Shugart. A Chinese missile blitz carries
with it ‘the potential for devastation of
US power-projection forces and bases
in Asia’. Shugart wrote for the Center for
a New American Security, a Washington
DC-based research institute.
The USAF is taking the threat seriously,
particularly the missile concerns
emanating from North Korea. In
December 2017, more than 200 US and
South Korean aircraft including six USAF
F-35As and six F-22A Raptors participated
in the annual ‘Vigilant Ace’ war game.
They were joined by five US Navy EA-18G
Growlers with sophisticated jammers and
capabilities for suppressing air-defense
sites. In order to hunt the ballistic missiles,
the US and South Korean air forces will
first need to disable those sites.
Nevertheless, the USAF is facing a
shortage of aircraft partly because of its
own decisions. During the 1991 Gulf War,
it committed some 826 combat-coded
warplanes, or 25 per cent of the fleet,
to the fight, according to Anderson.
Because the fleet has shrunk since
1991, that same number of airframes isequivalent to 37 per cent of the force
today. In a war with North Korea, that
may be sufficient. In a conflict with
China, it is doubtful the air force has
enough fighters and bombers to meet
its requirements for a campaign over
a country vastly larger than Iraq and
possessing more than 1,200 combat-
coded fighters — and skilled pilots.The wrong balance?
The type of combat aircraft the USAF
increasingly flies has also changed with
multi-role jets designed for electronic
warfare, surveillance and strike missions,
in addition to air-to-air combat. Such
airplanes, of which the F-22 and F-
are prime examples, are more expensive
— and capable — than their single-role
predecessors. However, more expensive
fighters means fewer of them in the form
of a dwindling but high-tech force that
may, ironically, be less well-equipped
to wage a drawn-out missile hunt over
Chinese territory. An influx of affordable
combat aircraft — even drones — would
help reverse this decline.More expensive fighters means fewer of
them in the form of a dwindling but
high-tech force that may, ironically, be less well-
equipped to wage a drawn-out missile hunt
over Chinese territory
Fast-forward
to 2017. A USAF
F-35A from Hill
AFB, Utah, flies
with 8th FW ‘Wolf
Pack’ F-16CMs
over South Korea
during Exercise
‘Vigilant Ace’ in
December. USAF/
TSgt Josh RosalesHunting for ballistic missiles also
requires a strategy. During ‘Desert Storm’
the coalition strategy was hampered
by poor intelligence and confused
direction, as aircraft at first primarily
targeted ‘Scud’ warehouses and fixed
launchers until the mobile launchers
began lobbing their warheads into Israel
and Saudi Arabia. That is when political
demands forced a change in direction
and the ‘Scud’ hunt truly began. US
strike aircraft, supported by ISR assets,
prowled above the desert on the look-
out. In effect, the coalition adapted to a
threat that it had underestimated, which
ultimately harmed the overall effort.
It could happen again. Within the
Pentagon, IAMD — integrated air and
missile defense — has increasingly
become the favored term in planning
for countering ballistic missiles
including in USAF doctrine. The
problem is that it is poorly understood
and there is nothing ‘integrated’
about it — the result of having been
passed, hot potato-like, between
different commands.
The concept has ‘no operational
structure’, retired Col Craig Corey wrote
in the winter 2017 edition of Air & Space
Power Journal, and has the potential to
‘fracture unity of command and unity
of effort’. Which, of course, is what
happened during the 1991 Gulf War
‘Scud’ hunt, although fortunately for
the US military back then it was on a
relatively small scale.http://www.combataircraft.net // February 2018 15
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