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> Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're f

> Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been dormant for decades. My understanding is that the U.S. sunsetted or reduced Javelin and Stinger production because of assumed air superiority in any potential conflict (COIN or near-peer). For all of their love of redundancy, do you think that they are overconfident in air superiority?

ckozlowski 4y ago
Hard to say. My guess (and it's just a guess!) is that they didn't see the need to ramp up Stinger production as there were so many sitting around. (Javelin is a different question and I'll omit that one for now.) I hear the "they'll rely on air superiority" bit a lot, but haven't read anything official that suggests that it's actual policy. It might just be one of those things that went unsaid as priorities shifted elsewhere. I think the Ballistic Missile Defense debate sucked a lot of oxygen out of the need for ground-based aircraft defense. There's growing calls for more robust aircraft defense, both against fighter airplanes and drones, and it's getting some attention as you can read here: https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... I note though that these are short-range systems, and I haven't seen much new for longer range systems such as what some NATO countries are doing with NASAMS, and so it seems like things have been quiet in the U.S. for medium and upper tier (BMD being the exception.) I've long wondered if there's hesitance to overlap medium and upper tier defenses with counter-air operations because of the risk of blue-on-blue engagement (See the Persian Gulf War and Patriot), and that it might be there reason why there's so little development in this space. Deconflicting those two things sounds rather difficult to me, and given our lack of success to date, the U.S. might simply have strategized that - with a few exceptions - it's best to leave medium and high altitudes to aircraft and just not worry about shooting down your own pilots. But that's just a guess. It's an interesting question and one I'll be curious to see play out.
- greedo 4y ago
  Whenever I try and understand what the Pentagon's actual policies are, I give up on reading announcements from PAOs etc. and look at what items each branch is funding. The Navy has had a great UCAS for 8 years, but has barely funded it compared to how many F-18s it buys. So this tells me that the VF mafia in the Navy doesn't want competition. The Army has cancelled the following systems in the last few decades: Comanche, Crusader, and FCS. Yet it spent the money on these and only cancelled them when the costs ballooned out of control. Other than buying Avenger in the 1980s, the Army has almost completely neglected SHORAD. This tells me they don't give a hoot about the threat. Compare that to Comanche. They are all in on the Future Vertical Lift program. For Crusader, they've decided on incremental (and seemingly perpetual) upgrades to the M109. As well as investing heavily in ATACMs and PrSM.
  - ckozlowski 4y ago
    Both the Navy and the USAF suffer from this in that the brass is staffed with former pilots, and those who have had combat experience at that. A lot of other missions have received little attention as a result, Space being a good example. I think they're slowly coming around to the idea that they need these, though it's arriving in the form of supporting roles and to solve a pilot shortage. With regards to ground, many of those cancellations came about as a result of the end of the Cold War. Comanche and Crusader were both 80's era programs The threat of a general European land war receded tremendously. Had those gone forward, I'm sure they'd be useful, but aged now even. I do wonder how useful Crusader would have been, given the shift to highly mobile wheeled SPGs as opposed to armored ones. (See CAESAR and Archer systems). FCS was later, and tripped over itself I think trying to make a series of vehicles that could do everything at a time when we weren't sure what we wanted a vehicle to do other than survive IEDs. They wanted air mobility (low weight!) but networking, tons of firepower, and be resistant to ATGMs and the odd buried 155mm shell exploding underneath it. It sounds like the Bradley all over again, but it's a tricky problem to solve. A combination of electronic jamming for IEDs and active protection for ATGMs might finally solve the problem. Might. I think you're right about SHORAD, and given the aerial performance in the Gulf and elsewhere, they've had little reason to think otherwise. The USAF and Navy have been so effective up until late that the Air-to-Air squadrons have had so little to do that the USAF invented sorties for their F-22 squadrons just to give them a shot at advancement compared to their A2G brethren. And while the Russians have been cranking out one fancy Flanker variant after another, they haven't had the funds to build them in any quality. The PAK-FA has been little more than a demonstrator. And up until relatively recently, the Chinese have been struggling to replicate Western and Russian turbofan technology. Lack of decent engines has held them back for years. It seems they're finally turning the corner on that. So yeah, they haven't had much reason to pay attention to it. Drones are starting to make them pay attention though. https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... Better late than never I suppose.

ckozlowski 4y ago

Hard to say. My guess (and it's just a guess!) is that they didn't see the need to ramp up Stinger production as there were so many sitting around. (Javelin is a different question and I'll omit that one for now.) I hear the "they'll rely on air superiority" bit a lot, but haven't read anything official that suggests that it's actual policy. It might just be one of those things that went unsaid as priorities shifted elsewhere. I think the Ballistic Missile Defense debate sucked a lot of oxygen out of the need for ground-based aircraft defense. There's growing calls for more robust aircraft defense, both against fighter airplanes and drones, and it's getting some attention as you can read here: https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... I note though that these are short-range systems, and I haven't seen much new for longer range systems such as what some NATO countries are doing with NASAMS, and so it seems like things have been quiet in the U.S. for medium and upper tier (BMD being the exception.) I've long wondered if there's hesitance to overlap medium and upper tier defenses with counter-air operations because of the risk of blue-on-blue engagement (See the Persian Gulf War and Patriot), and that it might be there reason why there's so little development in this space. Deconflicting those two things sounds rather difficult to me, and given our lack of success to date, the U.S. might simply have strategized that - with a few exceptions - it's best to leave medium and high altitudes to aircraft and just not worry about shooting down your own pilots. But that's just a guess. It's an interesting question and one I'll be curious to see play out.

greedo 4y ago
Whenever I try and understand what the Pentagon's actual policies are, I give up on reading announcements from PAOs etc. and look at what items each branch is funding. The Navy has had a great UCAS for 8 years, but has barely funded it compared to how many F-18s it buys. So this tells me that the VF mafia in the Navy doesn't want competition. The Army has cancelled the following systems in the last few decades: Comanche, Crusader, and FCS. Yet it spent the money on these and only cancelled them when the costs ballooned out of control. Other than buying Avenger in the 1980s, the Army has almost completely neglected SHORAD. This tells me they don't give a hoot about the threat. Compare that to Comanche. They are all in on the Future Vertical Lift program. For Crusader, they've decided on incremental (and seemingly perpetual) upgrades to the M109. As well as investing heavily in ATACMs and PrSM.
- ckozlowski 4y ago
  Both the Navy and the USAF suffer from this in that the brass is staffed with former pilots, and those who have had combat experience at that. A lot of other missions have received little attention as a result, Space being a good example. I think they're slowly coming around to the idea that they need these, though it's arriving in the form of supporting roles and to solve a pilot shortage. With regards to ground, many of those cancellations came about as a result of the end of the Cold War. Comanche and Crusader were both 80's era programs The threat of a general European land war receded tremendously. Had those gone forward, I'm sure they'd be useful, but aged now even. I do wonder how useful Crusader would have been, given the shift to highly mobile wheeled SPGs as opposed to armored ones. (See CAESAR and Archer systems). FCS was later, and tripped over itself I think trying to make a series of vehicles that could do everything at a time when we weren't sure what we wanted a vehicle to do other than survive IEDs. They wanted air mobility (low weight!) but networking, tons of firepower, and be resistant to ATGMs and the odd buried 155mm shell exploding underneath it. It sounds like the Bradley all over again, but it's a tricky problem to solve. A combination of electronic jamming for IEDs and active protection for ATGMs might finally solve the problem. Might. I think you're right about SHORAD, and given the aerial performance in the Gulf and elsewhere, they've had little reason to think otherwise. The USAF and Navy have been so effective up until late that the Air-to-Air squadrons have had so little to do that the USAF invented sorties for their F-22 squadrons just to give them a shot at advancement compared to their A2G brethren. And while the Russians have been cranking out one fancy Flanker variant after another, they haven't had the funds to build them in any quality. The PAK-FA has been little more than a demonstrator. And up until relatively recently, the Chinese have been struggling to replicate Western and Russian turbofan technology. Lack of decent engines has held them back for years. It seems they're finally turning the corner on that. So yeah, they haven't had much reason to pay attention to it. Drones are starting to make them pay attention though. https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... Better late than never I suppose.