatever description. China may have comparable military forces, but that remains to be seen. If we did engage in a shooting war with China, we would lose ships and aircraft, which means we would need enough aircraft carriers and escort ships to minimize the effect of those losses. We can't do that with a maximum of 6 deployable aircraft carrier battlegroups, but only 3 to 4 with the training to engage in a war at any given time. We need more carriers capable of generating more sorties per day, more capable escort ships rather than simply building more less capable escorts, and more amphibious ships.

All these horridly expensive diversionary "wunderwaffe" projects did nothing to change the nature of the game. Expeditionary fighting forces need lots of air support, enough firepower to deal crippling blows to enemy forces, practical vs fantasy mobility, and endless logistical support. We can't do that with what we have now. Apart from stealthy Gen5 fighter jets that avoid being shot down as often as Gen4 jets, none of our other types of "wunderwaffe" won any battles in Iraq or Afghanistan, nor have they won any battles for the Russians in Ukraine. I can guarantee that China is reassessing their Taiwan invasion plans and compensating for any misplaced valuation given to "wunderwaffe". We should do the same, or expect crippling casualties to any defensive force we send to stop that Chinese invasion. North Korea and Iran don't have any comparable military capabilities to our own, which is why they refrain from attacking anything that can shoot back. Russia will simply implode under the weight of its own bad decision making, so we need to stand well clear and let that happen. Russia imploded twice during the last century, and appears right on track for a third implosion during this century.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-23 10:37:25

For kbd512 re #14

Thanks for another significant contribution to this topic!

SearchTerm:Awareness Situational Global
SearchTerm:Situation Awareness

I hope (trust) we (US) have folks on staff who are paid to think along these lines.

However, I suspect that inputs like yours are competing for management/leadership attention with others who are thinking just as hard but from other perspectives. These are "Bet your Country" lines of thought. I sure hope we have the right folks in the right positions.

One benefit of Putin's venture ** should ** be to improve the quality of thinking going on in Europe. There are small signs that is happening here and there.

Your insight into China's evaluation for any adventures they wish to undertake was/is quite interesting.

I hope (trust) the Taiwanese are taking the lessons of Ukraine to heart. It's not as though they have not been warned, for many decades in fact.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-04-24 02:59:46

tahanson43206,

Does the sheer number of dead-end "wunderwaffe" projects not make it painfully obvious that we don't have people, or at least not enough people, who "think like this"?

The Sea Control Ship concept was born under former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. I can assure you that he did not want an obscenely expensive yet functionally useless "stealth destroyer" to be his namesake in our fleet. Admiral Zumwalt approached problems from a practical perspective.

Sea Control Ship

The Sea Control Ship (SCS) was a small aircraft carrier developed and conceptualized by the United States Navy under Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt during the 1970s. Currently the term refers to naval vessels that can perform similar duties. The SCS was intended as an escort vessel, providing air support for convoys. It was canceled after budgetary cuts to the US Navy.
The SCS was to be equipped with a mix of Rockwell XFV-12 fighter aircraft and anti-submarine warfare helicopters. It was tasked with carrying out anti-submarine warfare operations.

The Rockwell XFV-12 was a type of mini-fighter, nearly identical in weight class to the A-4 Skyhawk, America's last affordable attack aircraft.

Rockwell XFV-12

The Rockwell XFV-12 was a prototype supersonic United States Navy fighter which was built in 1977. The XFV-12 design attempted to combine the Mach 2 speed and AIM-7 Sparrow armament of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) fighter for the small Sea Control Ship which was under study at the time. On paper, it looked superior to the subsonic Hawker Siddeley Harrier attack fighter. However it was unable to demonstrate an untethered vertical takeoff and its inability to meet performance requirements terminated the program.
In 1972, the Navy issued a request for proposals for a next generation supersonic V/STOL fighter/attack aircraft. Rockwell's design with the XFV-12 won against Convair's proposal with the Convair Model 200. The XFV-12A, despite its concept being considered risky compared to that of the Harrier, was selected for development.
To reduce costs, the nose from a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and intakes from the F-4 were used. Engine rig testing began in 1974. Free-flight model tests conducted at the NASA Langley full-scale wind tunnel showed the projected thrust augmentation levels were highly optimistic, and that the aircraft would most likely be incapable of vertical flight on the thrust available, while the design remained suitable for conventional flight.

Did we ever have a real requirement for a supersonic VTOL aircraft? Not as far as I can tell. We'd just fought a war in Viet Nam, where supersonic speed was never attained over 1% of all combat flight hours flown by large fighter jets that were fully capable of supersonic speeds, even while carrying their normal combat loads. A thinking person would look at what combat actually looked liked and see that a supersonic VTOL fighter, even if such a thing was technically possible, was clearly not required for real-world combat. Most victories involved situational awareness on the part of our pilots, lack of situational awareness on the enemy's part, and a mastery of good basic combat tactics that only comes from realistic training. Speed was largely irrelevant. All jets, including all supersonic jets, maneuver best at mid-subsonic speeds and cruise at high-subsonic speeds. Flying much faster, even with so-called "super-cruise" capability, burns gas so fast that combat radius drops to functionally useless values. That was true in the 1950s and it's still true in the 2020s. Total numbers of available aircraft did matter, because the enemy could locally outnumber our jets. Cool tricks like vertical takeoff surely didn't matter because there were no such fighter jets available to either side. The Russians eventually discontinued using their "jump jets" because they weren't very practical and had very high accident rates relative to all other types of fighter aircraft that they fielded in significant numbers. VTOL, nevermind supersonic VTOL, was a solution in search of a problem to solve. Now we have stealth supersonic VTOL aircraft. If static air bases are so vulnerable to attack that VTOL is deemed necessary, then it turns out that making your airport mobile, an "aircraft carrier" by any other name, is significantly easier to design and operate. America has a habit of throwing enough money at make-believe problems to at least partially overcome incompatible design requirements, but that in no way is indicative of devising a practical and affordable solution.

Look at the list of accidents for the Harrier series (this requires quite a bit of scrolling to reach the end of the list):
List of Harrier Jump Jet family losses

In short, "supersonic VTOL" was a made-up requirement that was never based upon an actual need. The Navy didn't want to invest in smaller aircraft carriers, because that would somehow "de-justify" their decision to spend so much money on nuclear powered super carriers, so the light carriers that the Marine Corps truly needed for air support had to be amphibious ships without catapults or arresting gear. While nuclear propulsion for super carriers has certainly saved a lot of fuel over the decades, it never did reduce operational costs. Unfortunately for us, that fateful decision drastically reduced the total number of operational aircraft carriers. As the conventionally powered aircraft carriers were retired, the size of our aircraft carrier fleet fell off a cliff. We can't afford to operate enough nuclear powered aircraft carriers for them to be present in all the places where they may be required. If we ever lose one, it's almost irreplaceable. If the litany of aforementioned diversionary "wuderwaffe" projects had not been undertaken, then perhaps we could have purchased and operated more nuclear powered super carriers. In reality, we need at least 24 aircraft carriers. A maximum of 12 of those will be at sea at any given time. 6 will actually be capable of going to war, meaning carrier qualifications completed and training "up-to-snuff". We don't consider a carrier air wing ready for combat until all pilots prove they can land aboard ship in any weather, day or night, and all basic combat training missions have been successfully completed.

The training process starts at your home air base, the entire air wing then trains at NSAWC, we go to the carrier, carrier quals are completed, realistic training missions (coordinated strike packages) undertake a series of "real life" simulated missions. For us, that meant attack and electronic warfare jets launching as part of pre-planned strikes, hitting the tankers, attacking a "heavily defended" target, our aircrews fire real missiles and drop live ordnance at practice ranges, hitting the tankers a second time, and then landing on the carrier. That's about as "real as we can make it" without intentionally killing people for sake of realistic training. You fly against our air defenses and aggressor squadron pilots who have many thousands of flight hours and devote all of their time to finding and killing enemy aircraft. Every part of our "system" is tested at the same time during this training phase. Aircraft / submarine / anti-ship missile threats, fires, flooding, etc. If any part of your performance is deemed to be lacking, then that portion of the training must be repeated until acceptable performance is established. All that training takes time to complete, up to 2 months of a standard 6 month deployment, but is also why our performance in combat tends to be a little better than what you typically see from Russia and China. Even while we flew actual combat missions, training did not stop. Despite the fact that Afghanistan never had a functional Air Force or integrated air defense systems, we still trained as if they did. In addition to paying close attention to the weather, you never take the same route twice, you try to avoid being spotted from the ground so it's a surprise when you roll in on the target, your intel people continuously look for AAA / SAMs / aircraft / communications or command posts / buildup of forces, etc. The jets still carried Sidewinders for self-defense, briefs included potential air threats posed by nearby hostile nations, and so on. If you never take anything for granted, then you can never be surprised. Realistic training won battles, not wunderwaffe.

Sadly, our new CVN-78 class of super carriers are similarly plagued by "wunderwaffe" gadgetry. The zealous attempts to revolutionize launch, lift, and arresting technology only succeeded in making those systems less reliable or totally non-functional in the event of a shipboard casualty, which need never be related to enemy action. The electrical systems were supposed to be lighter, impose less total space claim, and be more reliable than the hydraulic systems they replaced. Actual testing and operational use indicates that the new electrical systems failed to meet all of those objectives, at a much greater cost than the steam / hydraulic systems. I think most of those critical systems are now at least minimally functional on the CVN-78, but it has yet to see its first real-world deployment after 5 years of development and evaluation work aboard ship. CVN-78 was commissioned in 2017. 2022 is the first year that all of the aircraft and ammo elevators worked. All of the cats and arresting gear are fully functional until they're not. 23 brand new technologies were incorporated into the design of the Ford class, despite recommendations to never deploy more than 2 new technologies aboard any given class of ship. We could've messed with the required tech for as many years as it took to make it work reliably, deploying it after it was ready for prime time, rather than before.

This is from Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gilday:

Why the Navy’s Most Powerful Aircraft Carrier Has So Many Problems

The new systems increase the Ford’s capabilities and decrease the number of crew members needed to operate it — about 4,500 compared with the roughly 5,000 sailors and aviators needed aboard Nimitz-class carriers.
But the new technologies have had more than a few problems. The EMALS, for instance, has repeatedly failed, and the AAG has also broken down numerous times.
One AAG breakdown required seven days to fix, while two separate failures once forced individual EMALS catapults offline for three days, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
...
Some of the problems may have been easier to fix if the Navy had tested the new technologies on land first, Gilday said last month.
“One of the things you learned from the Ford program was the importance of land-based testing on new systems before you introduce them to the fleet,” he said, citing the elevators as a prime example.
...
The Ford is also the victim of delays on the F-35C, the carrier variant of the stealth fighter. F-35Cs can operate only on one of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers, the USS Carl Vinson.
...
F-35Cs also deployed for the first time last week aboard the USS Carl Vinson, and the Marine Corps has said its first F-35C squadron is ready for combat. The Navy now plans to reduce the number of F-35C squadrons in each air wing from two to one and increase the number of aircraft in a squadron from 10 to 14.

What's the general utility of an aircraft carrier that can't land planes for an entire week?

Over several months of time on station, we did not halt combat flight operations over Afghanistan for more than 1 day. The only reason we were able to do that was the fact that we had 2 aircraft carriers on station.

How about this glowing endorsement from CVN-78 from Stars and Stripes?:

Navy’s $13 billion carrier sows doubt that it can defend itself

The combat system for the Navy’s newest and costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, “has yet to demonstrate that it can effectively” defend the aircraft carrier from anti-ship missiles and other threats, according to a new assessment by the Pentagon’s testing office.
Mixed performance by missile interceptors, radar and data dissemination systems on a testing vessel limited the ability to destroy replicas of incoming weapons even though sensor systems “satisfactorily detected, tracked and engaged the targets,” according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of its release.
The carrier built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. is still dogged as well by the “poor or unknown reliability” of its aircraft launch and recovery systems, according to the five-page report. And recent shock tests to assess the vulnerability of key systems “identified several design shortfalls not previously discovered,” the testing office said. It said “the Navy has already identified several survivability” opportunities to improve the four-carrier class of ships “against underwater threat engagements.”
The persistent shortcomings undercut the Navy’s hope to showcase the Ford as the first in a new class of nuclear-powered carriers that can project U.S. power globally and are more combat-capable, reliable and affordable to operate then the Nimitz class it’s replacing.
...
Lingering questions
The testing office said the Ford is unlikely to achieve its goal for the number of sorties it can launch over a 24-hour period, saying it’s “based on unrealistic assumptions.”
It also said that during 8,157 takeoffs and recoveries through last year, the carrier’s new electromagnetic catapult system made by General Atomics demonstrated a reliability of 272 launches “between operational mission failure,” or “well below” its required 4,166. Similarly, its system to snag landing aircraft demonstrated a 41-landing reliability rate “well below the requirement of 16,500,” the testing office said.

SCS needs miniature catapults and miniature arresting gear for its miniature fighters. Catapults and arresting gear are proven to work. Yes, they cost more money, but how much money was squandered on impractical supersonic VTOL technology that cost a whole lot more money? No matter how much money is thrown at the problem, VTOL aircraft will never carry as much or as far as catapult-launch-assisted aircraft of the same weight class. That's baked-in. It's a basic physics problem.

Given the substantially lighter weight of the A-36 micro fighters to be launched from my proposed SCS, we're taking a trip back in time to before the days of steam-powered catapults and substantially before electromagnetic catapults. WWII Battleships launched heavier sea planes than my micro fighter concept from much shorter catapults using blank powder charges for their 5" guns. We don't need steam and we certainly don't need absurdly complex electro-mechanical systems that require more instantaneous power output than a pair of 350MWt nuclear reactors can provide. It's hard to estimate how much power / weight / volume will be saved, but it will be considerable. Steam cats can launch every 80 seconds. EMALS can theoretically launch every 45 seconds if it ever works reliably. Blank powder charges can be reloaded into a gun tube considerably faster than the next plane can taxi to the catapult. Conceptually, we could also use a fuel-air mixture injected into the gun tube to provide a more gradual acceleration that's precisely adjusted for aircraft weight, just like EMALS. However, we won't spend billions of dollars and more than a decade of development if it proves to be more of a headache than it's worth.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-24 05:35:45

For kbd512 ...

Thanks for another detailed installment of your series on combat systems, with emphasis on US Navy experience.

Looking at the situation from a (now) civilian perspective, I see a lot of valuable insight in your comparison of tried and proven technology with attempts to improve.

I come away with the thought that (without intending to) you (appear to me) to have fallen into a trap that has bedeviled US military planners since the beginning of the Republic.... If it ain't broke, don't fix it ...

We (the US) have been caught flat footed on many occasions, because we failed to innovate our systems while the future enemy was testing (and proving) new systems at a furious pace. Your history lesson includes numerous examples of excursions that didn't prove out, and those are all valid (of course).

My worry is that the attitude of "don't waste money on new technology that won't work" is absolutely guaranteed to insure our defeat (or massive losses) when we go up against a peer who has been quietly innovating to overcome whatever we've been doing.

In short, while I appreciate your careful and thorough review of the benefits of steam catapults vs electromagnetic ones, I do NOT see the details about the deficiencies of steam catapults that led to conviction they could be replaced.

I would guess that hundreds of very intelligent, very well educated people have been performing the same thoughtful analysis as you have gifted us, and they threw the dice on the side of trying to improve on the tried and true.

There was ONE suggestion you included that I'd be interested in knowing more about .... that was the fuel/gas launch concept.

What I'm reminded of is the gas gun developed (and thoroughly tested) by Dr. John Hunter (still live and giving speeches).

If electromagnetic launchers can't improve themselves, then (I would ask a proponent of magnetic launchers for space) just exactly how does anyone propose they are more than toy concepts for space launches?

From my perspective, those US Navy EML systems ** have ** to work, because the future of space expansions is (in part) dependent upon success.

I'm going to close with a reminder that the US has a sad history of failing to innovate it's military .... Any suggestion that we (US as a nation) fail to keep trying to improve by encouraging effort (forget money - we're talking human effort here) seems to me a guarantee of long term failure in the Real Universe of peer level competitors.

If steam catapults are in fact superior to electromagnetic ones, I would expect to see them deployed in future carriers.

If they are NOT superior, then I expect to NOT see them deployed.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-24 06:21:39

Tried, True, Tested is why the old tech is still used in combat vessels. If they were continually installing up grades that lasted there would not be a problem. The issues are these upgrades are not lasting the period of time necessary to prove the saying with. The duration of manufacture is 7 years with hope it last 3 does not work as we have seen with the new designs.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-24 06:51:30

For SpaceNut re #18

Thank you reinforcing the point of view that is opposed to attempts to introduce change.

The challenge for a leader (of a nation or of a company) is how to balance wisely between the truths of the two positions.

If an nation (or a company) does not change it is not long for this Universe.

On the other hand, introducing new technology before it is ready is exceedingly risky.

Back on the first hand, if that risky new technology ** works ** and saves your personnel from death or worse, at the hands of the enemy, then it was worth the gamble.

Last night CSPAN's History series ran a lecture about the development of machinery in the US (and Europe)... It was a lecture on economics, but the greater part of the lecture was devoted to the history of innovation driven by the needs of the military.

The specific example I am going to offer you now is the Colt revolver that was a hit with the Texas Rangers, so that it became a standard issue for the US Army.

Colt (it turns out) was (apparently) a goof ball who made mistake after mistake all his life, but he was a super-salesman.

Apparently one of his ventures actually worked, so he is now forgiven for all his faults.

If we had stayed the tried and true flintlock rifles the Indians would have won the day, because they had learned that the earlier weapons had to be laboriously reloaded with a complex procedure.

The bottom line is that we (the US in particular) are condemned to constantly be attempting to improve our systems, and our performance, or we will find ourselves in the back of the pack, where we have been before. It was not fun then, and it will be even worse now.

Edit: The lecture was actually about mass production and uniformity of product, along with precision. Colt apparently cleverly ** simulated ** uniformity of production by carefully hand filing all the parts of his demo revolvers, so they were interchangeable.

His ** actual ** production line was NOT producing interchangeable parts. It took years more before parts coming off US production lines were actually interchangeable.

Edit; Colt was also noted for introducing the use of feeler gauges, for measuring tolerances. He comes across to me as a goof ball, but he seems to have been a clever one.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-24 10:10:09

Gauges that are mechanical work even when power goes out. Rotational values that you turn work as well. That is why most new innovations have them paired up together in the same device so that you have function even when power fails.
Sensors are the same problem in that if you have a power fail you get no readings so systems are paired up with mechanics as well to make it so that you have the backup.

kbd512 · 2022-04-24 10:55:16

tahanson43206,

You seem to have mistaken my admonishment to not ** require ** a new technology for a ship to function in its intended role at all, for "don't try to innovate".

What I said was (quoting myself here):

We could've messed with the required tech for as many years as it took to make it work reliably, deploying it after it was ready for prime time, rather than before.

If it turns out the EMALS doesn't work as intended, then we've already spent more than $25B on 2 new nuclear powered aircraft carriers that can't reliably launch aircraft. The specific EMALS implementation that the Navy has installed aboard 2 CVN-78 class ships now, not only fails to achieve the reliability of steam catapults, it fails to achieve the reliability of a system that would enable it to complete 1 to 2 days of flight operations before it can't use ALL FOUR CATAPULTS! What is the use case for an aircraft carrier that can't reliably launch aircraft? I can't think of one. It's certainly not a warship. It's a scientific oddity / curiosity. The reliability of steam catapults, whereby at least 1 of 4 cats were functional, is stated as 99.5%. After EMALS had proven that it was at least that reliable, then and only then would it be a candidate for deployment aboard a ship.

F-35C deployment went from all fighter squadrons in the carrier air wing, to half the total number of fighter squadrons in the air wing, to two squadrons, to one squadron with 14 vs 10 aircraft, due to cost and lack of range, as well as the need to make expensive modifications to all existing ships, including the new CVN-78 Ford class of super carriers. Our new "all-electric" Ford class can't launch F-35C Lightning II joint strike fighters without modifications that there's no money for, because they're spending so much money on the Ford class and other ships that have no reason to exist.

We are not innovating, Tom!

We're throwing more money at problems we've already solved, to "re-solve" what we previously solved.

All the General Dynamics marketing around EMALS and AAG is "happy talk" about what the technology could do if it ever works properly.

America needed affordable new Nimitz class aircraft carrier replacements.

No ship lasts forever, and our Nimitz class carriers are nearing end-of-life.

We're the only nation on planet Earth that operates more than 1 or 2 CATOBAR aircraft carriers. We can afford to do that when sufficient funding exists to operate them. If all the money devoted to ship construction is spent on development of systems that don't result in an actual improvement to force projection capabilities, then you end up with no usable force projection capabilities, because that's how basic math works.

Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress - Updated March 31, 2022

Procurement of Aircraft Carriers After CVN-81
A related issue for Congress concerns the procurement of aircraft carriers after CVN-81. The question of whether the Navy should shift at some point from procuring CVNs like the CVN-78 class to procuring smaller and perhaps nonnuclear-powered aircraft carriers has been a recurrent matter of discussion and Navy study over the years, and is currently an active discussion in the Navy.
The Navy’s FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan called for procuring the next carrier in FY2028 and for that carrier to be a CVN, which would make it CVN-82. The December 9, 2020, long-range Navy shipbuilding document called for procuring the next aircraft carrier in FY2028. The June 17, 2021, long-range Navy shipbuilding document does not include projected procurements of aircraft carriers (or any other Navy ship type) for FY2023 or subsequent years.
As mentioned earlier, the Navy does not currently operate CVLs. As discussed in another CRS report, however, the Navy in recent years has experimented with the concept of using an LHA-type amphibious assault ship with an embarked group of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters as a CVL. A February 1, 2021, press report states.
The Navy’s engineering community has already started conducting light carrier design and engineering studies, even as the Navy and the joint force still consider whether they’d even want to invest in a CVL to supplement supercarriers to bring more distributed capability to the fleet for less cost.
The idea of a light carrier resurfaced last summer as a Pentagon-led Future Naval Force Study was nearing its completion. The idea hadn’t appeared in Navy and Marine Corps plans, but then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper had a growing interest in the topic as he sought ways to keep future shipbuilding and sustainment costs down and as he worried about the Navy’s ability to conduct maintenance on its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers at Navy-run public shipyards.
The FNFS and the plan it produced, Battle Force 2045, ultimately recommended between zero and six light carriers and noted much more study would need to be done.
That work is already happening at Naval Sea Systems Command within the engineering and logistics directorate (SEA 05).
Rear Adm. Jason Lloyd, the SEA 05 commander and deputy commander for ship design, integration and engineering, said last week that his Cost Engineering and Industrial Analysis team has been studying different options to understand what operational utility the Navy would get out of each design and for what cost compared to the Ford-class carrier, “and then let the operators really, and the Navy, decide, hey, do we want that capability for that cost?”
“We have looked at an America-class possibility, we have looked at a Ford-class-light, we’ve looked at various different options and done cost studies on all those options. There are also capabilities studies on all those options,” Lloyd said last week while speaking at a virtual event hosted by the American Society of Naval Engineers.
Advocates of smaller carriers traditionally have argued that they are individually less expensive to procure, that the Navy might be able to employ competition between shipyards in their procurement (something that the Navy cannot do with large-deck, nuclear-powered carriers like the CVN-78 class, because only one U.S. shipyard, HII/NNS, can build aircraft carriers of that size), and that today’s aircraft carriers concentrate much of the Navy’s striking power into a relatively small number of expensive platforms that adversaries could focus on attacking in time of war.
Supporters of CVNs traditionally have argued that smaller carriers, though individually less expensive to procure, are less cost-effective in terms of dollars spent per aircraft embarked or aircraft sorties that can be generated; that it might be possible to use competition in procuring certain materials and components for large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers; and that smaller carriers, though perhaps affordable in larger numbers, would be individually less survivable in time of war than CVNs.

My response to that is that aircraft carrier survivability in times of war is nearly 100% dependent upon the quality of the escort ships used to defend them from air, surface, and sub-surface attack. The Navy spent many billions on the S-3 Viking anti-submarine warfare aircraft capabilities, then discarded them. The Navy spent many more billions on anti-torpedo torpedo technology to be installed on the carriers, and then discarded that as well. So, there's no argument to be made that the carrier itself can properly defend itself from attack.

The Navy has spent very little money on ESSM and RAM capabilities, relative to the cost of the supercarriers they're mounted on to protect against anti-ship missiles. The Navy has spent even less money on fleet air defense, and discarded or ceased development of its most capable fleet air defense fighter (F-14 Tomcat) and fleet air defense missiles (AIM-54 Phoenix). Again, no serious argument can be advanced that these capabilities were deemed important, because all existing capabilities were discarded on grounds of cost and actual capabilities.

Winning all past, present, and future naval engagements is primarily a matter of having the best sensor technologies, best weapons technologies that can intercept incoming missiles or torpedoes, and best-trained crews. CVN-78 discarded the parts of the Dual-Band Radar system that would allow it to more efficiently perform volume search and tracking of many more air targets that may threaten the carrier or carrier battlegroup.

What are we left with?

We spent a crazy amount of money on replacing steam catapults and traditional arresting gear. Given the fact that the new stealth fighters and the new stealth combat drones are in the same (very heavy) weight class because they both perform the same missions as traditional fighters (but require more onboard fuel and weapons), that was clearly our highest priority, right?

Electrical catapult and arresting gear tech could one day prove useful for launching and recovering "lightweight combat drones". That was the sales and marketing job for the new tech. We have no such animals as "lightweight combat drones" to actually make use of it. We paid to develop a capability that "solves" a problem that we don't actually have, and are highly unlikely to have in the near future, because there won't be any money left to create the problem that the new electrical launch and recovery technologies were supposed to solve.

At this point, we're also unlikely to have money left to build enough ships to meet future needs. That will mean future combat aircraft will have to become bigger and more capable, despite not using most of that capability in 90% of real world fighting. That state of affairs virtually assures that electrical launch and recovery technologies never result in the outcome they were intended to permit (the use of "lightweight combat drones").

You have to ignore the Navy's history with shipboard and aircraft technology development, over my entire lifetime, to pretend that they're solving an actual problem.

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-24 11:29:27

For kbd512 ... Thanks for pointing out the alternative to deploying new technology

Actually, I'm pretty sure I noted that in your post. However, if you look back, I ** think ** I was addressing SpaceNut, who made a strong case for staying with tried and true technology.

I was trying to make the point (to SpaceNut, not to kbd512) that is is NOT a good idea to stand pat with technology and practices that worked fine in the past. The competition is NOT standing still, and they WILL force change.

Now ... to YOUR point ....

Boy! You've really identified (put your finger on) a difficult management dilemma ...

A top level (ie, Nation or Large Corporation) has a pool of talent of various ages to work with.

The idea of building on-shore testing facilities to test new technology sure does make sense, but if you keep it on shore until it works perfectly, your young sailors will NOT have any experience with it.

Because of your demonstrated ability to think on a global scale, and specifically in the defense context, I am confident you want to expand your capability. There are high paying government (and industry) jobs for those rare individuals who can see the big picture AND make ** really good ** decisions.

In order to refine your judgement, you are taking the risk of publishing your ideas in an open forum. i am trying to do my part (along with SpaceNut from time to time) to help you identify any weaknesses in your skill set.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-24 12:58:30

The most recent Virginia class submarine is in constant retooling as technology that would and should be great a decade from now is being classed as obsolete in less than half of that period. Its own hull in in version of change 5 of production. The huge cost to build is also increasing not decreasing as replication should be taking place from a continual building of it.
The more tech that is made from commercially off the shelf the less time it can be effectively used before its no longer working.

kbd512 · 2022-04-24 13:38:46

tahanson43206,

When you want to give your people experience using a new technology, you first do that on land. You build a realistic training facsimile of the new technology, then you test it over the course of a year or two. There is no reason why EMALS / AAG could not be tested on land near an ocean, and used to launch aircraft, such as training aircraft, to determine the suitability of said systems for use in an operational environment. No lives are at serious risk, the sailors can practice troubleshooting problems and repairing them at the shore facility, and aviators can practice launching and recovering in a comparatively benign environment that your Navy is not dependent upon when lives are on the line.

This has been repeatedly noted by Chiefs of Naval Operations, people in Congress, and people from the general public with experience in operational environments (such as myself). For some reason, our Navy keeps doing the exact opposite of what they note should be done, prior to deployment of new technologies aboard ships. After that's done enough times and in enough different programs, you can no longer call it an accident. It's wasting tax payer money to pay off a special interest group that has no business dictating appropriate uses of new technology developments to the US Navy.

For the exact same reason, we should develop a micro fighter as a development program first, then proceed with serial production of the airframes AFTER the development program has been successfully concluded, and not one second before that result is achieved. There are no "high paying jobs" for people who make sound decisions regarding new technology development. That is FALSE, full stop! If there were, then we wouldn't be in the mess we're currently in. All people who advocate for and practice half-way intelligent decision making that puts good stewardship of public money ahead of personal financial interests are religiously removed from their positions.

The "weaknesses in my skillset", as you put it, is that I refuse to become like the people who have brought us these sorts of issues. That's why I would never be hired for the types of jobs surrounding these projects. I'm not remotely interested in making defense contractors wealthier at the expense of the people they're supposed to serve. Making impartial assessments about technology requires that you accept end results, whether it supports or detracts from your own beliefs about a specific technology. I cannot look at the results achieved with nuclear powered super carriers, nor "electrical everything", and validly conclude that any money was saved, that any practical warfighting capabilities were created or preserved, nor that we couldn't achieve a better result using drastically less costly alternatives.

I don't need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to determine that the current state of affairs is untenable. I recognized that simple fact a long time ago. I'm only pointing out, in an open forum, how obscenely costly the "new and improved" technology, as well as how ridiculous the arguments that we continue doing what we've been doing have become.

When we can no longer afford to operate any carriers, or no longer have any carriers reliable enough to operate, then and only then will anything change. Maybe our Navy is no longer interested in operating warships. It's certainly starting to look that way to me. Maybe they're becoming like NASA- another dysfunctional bureaucratic organization that spends money to please its vendors, never actually using the technology they develop to achieve the goals they say they wish to achieve.

kbd512 · 2022-04-25 07:49:45

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