“Such weapons have been improved over the years. Most of us can remember watching “the luckiest guy in Iraq” on CNN. During the Gulf War, his car was perhaps two hundred yards from the impact point of a two-thousand-pound guided bomb on an Iraqi bridge. Bridges are always worth destroying. So are factories, aircraft on the ground, radio and TV towers, and microwave relays. So too, especially, are the places which generate signals and commands . . . because commanders are there, and killing commanders is ever the quickest way of disrupting an army. Or a whole nation. Using precision-guided munitions can be likened to sniping with bombs. All warfare is cruel and ugly, but such munitions are less cruel and ugly than the alternatives. ” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Seemingly a violation of the laws of physics, stealth is really a mere perversion of them. The technology began with a theoretical paper written around 1962 by a Russian radar engineer on the diffraction properties of microwave radiation. About ten years later an engineer at Lockheed read the paper and thought, “We can make an invisible airplane.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The stealth revolution is simple to express: An aircraft can now go literally anywhere (depending only on its fuel capacity) and deliver bombs with a very high probability of killing the target (about 85% to 90% for a single weapon, about 98% for two), and in the process it will give no more warning than the flash and noise of the detonation. Meaning: The national command authorities (an American euphemism for the president, premier, or dictator) of any country are now vulnerable to direct attack. And for those who believe that the USAF was not trying to kill Saddam Hussein, be advised that maybe his death was not the objective. Maybe we were just trying to turn off the radio (i.e., command-and-control system) he was holding. A narrow legal point, but even the Pentagon has lawyers. However one might wish to put it, we were trying, and Hussein was a lucky man indeed to avoid the skillful attempts to flip off that particular switch. Whoever next offends the United States of America might wish to consider that. Because we’ll try harder next time, and all you have to know is where that offending radio transmitter is.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The F119 engine on the F-22 is technically a low-bypass turbofan, with only about 15% to 20% of the air going down the bypass duct. Now, this low-bypass ratio seems to conflict with all I’ve said about the advantages of high-bypass turbofans. However, a high-bypass-ratio turbofan is designed to give good performance at subsonic speeds! For supersonic cruising, the best engine must be more like a turbojet. With its low bypass ratio, the F119 engine is almost a pure turbojet, with only enough air sent down the bypass duct to provide for the cooling and combustion (oxygen) requirements of the afterburner. During test runs in 1990 and 1991, the F-22 was able to sustain Mach 1.58 at altitude, without using its afterburner. The tremendous advantage of maintaining supersonic speeds without the afterburner, coupled with thrust-vectored exhaust nozzles, will provide the F-22 with significantly enhanced maneuvering characteristics over even the nimble F-16 Block 50/52, equipped with the -229 version of the F100.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Where engine technology will go from here is anyone’s guess. One of the major challenges that has faced designers for decades is to produce power-plants that can make Short Takeoff/Vertical Landing (STOVL) tactical aircraft a practical reality. The AV-8B Harrier II is a wonderful tool for the U.S. Marines, but the weight of its Pegasus powerplant limits it to short-range, subsonic flights. Perhaps the next-generation engine that is being developed under the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program will provide the answer for this quest. Whatever happens, though, engine designers will always hold the key to those who “feel the need for speed . . .” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “In comparison to the F-15E Strike Eagle, which has, at best, the equivalent of two or three IBM PC-AT computers (based on Intel 80286 microprocessors), the F-22 will take to the skies with the equivalent of two Cray mainframe supercomputers in her belly, and there is room for a third! To keep up with this vast increase in processing power, data rates on the network or “bus” connecting various aircraft subsystems have increased from one million characters per second (1 Mb/sec.) to over 50 Mb/sec. There has been a similar increase in computer memory and data-storage capacity.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “A nightmarish phrase sometimes occurs in accident reports: “controlled flight into terrain.” The English translation is that some poor bastard drilled a crater right into the ground and never knew it. The dream of every flight-control avionics designer and programmer is to make that impossible.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “In 1975 the F-15A Eagle, equipped with the powerful Hughes APG-63, introduced a new era of multi-mode radars. The APG-63 radar was the first all-weather, programmable, multi-mode, Pulse-Doppler radar designed to be used by a single pilot. Pulse-Doppler radars rely on the principle that the frequency of waves reflected from a moving object will be slightly shifted upward or downward, depending on whether the object is moving toward or away from the observer. Precise measurement of this Doppler shift allows the radar’s signal-processing computer to determine the target’s relative speed and direction with great precision. With a detection range of greater than 100 nm./182.8 km. against a large RCS target (like a Tu-95 BEAR bomber), the APG-63 combined long range with features such as automatic detection and lock-on. By allowing a digital computer to control most radar operations, the pilot was left free to concentrate on getting into position to make an effective attack. This computer, by the way, was just slightly more powerful than your standard first generation IBM PC (equipped with an Intel 8-Bit 8086/8088 processor; today many home appliances like refrigerators[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. Interferometry: “SARs use a processing technique that uses the aircraft’s horizontal motion to “fool” the radar system into “believing” the antenna is actually much larger than it really is. By overlapping multiple return echoes from several scans, and matching them up with the Doppler shift from the various objects in each individual scan, a very high resolution image can be created.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Another remarkable feature of the APG-70 is called Non-Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR). “Cooperative” target recognition depends on the transponders carried by friendly aircraft, which return the proper coded reply when they are “interrogated” by an IFF system. The relatively low reliability of this method has led to very restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) that require several independent means of verifying that a target is really, truly an enemy before a pilot is allowed to shoot it. All air commanders live in fear of “fratricide” or “blue-on-blue” accidents, and the tragic shootdown of two Army helicopters in Northern Iraq in 1994 by F-15Cs suggests that this fear is well founded. NCTR, which is quickly becoming standard on many U.S.-designed radars, is the ability to classify a target by type while it is still beyond visual range. How this is done is highly classified; and even mentioning NCTR around an Air Force or contractor site is likely to raise eyebrows and tighten lips. Nevertheless, NCTR was used in Desert Storm. One possible means discussed in open sources is to focus a high-resolution radar beam on a head-on target and count the number of[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. CI: “The most impressive capability of the APG-77 radar is LPI (low probability of intercept) search. LPI radar pulses are very difficult to detect with conventional RWR and ESM systems. This means the F-22 can conduct an active search with its APG-77 radar, and RWR/ESM-equipped aircraft will probably be none the wiser. Conventional radars emit high-energy pulses in a narrow frequency band, then listen for relatively high-energy returns. A good warning set, however, can pick up these high-energy pulses at over two times the radar’s effective range. LPI radars, on the other hand, transmit low-energy pulses over a wide band of frequencies (this is called “spread spectrum” transmission). When the multiple echoes are received from the target, the radar’s signal processor integrates all the individual pulses back together, and the amount of reflected EM energy is about the same as a normal radar’s high-energy pulse. But because each individual LPI pulse has significantly less energy, and since they do not necessarily fit the normal frequency pattern used by air-search radars, an enemy’s warning system will be hard-pressed to detect the pulses long before the LPI radar has detected[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Two B-2s, without escorts or tankers, could have performed the same mission as a package of thirty-two strike aircraft, sixteen fighters, twelve air-defense suppression aircraft, and fifteen tankers. —GENERAL CHUCK HORNER, USAF (RET.)” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “But to understand the B-2, you have to understand the threat that it was designed to overcome and the almost unimaginable mission it was created to perform. One of the things that helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union was an obsessive, forty-year attempt to build an impenetrable air-defense system. The National Air Defense Force (known by its Russian initials, PVO) was a separate service, co-equal with the Soviet Army, Navy, Air Force, and Strategic Rocket Forces. It was designed to keep the U.S. Air Force and the few strategic bombers of the other Western allies from penetrating the Russian heartland and decapitating the highly centralized Soviet command and control system, as well as their top military and political leadership. Ultimately, the only Western plan for defeating the system was the Doomsday scenario, using nuclear missiles to “roll back” the successive layers of air defense so the bombers could get through to their targets.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Moreover, the B-2 was the first modern aircraft to go into production without requiring a prototype, or even a development fixture. Designed with advanced three-dimensional CAD/CAM systems, which are used to fix parts, the B-2’s virtual development fixture allowed every component to be fit-checked before it was manufactured. As a result, when the first B-2s were assembled, something happened that was unprecedented in aviation history, possibly in the entire history of engineering development and manufacturing. Every part fit perfectly the first time, and the finished aircraft precisely matched its designed dimensions within a few millimeters over a span of 172 feet/52.4 meters.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “As for sensors, the new Westinghouse APG-77 radar is a wide field-of-view (over 120°) fixed phased array, which is virtually undetectable with conventional RWR systems. In fact, the APG-77 can probably be programmed to do virtually any kind of operation that a radar is capable of doing just by programming it with additional software and adding the necessary processor/memory capacity to the CIPs.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Tom Clancy: If you were to summarize the objectives of the air campaign plan that became Desert Storm, how would you characterize them?   Gen. Horner: First, to control the air (Phase I). Secondly, cripple the Iraqi offensive capabilities, in particular the SCUDs and nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to the extent we could (Phase II). Then, isolate the battlefield (Phase III), and prepare it for the ground war (Phase IV).” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Tom Clancy: Talk about “Poobah’s Party.”   Gen. Horner: “Poobah’s Party.” That was planned by Larry “Poobah” Henry, probably one of the best planners we ever had. He was the only navigator [backseater] who was a wing commander in the Gulf. He looks mediocre, he’s got navigator wings, but he’s an incredible genius. The man’s an absolute fiend when it comes to hunting SAMs. He arranged to have a mass of air- and ground-launched decoys, and one hundred HARM missiles all in the air at the same time. It was devastating to the Iraqis, something they never recovered from during the war.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The basic F-15 is an enormously tough airplane—after a midair collision, one F-15 pilot safely landed his craft with only 14 in./35 cm. of wing remaining on one side—and the modifications to the -E model have only made it tougher.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The original B-1A design incorporated a complex crew “escape capsule”; the entire cockpit compartment would separate from the aircraft and deploy stabilizing fins and a parachute. But on the B-1B this was replaced by simpler, lighter, and more reliable ACES II ejection seats. Blow-out panels above each crew position are triggered by the ejection mechanism, which has a surprisingly good record for crew survival in emergencies.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Throughout the history of aerial warfare, the single most limiting factor has been the fuel capacity—and thus the range—of the aircraft flying the combat missions. The lack of a long-range escort fighter cost the Germans the Battle of Britain in 1940. Conversely, the P-51 Mustang, with its “seven-league boots,” was the deciding factor in the success of the 8th Air Force in their operations over Germany. Thus, the idea of extending an aircraft’s range by aerial refueling is such a simple idea, it is surprising that it took so long to catch on.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “All USAF tankers are unarmed; and indeed, they are not even equipped with basic self-protection radar warning receivers, chaff or flare dispensers, or jamming pods. As a result, they can only survive and operate under conditions of total local air supremacy. It is not hard to understand why, when you consider that a tanker is nothing but a relatively slow and unmaneuverable bag of fuel, requiring just one cannon shell or “hot” warhead fragment from an AAM to turn it into a very large fireball.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “the missile’s performance “envelope” (aviator jargon for things like, “How fast can it turn, climb, or dive at different altitudes and velocities?”)” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “At the front of the missile is the WGU-4A/B Guidance Control Section (GCS). Inside the GCS is the seeker, which is the ultimate in single-element infrared sensitivity. Composed of an indium-antimonide (InSb) detector element, cooled by an open-cycle Joule-Thompson cryostat, it is mounted on a gimbaled “head” behind a magnesium-fluoride (MgF2, a fragile material, but selectively transparent to infrared radiation in the seeker’s particular wavelengths) seeker dome/window. The seeker element feeds into a signal processor, which generates the commands for the missile’s four guidance fins, which are mounted on the side of the seeker-guidance section. The real beauty of the current system is that it scans in two different wavelengths or “colors.” This means that it is looking at both short- and middle-wavelength (infrared) light as well as the long-wavelength (ultraviolet) spectrum. It is a deadly combination.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “BVR meant greater than 20nm./36km. Pilots prefer to think in terms of a missile’s “no escape zone,” an ever-changing teardrop-shaped volume of space with dimensions that are classified.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Then, some good things began happening. Fully validated software tapes began to arrive at test sites, and missiles began to fly straight and true against their drone targets. To some of the missile’s critics, it appeared that a miracle had happened. In fact, AMRAAM had followed the normal path of a system controlled by computers and software. It is a hallmark of software-driven systems that they are virtually useless until a valid version of the software is available. But when the day comes that a technician plugs in the final release version of the software, it usually works exactly as promised. Like the Army’s Patriot SAM and Navy’s Aegis Combat System, AIM-120 came of age when its software was finally ready. The final validation of AMRAAM came at the White Sands Missile Range when an F-15C ripple-fired four test AIM-120s at four jammer-equipped QF-100 target drones, maneuvering aggressively and kicking out flares and chaff decoys. Dubbed the “World War III Shot” by test directors, it resulted in all four drones going down in flames. All of the Congressionally mandated tests were passed.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The newest TMD variant to make it into the field is the CBU-97B, which is equipped with the new BLU-108/B anti-armor submunition. First fielded in 1992, each CBU-97/B is composed of an SUU-64/B TMD, loaded with ten of the BLU-108/Bs. Known as a “sensor fuzed weapon,” the BLU-108/B looks like an oversized coffee can when it is ejected from the TMD. Once clear of the TMD, each BLU-108/B ejects four small devices called “skeets.” The skeets, which look a lot like jumbo-sized hockey pucks, are flung spinning from the BLU-108/B in four different directions to maximize their coverage. Once armed, each skeet scans the ground with a sensitive infrared seeker, tuned to look for the heat signature of an internal combustion engine. Should the skeet sensor detect the heat of a vehicle below, it fires a self-forging projectile or “spoon” down into the engine compartment of the vehicle at a speed of roughly Mach 5! The projectile has so much energy, that it just punches through the vehicle, even if it is a tank, usually destroying whatever it hits.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The top of the 366th Wing organization is the Headquarters Squadron at the base/wing headquarters building on Gunfighter Boulevard. On the second floor is the commander’s office, and in the top spot is Brigadier General David J. “Marshal” McCloud. The first time you meet him, you know why everyone calls him Marshal. Part of it is his build, well over six feet tall and lean as a rail. The other part is his reputation for leadership and action. Two previous wing command tours, quite unusual in the USAF, have given him ample experience to handle this job. He’s flown just about every kind of tactical aircraft in the USAF inventory. He’s flown everything from F-117A Night Hawks (from his time with the 37th TFW), to F-15Cs (from his command tour with the 1st TFW at Langley AFB, Virginia); and now he flies a new F-16C Block 52 (with the 389th FS) that bears his personal marking as the 366th’s “Wing King.” Flying skills are important for an air leader; they confer credibility in the eyes of the flight crews and establish a bond based on shared experience. And familiarity with a wide variety of aircraft[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Air Tasking Orders (ATOs). ATOs furnish the script for everything that happens in the air, from the time and altitude for a tanker to establish a track to refuel other aircraft, down to whether the Army can fire artillery or guided missiles through a particular chunk of airspace at a particular time. One reason for the success of Operation Desert Storm was the quality of the ATOs built by General Horner’s CENTAF staff. But the 366th has to do this job with a lot fewer people (forty-two vs. several hundred for the CENTAF staff), and less equipment. On deployment, the 366th OSS forms what is known as the 366th Air Operations Center (AOC), which brings its own tent city to operate from a “bare bones” base. Some good tools help make up for the lack of personnel. The main tool is the Contingency Tactical Air Control System (TACS) Automated Planning System, or CTAPS. This is a network of computer workstations that ties together a series of databases on intelligence, terrain, known targets, and aircraft capabilities, enabling the 366th AOC staff to rapidly build and distribute ATO plans to everyone in or attached to the wing.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The Reserves consist of veterans who have completed their active duty and are available for recall in a national emergency on order of the President. The National Guard units evolved from the state militias of Colonial and Civil War times. Nominally under the command of their respective state governors (or commonwealth in the case of Puerto Rico), they can be called into federal service by a Presidential executive order. Many of the flight crews and maintenance personnel of U.S. commercial airlines serve in Reserve and National Guard units, and a major mobilization would wreak havoc on airline flight schedules, much as it did in 1990 during Operation Desert Shield.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “It is one of the realities of our time that satellite news networks are the finest intelligence-gathering agencies in the world. Though Hanoi denied conducting the strike, a Sky News TV crew from Britain had it on tape, with the yellow stars clearly visible on the MiGs. The tape was uplinked immediately to the global satellite network.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Ten seconds after the General Quarters alarm sounded, four SA-N-4 Gecko/4K33 missiles rose from the ships, while the four HARM missiles descended from the planes. The range was down to 5 miles/8.2 km. as the 100mm gun turrets of the frigates began slewing toward the black specks in the clear tropical sky. Diving in at over 4,500 feet per second/1,372 meters per second, the HARMs won the race. The proximity fuzes detonated above the ships, showering them with thousands of tungsten fragments and chunks of still-burning rocket motor fuel. Admiral Vu and his bridge crew were dead before they knew what had happened. The fragments from the HARMs’ warheads virtually shredded the two frigates, starting fires in the forward weapons magazines of both ships, as well as rupturing the fuel tanks. The SA-N-4s, deprived of terminal guidance, followed a graceful ballistic arc until the fuzes timed out and they self-destructed.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Lieutenant Colonel Harry Carpenter looked down at the notes on his laptop computer and began to speak. “Sir, the last elements of the C-Package arrived this afternoon. The Bones from the 34th will start mining operations of all northern harbors, rivers, and estuaries tonight. It will take about two nights to get them closed off. The UN posted the warning to navigators right after the embargo resolution was passed, and Lloyds threatened to pull the coverage from any ship still in harbor after 0000 local time tonight. The B-1Bs will start laying the eggs around 0400 local tomorrow, with activation in forty-eight hours.” “How about escorts and ROE?” the general inquired. “Per your orders, sir,” the lieutenant colonel replied, “no bomber shall drop any mine without logging it with a PY-code GPS receiver supplying the position. Also, each B-1B will be escorted by an F-15C loaded for air superiority and an F-16C with HARMs and HTS for defense suppression, if required. For tonight at least, the dark grays over at the 391st will do the no-fly job for us until that’s done.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “THE two RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft were working with a C-130 Hercules equipped with a Senior Scout clip-on SIGINT system to isolate the final locations of what were now being called “the leadership caves” from the minute emissions of the French-supplied cellular phone equipment used for their communications. The idea had come to Major Goldberg when he remembered a small notice he had seen on an Internet newsgroup several months before about a French firm in Toulon selling several million francs’ worth of satellite cellular equipment to the Vietnamese government. He talked the situation over with the newly arrived French liaison officer, sent ahead to scout for the squadron of Rafale fighters that was due to arrive in three days. A phone call was made to the electronics firm and the company controlling the satellite cellular service contract for the Vietnamese. After finding out that the service had been almost unused until a few days earlier, and exactly what frequencies the phones transmitted on, it was a simple matter to have one of the NSA SIGINT satellites identify a rough location for the cellular activity. The three aircraft refined their positions, then handed them off[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “IT was the memory of a younger man that saved him at that moment. There was only time for General Truong Le to yell, “Get down!” to the sergeant, before the four bombs impacted the top of the karst. For a moment, the old man thought that the weapons has been duds, though that illusion was rapidly dispelled when the delayed-action fuzes fired the charges in the BLU- 109/B warheads. There was no way the weapons could fully penetrate the limestone strata to reach the caves below. They did not have to. The tail-mounted fuzes had been set to detonate at the same moment, setting up the equivalent of a small earthquake within the soft rock. At once, a vertical shear wave was formed, heading down into the karst. It collapsed the cave tunnels below, like eggs under an elephant. Everyone inside was killed instantly. Meanwhile, the sudden collapse of the caves caused a huge overpressure of air in the tunnel entrance, blowing the blast door off its hinges with a “bang” and a “whoosh.” The rogue door was flung out of the twisting cave tunnel like a sheet of paper. It missed the Defense Minister[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “In its simplest form, air supremacy exists when enemy tank drivers run over their own people while operating with their eyes on the sky instead of on the road.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The Air Force deals in what it calls “core competencies,” those features that distinguish the aerospace mission. They include Rapid Global Mobility, Precision Engagement, Global Attack, Air and Space Superiority, Information Superiority, and Agile Combat Support. Most of the core competencies are self-evident. Rapid Global Mobility refers to aviation’s inherent advantage of speed and range. In addition to deploying tactical units almost anywhere on earth in a matter of days, the Air Force can also transport Army or Marine Corps forces to a war theater or trouble spot. The problem, of course, tends to be bases—as the Tailhook Navy likes to remind Congress during appropriation hearings. Aircraft carriers represent four and a half acres of sovereign territory that moves at 30 knots without needing to play “Mother, may I?” with wavering allies, as we saw in Turkey during “Iraqi Freedom.” On the other hand, due to mismanagement in the first Bush Administration, the Navy found itself out of the deep strike mission unless Air Force tankers were available. Jointness came on forced wings, but it came regardless.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “With increasing stress and its attendant reduction in remaining fatigue life, combat aircraft just plain wear out. Though the Air Force’s “howgozit” monitoring of critical airframe parts (especially wing spars) can track the trends, aircrews deserve a break. The last F-15Cs were built in 1988, and if an Eagle has a theoretical service life of 1,800 hours remaining, a fudge factor is needed to afford some velvet.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “the A-10 “Warthog” was built with an electrical system incapable of handling state-of-the-art radar and computer” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The Raptor, proposed in 1986 with a 1994 operational date, is now expected to enter service in 2005, for a nineteen-year development cycle. The Air Force Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35A, comes close at eighteen years between 1993 and the expected IOC of 2011.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Stealth does amazing things to development times, most of them bad. For instance, depending on how they’re reckoned, the design to operational period for recent jet fighters has been seven to eight years. The landmark F-15 took longer, 1965 to 1976, but the F-16 and Navy FA-18 both ran around seven. Lockheed’s storied Skunk Works produced the F-117 Nighthawk in eight (1975-83).” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The 2004 budget allocated $226.5 billion to JSF and $69.7 billion for the FA-22; the Navy’s Virginia Class submarine joins them in the top three. The funding represented 2,866 JSFs and 295 FA-22s, for an average program cost of $236 million per Raptor and $79 million per JSF” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “In the summer of 2002 another reduction was proposed, from 295 to 180 aircraft in comparison to the 750 previously planned. By then, some $26 billion of a budgeted $69 billion had already been spent. Yearly acquisition was ten Raptors in 2002 and twenty-three more (costing $4.6 billion) in 2003. In November 2002 the Air Force conceded an overrun of up to $690 million in engineering, manufacturing, and development costs, adding that neither technology nor performance figured in the equation. The overruns led to “replacement” of three senior overseers (people are not “fired” anymore) and the T&E folks were reprimanded for indulging in tactics development before the test program was completed. As of 2003, Lockheed Martin had $43 billion to produce some 276 Raptors through 2013. However, the Air Force wants 381 for a minimum of ten air expeditionary squadrons with twenty-four planes each, with 105 attrition and force expansion airframes. Full-rate production is expected to reach thirty-six per year, with a goal of $75 million per Raptor. With a purchase of 760 or so FA-22s, the Air Force could field two squadrons per wing. First delivery is still expected in 2004, with[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The concept was not new. In the early 1960s the Kennedy administration pushed the multi-service TFX, the experimental fighter that would simultaneously serve the Air Force and Navy. It became the signature program of Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert Strange McNamara, previously a Ford executive.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Therefore, the JSF concept had some appeal, especially its multi-mission capability and lower cost. Two industry teams were awarded development contracts: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It was touted as a head-to-head shootout; a financial dogfight with the winner taking home the biggest defense contract yet. Boeing’s X-32 and LM’s X-35 both had to meet design specifications, but were free to interpret the best approach. It was a daunting task: meeting the needs not only of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, but of the British Royal Navy as well. The latter two organizations required a short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) capability to replace the aging Harrier and Sea Harrier. Consequently, the design teams opted for a modular approach in three iterations: a strictly land-based (Air Force) version, a conventional carrier aircraft (Navy), and the STOVL machine (Marines and Brits). The program called for at least 70% commonality of airframe parts with the same basic engine. Both teams succeeded: Lockheed Martin’s design was selected.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The best explanation available is from an industry source: “During the JSF down-select announcement on October 26, 2001, Air Force Secretary Roche referred to the JSF as the ‘F-35’ . . . and sort of looked around the room for confirmation. A few months later the government made F-35 the official designator!” Beltway insiders compare the F-35 moniker with Lyndon Johnson’s transposition of the designators in the RS-71 Blackbird. After Johnson referred to it as the SR-71 in a speech, the designation was changed in order to prevent a minor embarrassment to the commander in chief.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The long-range goal was for “migration” (another Pentagon buzzword) to an all stealth fighter force around 2025.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “According to industry reports, some 250 officials were involved in making the selection. That’s a committee by any standard, and everybody knows what committees are like. Many of them tend to analyze, cuss, and discuss a subject to tears. But JSF was different. Rather than the traditional fly-off, the Boeing and Lockheed Martin prototypes were evaluated not head to head, but side by side. At a 2002 briefing a manager said, “They were evaluated not against each other but in comparison to how well they fit the requirement.” Experienced test pilots in the audience shifted in their seats, muttered to themselves, and essentially said, “Batguano.” The explanation sounded like doublespeak, and in a sense it was. Whether the X-32 and X-35 flew against each other or were rated separately, it was still a competition. The winner was the one that looked most promising in the context of the criteria. At least that was the official view. Some insiders postulated that there wasn’t enough technical or operational difference between the two designs, so the contract went to the company with greater need. If so, that was LM, since Boeing had sold the Super Hornet and was doing[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Meanwhile, the number of F-35s available to conduct those missions remained negotiable. In 2002 the Air Force’s JSF buy was reduced from 2,036 to 1,763 at a flyaway price of $37 million to $48 million. Meanwhile, another 1,239 JSFs are on order for U.S. and British naval models. Further changes undoubtedly will occur in the Byzantine labyrinth of the American weapons acquisition process.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “JSF is likely to live a double life in tactical squadrons. It can be employed early in an air campaign, relying on its stealthiness to attack targets within the air defense envelope while other birds (presumably B-2s) attack the hard targets at the core. When the SEAD phase has largely been completed, F-35s can then become bomb trucks, packing larger (nonstealthy) loadouts to other targets.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “With no comparable enemy fighter on the horizon, the FA-22 is likely to remain semi-inviolate in the air-to-air arena. Not so from the ground. We may be entering an era in which the initiative is swinging toward the defense for a change, with the major opposition to FA-22 and F-35 coming from ground-based air defenses, primarily new or upgraded surface-to-air missiles.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “In recent years, Russian SAMs have progressed from the “single digit” types (SA-2 through 9) into the next-generation “double digit” variety. The SA-10 Grumble, with a range of nearly 50 miles, is optimized for use against tactical aircraft, and, with a Mach 6 sprint speed, very quick off the mark. The SA-12 Gladiator already is available in A and B models. Similar to the Patriot concept, it’s intended to knock down tactical ballistic missiles within 60 miles but is probably adaptable to aircraft. The SA-20 Triumph represents a major leap: with a published range of nearly 250 miles, it has three times the reach of the still formidable SA-6, and is automatically operated with digital programming. Furthermore, all three double-digit SAMs can be integrated into a combined missile and radar network affording low to high altitude coverage of a considerable area. The Russians, perennially cash-poor, have exported the missiles individually but also collectively as the S-300 system. A follow-on S-400 option is likely.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “New-generation SAMs will constitute a far greater threat than enemy aircraft. SA-20 in the S-300 air defense system has the potential to destroy tankers, AWACSs, and even J-STARSs, or at least push them farther from the combat arena. The latter would result in a denigration of the almost unlimited aerial refueling and battle control that we have taken for granted for so long. The actual loss of a tanker, let alone an AWACS, probably would produce the same result.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Over North Vietnam, U.S. aircrews faced a paradox. Well, all right, a lot of paradoxes, including running orders which, distilled to their essence, said, “Don’t lose but don’t win.” From the tactical perspective, we found ourselves frequently opposed by motivated young men who may never have driven an automobile but could do a creditable job in a MiG-21. The Air Force’s premier combat leader in that theater, Colonel Robin Olds, was an ace in two airplanes during World War II but he envied his Vietnamese counterparts. “Hell,” he insisted, “if I’d have been one of them I’d have got fifty of us!” The Vietnamese quickly mastered the canned intercept: following GCI vectors to the point of a six o’clock low pop-up from the weeds, hosing a couple of Atolls at a formation of Yankee Air Pirates, and ducking back to paddy level to escape. One such loss per mission was enough to discomfit many Americans. Vietnamese hit-and-run tactics could not affect the outcome of the air war—and in fact did not—but they inflicted frequent losses on the strike package. Besides, it was humiliating to lose a $2 million aircraft flown by a professional[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Electronics are here to stay: They have become at least as important as airframes. Electronic warfare (EW) goes hand in glove with electronic countermeasures (ECM), with an aviation heritage dating to the Second World War. Jamming hostile radars and communications has become even more important since Vietnam, as it not only helps prevent friendly losses but contributes to achieving the specific mission.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “We can expect the 366th Wing of the future to include both standoff and overhead jammers, with increasing reliance on UAVs. While some things may indeed last forever, not even B-52s fit that category!” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The Air Force’s current tactical aircraft have job security for the near term, and even beyond. Some 700 A-10s were delivered from 1976 to 1984, and though the latest Warthogs are nearly twenty years old, upgrades are planned on remaining aircraft beginning in 2004. The big, ungainly looking Thunderbolt remained beloved of infantrymen in both Iraq wars, and A-10 pilots insist there’s nothing comparable on the horizon: not even the Joint Strike Fighter affords as much bang for the buck. Consequently, Warthogs could still be flying in 2028.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Today, most large defense programs represent subcontractors in most states. Among 1,150 firms involved in the FA-22 program, the Raptor managed to miss only four states, while adding Puerto Rico for good measure. That translates into jobs, which translates into votes. If that seems cynical, so be it: scratch a cynic and I’ll show you a realist. In short, expensive Pentagon projects combine powerful elements: jobs, votes, and power to defend America.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Who, for instance, anticipated that America would be run out of Somalia by local clansmen wielding rocket-propelled grenades as effective anti-aircraft weapons?” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. --- Failure to understand emergence of Al Qaeda “Two-plane sections will penetrate enemy airspace at supercruise or better, perhaps with three or more UAVs preceding the fighters. Drones are likely to become a familiar aspect of Raptor ops, even an essential one. They can provide decoys, overhead jamming, and perhaps enhanced SEAD capability. Control of UAVs may be from ground or airborne operators. Raptors will live and operate with JSFs. It’s entirely possible that the Bold Tigers and Wild Boars will work together in those types. Sometime after 2012, FA-22s and F-35As would be expected to fly complementary missions. Raptors would gain air superiority over perhaps more numerous, but less capable, enemy fighters, permitting JSFs to attack targets in hostile territory. Strike planners explain that in the opening hours of conflict, F-35s carrying two one-ton precision weapons internally would dash in at supersonic speed, stealthily delivering their ordnance against command and control targets: essentially the Desert Storm scenario. The Suppression of Enemy Air Defense mission is generally expected to proceed quickly. At least that’s the plan.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Raptors also are likely to escort B-2s on deep penetration missions, affording an all stealth strike package. Based on previous experience, however, ultra high ticket items such as B-2s will still have jammer support, contrary to the Spirit’s “sales brochure” which convinced Congress that stealth bombers are self-supporting. (Before World War II, Congress accepted the Air Corps’ concept of the self-escorting bomber, which would “always get through.” While dedicated crews inevitably reached their targets, equally dedicated young National Socialists extracted a potentially prohibitive price until the advent of the P-51 Mustang. There may be a lesson for today’s world.) At more than $2 billion per airframe, however, the Air Force understandably wants to hedge its bets.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “However, for air-to-air combat, a drone should be unbeatable. Theoretically, anyway. Once at the merge, no human could compete with a UAV pulling 20 or more Gs. With thrust vectoring, a drone would be an even more formidable dogfight opponent. The preceding, of course, assumes that the ninety-year history of aerial combat continues unimpeded, and that even in the advanced missile era, aircraft will continue meeting at “the merge” and maneuver for a firing solution. All aspect missiles are a reality, and it remains to be seen how often increasingly rare fighter versus fighter encounters develop. “Launch and leave” missiles that provide their own homing have vastly simplified the pilot’s combat tasking, but they are complex systems that do malfunction. If history is any yardstick, there will still be some yanking and banking after the initial AAM picket is launched.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Other Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) certainly are under way, including designs meant to perform their missions in space. But we are concerned with air combat within the Earth’s atmosphere, and several designs are taking wing. Most notable is the X-45A, which first flew in May 2002. Resembling a baby B-2, the X-45 has met with initial success, and Popular Mechanics quoted the program manager who described the flight as “a significant jump in our quest to mature the technologies and systems required to integrate UCAVs into the future Air Force.” According to industry reports, an X-45 (with a 33-foot span versus 172 for the B-2) can be produced and operated for 65% to 75% less than conventional stealth aircraft. Consequently, it’s far more expendable: capable of flying into the teeth of tomorrow’s more lethal air defense networks and knocking off some of those radars and SAMs. That means that UCAVs lend themselves to the dangerous SEAD mission—suppression of enemy air defenses—which are vastly more threatening than any hostile fighters now flying or likely to fly in the near future. As of 2003, the X-45 was expected to become operational[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “America has recently developed two revolutionary offensive capabilities. The first, stealth, denies an enemy the ability to detect, and therefore protect against, a deep and damaging strike. Stealth is not black magic; it is a technical fact. When used properly in the design of an aircraft, missile, ship, or even submarine, stealth gives the attacker a decisive advantage over almost any kind of sensor from radars to sonars. The second capability, precision-guided munitions (PGMs), gives the attacker the means not so much to do explosive “surgery” as to use his weapons with a far higher degree of efficiency. No longer is laying down a carpet of bombs on a target a viable political or military option. Given the worldwide abhorrence of collateral damage from air strikes, use of PGMs is not only desirable, but may become required in the future. The combination of these two technological capabilities offers our national leadership opportunities unknown since the demise of a small and vicious sovereignty in the Middle East whose name has come into the English lexicon as a curse—Assassin. During the Middle Ages, from their mountain fortress in Lebanon, the military-religious Order of the Hashishin preserved their independence[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Thus, the mating of stealth technology and PGMs today means that the decision-makers who send young men off to die can now be targeted directly. No one is truly safe from such a precision attack, and personal vulnerability might well make a dictator think twice and then again before committing his country to war—if, that is, America develops the doctrine and installs the capability to target those who instigate war. Clausewitz liked to talk about an enemy’s “center of gravity,” meaning those things which a nation had to protect in order to survive. But the real center of gravity of any nation is its decision-makers, be they presidents, prime ministers, dictators, or juntas. No person becomes a chief of state, or group a leadership team, in order to suffer. The exercise of power, especially for despots, is heady wine indeed. Hiding in deep bunkers (which may no longer be safe in any case) cannot be fun. Nor is traveling about with the constant knowledge that a single enemy intelligence officer, or a domestic traitor, needs to finger the target only one time. What has emerged, then, is the ability to apply the well-named MAD principle[…]” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “The “limited punitive air strike” may play well on the evening news to a domestic audience, but it generally only serves to solidify the enemy’s will to resist.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Symbolically speaking, when you shoot down my airplane, that is an unfortunate incident, but when you kill my soldiers or sink my ship, that is an act of war. Perhaps airpower will never conquer ground. Perhaps airpower cannot linger in place as long as ships. But airpower can take the fight to the enemy’s heart and brain in a way and with a speed impossible for the more traditional fighting arms. It is, moreover, almost entirely an American invention which, like democracy, has changed the face of the world, and, as shown in Operation Iraqi Freedom, continues to shape and define the tactics and execution of modern warfare.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Energy In pilot jargon, the sum total of kinetic energy (speed) and potential energy (altitude) that an aircraft or missile has at a given instant. The concept of “energy maneuverability” developed by Colonel John Boyd is a fundamental idea in air-to-air tactics. Turning and other forms of maneuvering quickly use up energy, making an aircraft vulnerable to an enemy with more energy. The faster an aircraft can accelerate, the more quickly it can regain lost energy.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “HVHAA High Value Heavy Airframe Aircraft. Air Force term for a big, slow, vulnerable, and extremely valuable aircraft such as an AWACS or tanker that must be protected at all costs.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “INS Inertial Navigation System. A device that determines location and velocity by sensing the acceleration and direction of every movement after the system is initialized or updated at a known point. Conventional INS systems using mechanical gyroscopes are subject to “drift” after hours of continuous operation. Ring-laser gyros sense motion by measuring the frequency shift of laser pulses in two counter-rotating rings, and are much more accurate. The advantage of an INS is that it requires no external transmission to determine location.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “MIL-STD-1553 U.S. Military Standard that defines cable specifications, connectors, and data formats for a digital data-bus, or high-speed network for aircraft, naval, or ground-based electronic systems. One of the most successful standards in aviation history.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “NRO National Reconnaissance Office. Formerly super-secret intelligence agency established in late 1950s within the Department of Defense, not officially acknowledged to exist until 1990s. Responsible for procurement, operation, and management of various types of reconnaissance satellites. A separate organization, the Central Imagery Office (CIO), is responsible for processing, interpretation, and dissemination of satellite imagery.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “Sortie The basic unit of airpower: one complete combat mission by one aircraft. “Sortie generation” is the ability of an air unit to re-arm, re-fuel, and service aircraft for repeated missions in a given period.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks. “UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Also known as a drone or RPV (remotely piloted vehicle). A recoverable pilotless aircraft, either remotely controlled over a radio-data link, or pre-programmed with an advanced autopilot. The U.S. Air Force has tended to resist any use of UAVs, except as targets, because they take jobs away from pilots. There are also real safety concerns about operating UAVs and manned aircraft in the same airspace, since UAVs are usually small and hard to see.” Excerpt From: Tom Clancy. “Fighter Wing.” iBooks.