6 ms·

Won't the air to ground bombing mission be done mostly by drones? Manned aircraft will be increasingly reserved for special operations and dirty little wars, w

Won't the air to ground bombing mission be done mostly by drones? Manned aircraft will be increasingly reserved for special operations and dirty little wars, which is pretty much the Marines' job description. Also, the vertical takeoff capability will be mandatory for a hypothetical future war against a major power. Once the huge, lumbering aircraft carriers are sitting on the sea floor, they will be replaced by heavily armored battleships. In a major war, the only sea launched aircraft will be VTOLs.

antubbs 13y ago
Gotta be careful about history; when the F-35 program started, drone-based warfare was pretty infantile. Drone payloads are still relatively light compared to heavily-laden fighter-bombers (or indeed outright bombers). This will likely evolve over time (the future bomber program requires both manned and unmanned capabilities in some proposals).
lmg643 13y ago
Agree on drones and unmanned aircraft. Manned combat planes are going to be the cavalry of war in a few years (if not already) for the simple fact that a pilot cannot withstand the g-forces that an unmanned plane or missile can. US hasn't realized this yet because we are currently using our military might to pick on folks who are decades if not a century or more behind us technologically but would likely be a different story against a more up to date competitor.
- caycep 13y ago
  I think there is what the Pentagon "wants" to do, and what will naturally evolve despite whatever direction they throw their money. Drones will probably get good enough to do most air to ground, at 1/10 or 1/100th the cost or whatever figure is being thrown around. Maybe even air-air, although I don't really think anyone has seriously tried this yet. Manned aircraft in the meanwhile will pad a a large number of Pentagon manager's retirements and kid's college educations...
- jzwinck 13y ago
  One punchline at the end of the article seems to implicitly agree on drones: > Ward said any future warplane should have clear and narrow requirements, as opposed to the F-35's broad, incompatible guidelines. Development timelines should be fast, budgets should be inexpensive, the overall concept should be simple and hardware should be as tiny as possible. The one way we have today to accomplish all those goals together is unmanned aircraft. Simple because no life safety systems. Tiny because no human factors (displays, radios, windscreens). Cheap because no need to get every plane home safe (mission success largely determined by delivery of sufficient quantity of planes to the theatre).
  - caycep 13y ago
    Also, not glamorous enough to attract the attention of Important People in the Pentagon...that's the most important requirement. Let the Designers work in peace!
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    I'd argue that most of the truly successful military aircraft in the US inventory started out as single-purpose aircraft. The F-4 and F-15 were pure fighters. The F-117 and A-10 were pure attack aircraft. The political process drives the insanity of trying to serve multiple purposes with thousands of design engineers strategically located in as many Congressional districts as possible. I think drones should be used for every application that they are appropriate for -- why put people on the line when computers can do the work? But just like the JSF project attempted to serve many masters, assuming drones are the optimal decision for all military aircraft requirements is dumb. The Chinese and Russians are building high performance aircraft for less than $1 Trillion. There's a reason for that. We can too.
- Nelson69 13y ago
  Has it not been realized? I think it has, there is a ton of drone stuff going on. The DoD hasn't rewritten the war fighting manual and strategy yet though so manned fighters and bombers are still part of the plans but I don't think UAVs haven't proven themselves. This is a titanically slow moving organization... lives and deaths are on the line with their decisions. One of the real lesson of the JSF is the amount of institutional inertia surrounding it. We were effectively pot committed before they had demo planes to play war games with. They spent 10+ years selling the idea. How do you kill a project like that? There is a certain irony to how the US picks weapons platforms too, everybody wants a new toy so who says "no" when the toy isn't quite up to snuff? So politically, we kill all the things the JSF is going to replace, we build love for the new platform, promise the world when nobody has even seen it. The whole "jump jet" fascination is an interesting one, why do you need to land or take off a fighter/bomber from a place where you can't fuel it, can't reload it, and it doesn't carry cargo and people? Now the concept is cool, I get that, I just don't see where it fits in to the war fighting plan in a general way, not until planes have like nuclear reactors for fuel or something like that. It just doesn't seem generally useful.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    The Marines have "amphibious assault ships" that are sort of like aircraft carriers for helicopters. S/VTOL aircraft can operate from these locations. I was told by a Marine that the Harrier obsession stems from Guadalcanal in WW2. The waters in the Solomons were heavily contested and the Navy basically took off and left the Marines stranded. That institutional memory is hard to shake.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > The Marines have "amphibious assault ships" that are sort of like aircraft carriers for helicopters. There actually very much like medium-deck carriers, which are the biggest carriers anyone not the US Navy operates anywhere. The Marines seaborne aviation capacity carried on its various amphibious ships outclasses, IIRC, all the non-US naval aviation in the world combined.
    - spartango 13y ago
mehwoot 13y ago
> Once the huge, lumbering aircraft carriers are sitting on the sea floor, they will be replaced by heavily armored battleships. In a major war, the only sea launched aircraft will be VTOLs. Huh... there isn't a single battleship in service in any navy in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#Modern_times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#Modern_times
- newbie12 13y ago
  When the carriers are sunk, it is our submarine fleet with its cruise missiles that will carry the day.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  There will be in a major war. Nothing else can stand up to nukes and lasers.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    The only way a battleship would help against nukes is if it somehow fell on whoever is in charge of the nukes.
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      Battleships can survive close hits by airburst nukes. To defend against this, the opponent must either use massive overkill, or use underwater bursts near their own coasts. Either approach has dreadful economic costs. War is the art of making the opponent's costs exceed their resources. One way to create costs is to make weapons that are unreasonably durable—the battleship is the extreme end of the spectrum.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        There was an airburst test that battleships survived, but the nuke was way off target, even well shielded animals onboard died so if it was crewed it would have been a floating coffin and the nuke was a 20 kiloton device. One single Trident missile holds up to twelve 500 kiloton bombs.
greedo 13y ago
People have been saying the demise of the carrier is upon us for 5 decades. Yet nothing offers the flexibility and power projection capabilities of a CVBG. And guess what submariners call "heavily armored battleships?" Targets... And if you think CVNs are expensive, you should research how much retrofitting an Iowa Class with a STOVL flight deck would cost. And then factor in manning costs for a ship that needs close to 5000 sailors.
- JackFr 13y ago
  And when (if?) energy weapons and railguns become a reality, all of a sudden a 100MW reactor is not a bad thing to have.
Zimahl 13y ago
Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. I know people fear China but they are no cold-war Russia. Anything conventional and the US is in the lead by a lot. There's no reason to discuss anything nuclear because everyone loses in that case.
- dctoedt 13y ago
  > Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. There have been reports that the Chinese have developed and brought to initial operational status the DF-21D, a medium-range, hypersonic, anti-ship ballistic missile specifically designed to be a carrier-killer [1]. The concern is that our carriers might be chased from the Western Pacific. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_Anti-ship_ballistic_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_... -- also http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china-may-limit-carrier-killers-range/ http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china...
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Maybe there's something I'm missing about the DF-21D, but even assuming it doesn't miss the carrier while traveling at a hypersonic speed, Big Explody Things dropping on top of American carriers during wartime is not exactly a new thing in the annals of warfare. It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. Obviously an ASBM may change the calculus of whether you send carriers in early in the conflict (preferring instead to use submarines with cruise missiles to take out Dong Feng launch sites or whatever you'd have been trying to bomb in the first place). But I don't see how ASBM is a guaranteed single-shot carrier kill by any stretch either.
    - dctoedt 13y ago
JackFr 13y ago
Aircraft carriers on the sea floor? Not if they're refitted with megawatt lasers, railguns, UAVs and USVs.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Sea mines and stealth torpedos are still hard to defend against with anything besides a very thick hull. At that point it is a battleship.

antubbs 13y ago

Gotta be careful about history; when the F-35 program started, drone-based warfare was pretty infantile. Drone payloads are still relatively light compared to heavily-laden fighter-bombers (or indeed outright bombers). This will likely evolve over time (the future bomber program requires both manned and unmanned capabilities in some proposals).

lmg643 13y ago

Agree on drones and unmanned aircraft. Manned combat planes are going to be the cavalry of war in a few years (if not already) for the simple fact that a pilot cannot withstand the g-forces that an unmanned plane or missile can. US hasn't realized this yet because we are currently using our military might to pick on folks who are decades if not a century or more behind us technologically but would likely be a different story against a more up to date competitor.

caycep 13y ago
I think there is what the Pentagon "wants" to do, and what will naturally evolve despite whatever direction they throw their money. Drones will probably get good enough to do most air to ground, at 1/10 or 1/100th the cost or whatever figure is being thrown around. Maybe even air-air, although I don't really think anyone has seriously tried this yet. Manned aircraft in the meanwhile will pad a a large number of Pentagon manager's retirements and kid's college educations...
jzwinck 13y ago
One punchline at the end of the article seems to implicitly agree on drones: > Ward said any future warplane should have clear and narrow requirements, as opposed to the F-35's broad, incompatible guidelines. Development timelines should be fast, budgets should be inexpensive, the overall concept should be simple and hardware should be as tiny as possible. The one way we have today to accomplish all those goals together is unmanned aircraft. Simple because no life safety systems. Tiny because no human factors (displays, radios, windscreens). Cheap because no need to get every plane home safe (mission success largely determined by delivery of sufficient quantity of planes to the theatre).
- caycep 13y ago
  Also, not glamorous enough to attract the attention of Important People in the Pentagon...that's the most important requirement. Let the Designers work in peace!
- Spooky23 13y ago
  I'd argue that most of the truly successful military aircraft in the US inventory started out as single-purpose aircraft. The F-4 and F-15 were pure fighters. The F-117 and A-10 were pure attack aircraft. The political process drives the insanity of trying to serve multiple purposes with thousands of design engineers strategically located in as many Congressional districts as possible. I think drones should be used for every application that they are appropriate for -- why put people on the line when computers can do the work? But just like the JSF project attempted to serve many masters, assuming drones are the optimal decision for all military aircraft requirements is dumb. The Chinese and Russians are building high performance aircraft for less than $1 Trillion. There's a reason for that. We can too.
Nelson69 13y ago
Has it not been realized? I think it has, there is a ton of drone stuff going on. The DoD hasn't rewritten the war fighting manual and strategy yet though so manned fighters and bombers are still part of the plans but I don't think UAVs haven't proven themselves. This is a titanically slow moving organization... lives and deaths are on the line with their decisions. One of the real lesson of the JSF is the amount of institutional inertia surrounding it. We were effectively pot committed before they had demo planes to play war games with. They spent 10+ years selling the idea. How do you kill a project like that? There is a certain irony to how the US picks weapons platforms too, everybody wants a new toy so who says "no" when the toy isn't quite up to snuff? So politically, we kill all the things the JSF is going to replace, we build love for the new platform, promise the world when nobody has even seen it. The whole "jump jet" fascination is an interesting one, why do you need to land or take off a fighter/bomber from a place where you can't fuel it, can't reload it, and it doesn't carry cargo and people? Now the concept is cool, I get that, I just don't see where it fits in to the war fighting plan in a general way, not until planes have like nuclear reactors for fuel or something like that. It just doesn't seem generally useful.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  The Marines have "amphibious assault ships" that are sort of like aircraft carriers for helicopters. S/VTOL aircraft can operate from these locations. I was told by a Marine that the Harrier obsession stems from Guadalcanal in WW2. The waters in the Solomons were heavily contested and the Navy basically took off and left the Marines stranded. That institutional memory is hard to shake.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The Marines have "amphibious assault ships" that are sort of like aircraft carriers for helicopters. There actually very much like medium-deck carriers, which are the biggest carriers anyone not the US Navy operates anywhere. The Marines seaborne aviation capacity carried on its various amphibious ships outclasses, IIRC, all the non-US naval aviation in the world combined.
  - spartango 13y ago

mehwoot 13y ago

> Once the huge, lumbering aircraft carriers are sitting on the sea floor, they will be replaced by heavily armored battleships. In a major war, the only sea launched aircraft will be VTOLs. Huh... there isn't a single battleship in service in any navy in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#Modern_times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#Modern_times

newbie12 13y ago
When the carriers are sunk, it is our submarine fleet with its cruise missiles that will carry the day.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
There will be in a major war. Nothing else can stand up to nukes and lasers.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  The only way a battleship would help against nukes is if it somehow fell on whoever is in charge of the nukes.
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    Battleships can survive close hits by airburst nukes. To defend against this, the opponent must either use massive overkill, or use underwater bursts near their own coasts. Either approach has dreadful economic costs. War is the art of making the opponent's costs exceed their resources. One way to create costs is to make weapons that are unreasonably durable—the battleship is the extreme end of the spectrum.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      There was an airburst test that battleships survived, but the nuke was way off target, even well shielded animals onboard died so if it was crewed it would have been a floating coffin and the nuke was a 20 kiloton device. One single Trident missile holds up to twelve 500 kiloton bombs.

greedo 13y ago

People have been saying the demise of the carrier is upon us for 5 decades. Yet nothing offers the flexibility and power projection capabilities of a CVBG. And guess what submariners call "heavily armored battleships?" Targets... And if you think CVNs are expensive, you should research how much retrofitting an Iowa Class with a STOVL flight deck would cost. And then factor in manning costs for a ship that needs close to 5000 sailors.

JackFr 13y ago
And when (if?) energy weapons and railguns become a reality, all of a sudden a 100MW reactor is not a bad thing to have.

Zimahl 13y ago

Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. I know people fear China but they are no cold-war Russia. Anything conventional and the US is in the lead by a lot. There's no reason to discuss anything nuclear because everyone loses in that case.

dctoedt 13y ago
> Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. There have been reports that the Chinese have developed and brought to initial operational status the DF-21D, a medium-range, hypersonic, anti-ship ballistic missile specifically designed to be a carrier-killer [1]. The concern is that our carriers might be chased from the Western Pacific. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_Anti-ship_ballistic_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_... -- also http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china-may-limit-carrier-killers-range/ http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china...
- mpyne 13y ago
  Maybe there's something I'm missing about the DF-21D, but even assuming it doesn't miss the carrier while traveling at a hypersonic speed, Big Explody Things dropping on top of American carriers during wartime is not exactly a new thing in the annals of warfare. It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. Obviously an ASBM may change the calculus of whether you send carriers in early in the conflict (preferring instead to use submarines with cruise missiles to take out Dong Feng launch sites or whatever you'd have been trying to bomb in the first place). But I don't see how ASBM is a guaranteed single-shot carrier kill by any stretch either.
  - dctoedt 13y ago

JackFr 13y ago

Aircraft carriers on the sea floor? Not if they're refitted with megawatt lasers, railguns, UAVs and USVs.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Sea mines and stealth torpedos are still hard to defend against with anything besides a very thick hull. At that point it is a battleship.