TAKING A LOOK BEHIND THE HEADLINES
COMBAT AIRCRAFT’S REGULAR COLUMN
BYBY ROBERT BECKHUSEN ROBERT BECKHUSEN
FACING THE
MISSILE THREAT
T
WENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, a
US-led coalition launched the
first Gulf War air campaign,
one part of which involved US
and allied warplanes hunting
for Saddam Hussein’s ‘Scuds’
— Soviet-supplied tactical ballistic
missiles. The Iraqi ‘Scud’ missile blitz
targeting Israel and US bases in the
Middle East largely failed as Saddam’s
enemies adapted to the threat.
However, the results of the coalition
air campaign to destroy the missiles’
mobile launchers on the ground remain
inconclusive and hotly debated to
this day.
Allied warplanes prowled the skies
bombing real and suspected Iraqi
transporter erector launchers, or TELs,
but post-war assessments discovered
that the majority if not all of Iraq’s
launchers remained intact, and that the
Pentagon exaggerated the success of
its Patriot missile defenses at shootingdown ‘Scuds’ while in flight. The coalition
did reduce the frequency of ‘Scud’
launches and kept Israel from entering
the war — an important political
victory given sensitivities with America’s
Arab allies.
This history is worth remembering given
the potential range of future demands
for the US Air Force’s ‘counter-missile’
mission, especially regarding China and
North Korea. That is, diverting one’s own
warplanes and intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft to keep
a future enemy’s strategic missiles away
from friendly forces. The USAF, military
officers have cautioned, is not prepared
for this mission, not least because the
flying branch needs significantly more
strike aircraft than it has right now.The numbers game
In 1991, Iraq possessed some 400 ballistic
missiles. China in 2017, by comparison,
has more than 1,800 ballistic missiles,some 260 nuclear warheads and hundreds
of missiles capable of reaching US bases
in Japan. North Korea, another potentially
nuclear-capable country more likely to
enter conflict with the US, is believed to
have more than 1,000 ballistic missiles
and can also strike at US bases in the
Western Pacific.
Beyond sheer size and scale, China’s
rocket and missile forces are better-
trained, adept in the use of camouflage
and deception, and their plans and
procedures more advanced than those
developed by Iraq. The People’s Liberation
Army Rocket Force is equal to China’s
other military branches and relies on
improved guidance systems. Unlike in the
1991 Gulf War, the USAF will not be able to
count on unchallenged control of the skies
due to the strength of the PLAAF. Many
of the USAF’s proposed solutions, such as
new penetrating strike aircraft including
the stealthy B-21 Raider bomber and F-
Lightning II are immature and still few in
number. The B-21 isn’t even built, or if it is,
the USAF has not revealed it.
Nor would the US be able to deploy
enough ground-based interceptors such
as the Patriot to make an appreciable
dent were China or North Korea to
unload their missiles on American bases.
‘The US could easily find itself without
adequate numbers of air assets to handle
the counter-missile diversion in a China
scenario’, USAF Maj J. Patrick Anderson, an
F-16 pilot, warned in a 2017 paper for the
Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama. ‘A modern-day ‘Scud’ hunt could
possibly be of such magnitude as to break
the primary US air campaign’, he added.
These concerns were echoed in a
2017 report by US Navy CDR ThomasShades of the
past — F-111Fs and
an EF-111A during
the build-up for
Operation ‘Desert
Storm’ in 1991.
Back then the
USAF had 134
fighter squadrons.
The war with
Iraq saw 34 of
those units being
forward-deployed
to the Middle East.
Today the USAF
has 55 fighter
squadrons in
total. USAF1414 February 2018 February 2018 ////^ http://www.combataircraft.netwww.combataircraft.net
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