Exposing the “Silly Exercise”

So one of the new buzz pieces in Defense News is about how pitting the F-35 against the A-10 in a test of CAS capabilities would be a “silly exercise.” First, the good news: the Chief is correct — it would be silly. Now the bad news: not for the reason Defense News chose to quote. Now for the worse news: the Air Force is partially to blame for the confusion.

Lets begin at the beginning. Dr. Gilmore’s team at DOT&E is the chartered agent to ensure the F-35 is operationally suitable for the Services. I’ve worked with Mr. Curt Cook (who is the oft quoted source of last week’s articles advocating comparative testing) and he is talking about base-lining the A-10 versus the F-35 in order to eliminate the Hawg’s CAS halo and biases for and against the F-35’s. That is not about agendas, it’s about test design.

That’s the context of the question Jamie McIntyre asked Gen Welsh and Secretary James at Monday’s press conference: “is there going to be some sort of head-to-head demonstration to show what the F-35 can do compared to the A-10?” The Chief does indeed respond that “that would be a silly exercise” but the article doesn’t really let him finish where he finished. Following a few twists and details, the article clinches the AF position with “the Air Force never intended to use the multi-role fighter jet as a direct replacement for the A-10, which is a single-mission platform dedicated to close-in attack.”

But the problem is that’s not really where the Chief finished. Following “that would be a silly exercise,” Chief Welsh said “I don’t know anything about that. The F-35's mission in the close air support arena will be to do high-threat close air support in a contested environment that the A-10 will not be able to survive in. That will be the role of the F-35, and it will not be able to do that until it’s fully mission capable in our full operational capability at age 2021 and beyond. So the idea that the F-35 is going to walk in the door next year when it becomes IOC and take over for the A-10 is just silly. It’s never been our intention and we have never said that. And so that’s not a plan.”

And that’s where the Air Force seems caught in a dilemma.

The Air Force’s capability to achieve air superiority versus a determined adversary has been eroding for two decades and — as a fighter pilot — I can say it’s getting pretty daunting. I used to have a world class suite of electronic protection and attack capabilities to confuse adversary pilots and SAM operators — now my outdated capabilities are often merely buying time on the margin, or worse, leaving me completely defenseless. I used to be the only guy on the block able to multi-target (target more than one adversary aircraft at a time) with a “launch and leave” capability. Combined with aircrew skill developed by peerless training, that was the US qualitative advantage that mitigated our quantitative disadvantage. (We always fight an away game and the home team usually has a quantitative air advantage — Iraq 2003 and Afghanistan excepted). I could hold most, though not all, targets at risk — and there were some “super MEZs” that were the domain of B2s and ICBMs — but, in general, we gave the President conventional escalation dominance. That’s strategy-speak for “we ensured the President had the biggest stick on the block, and no one had to resort to nukes.” That’s kind of a big deal.

Now I’m not so sure.

Fighter forces have evolved over the past 20 years, but the evolution has focused on the air support mission. Fighter and Attack aircraft evolved optical targeting systems that allowed us to “see” the battlefield about as well as an RPA so we could overwatch individual troops sneaking up on their objectives. Our precision weapons and datalinks ensured we could be ready to deliver devastating precision firepower at a moment’s notice. Our ground forces were routinely outnumbered in bad-guy country but always had the advantage in terms of firepower. We radically refocused the emphasis of Fighter and Attack operations on TTPs for air support, Combat Search and Rescue, and SOF support missions. We did it because we were part of a Joint team tasked by the President, and because those innovations directly contributed to tactical success and ground force survival.

Year by year, Airmen transferred risk onto ourselves.

Russia and China learned well the lessons of the Gulf War — America’s Joint conventional might is based upon the strength of her air components (mainly in the Air Force, but also in the Navy and Marines). It is impossible to imagine a Joint campaign that doesn’t first secure contested high-ground. Take that away, and hold America at bay. But I’m still flying a variant of heat-seaking missile built the year I graduated highschool (I’m no spring chicken), and many fighter airframes are fast surpassing their design service life. Fighter aircraft built in the 1980s, and used in 25 years of non-stop contingency operations begining in the 1990's, and now expected to remain in service for over half a century. They are showing their age. Sadly, they are also often experiencing fatigue failures no engineer anticipated.

So after a 20+ year fighter post Cold War procurement holiday (ploughshares, right?), combined with an intense operational tempo of combat air forces supporting joint action and ensuring policy all over the globe, we need to have a heart-to-heart America.

I don’t think we can do what you expect us to do.

I don’t think we can presume conventional success anymore. I don’t think we can assume US-led Coalition freedom of action for granted anymore. I think that we’re going to have to accept a human cost for intervention that we haven’t contemplated since Vietnam. America’s Airmen are still flying the planes Captain Scott O’Grady flew, but our adversaries have done anything but sit still with their defenses. (Oh how I wish I only had to fight SA-3s and SA-6’s).

We’ve done what we can with piecemeal modernization. Against any adversary more capable that Iraq, we should expect degradation and losses. I’m not sure our legacy airpower — equipped as it is — can give America dominant conventional options anymore, and the Nation may be left counting on silver bullets or the nuclear backstop (a whole other area of gross neglect). I think there could be a shitty day in the not-too-distant future where we talk about the targets that didn’t get struck, the troop transports that were shot down in flight, CSAR missions that couldn’t be supported, and how America is now turning its attention to diplomatically repatriating its fighting men and women while we seek peace with honor.

So the Chief is right that comparing the F-35 to the A-10 is silly. The F-35 will have a chance to survive and destroy targets within environments that the A-10 won’t. And the issue is not just about close air support — although that is vitally important issue. The point is to say that when an Airman, Sailor or Marine is doing CAS with an F-35, it is probably because the situation is so dire that the Joint Force Commander was willing to trade its ability to get “low and slow,” or “down and dirty,” in order to secure what they really need: force survival to gain Freedom of Maneuver.

The ability of the Air Force, Navy and Marines to deliver dominant air support has allowed the Army to reduce its organic artillery and become a faster, leaner force. If the Air branches do not have a high-end asset that provides freedom of air maneuver that spearheads land maneuver, the entire conversation changes.

On the high-end battlefield, speed is life.

So if the Army has to move more slowly because its air support has to pick apart air defenses — it becomesmassively more vulnerable. Should the land components have to return to the business model of bringing all of its own artillery to make up for the striking power currently delivered by Fighter and Attack assets, the Joint force will be stuck needing major force build-ups which depend on willing partners and a very accommodating (think Saddam in 1990) enemy. The speed and reach of modern mechanized land forces needs the speed and reach of aviation ISR and strike.

The Joint Force enjoys a virtuous circle when the capabilities of our air branches give the entire Joint team more speed. The A-10 is not optimized to that. It is not where it excels. Just like the A-10 precedes the troops to do CAS and Battlefield Interdiction (no defense like a good offense), it needs to be preceded by “counter air” fighter jets. That is why we have F-22s and F-35 and F-16 and F-15Es. Airmen know it takes the full-toolkit of capabilities rather than a monolithic solution.

The right tool for the right job matters.

And the Chief is also right when he went on to say that he wants “a capability that replaces the A-10, that does the low-threat CAS work in an even better way than the A-10 has been able to.” The simple fact is that if the high-end forces are doing their job right, then the air-support focused aviation forces are even more free to optimize for better air support. That means they can be even better tactically, and more sustainable operationally, than even the A-10. Because the fact of the matter is that the A-10 is/was the end-all-be-all of a particular armor-vs-armor battle-space that is decreasingly likely to present itself except in Eastern Europe and north of the Korean DMZ. “Swarms” of adversaries are still likely, but they are now less likely to be armored tanks than fast-attack craft or AK-47 wielding mujahideen. That means that the particular relevance of the 30mm cannon and “titanium bathtub” armor is up for debate, and that lets Airmen do some really savvy trades.

For instance, the persistence of the A-10 over most battlefields is a critical capability— often twice as much as an F-15E/16 — but even the A-10's 2–3 hour persistance could be further improvedby the efficiency of a turboprop (reference the 20+ hour missions of MQ-1/9s). The most requested weapons of many air support / CAS missions are precision/low-collateral damage weapons like the AGM-114 “HELLFIRE.” But miniaturization of components now allows fighters to carry four times as many guided rockets (essentially the equivalent of HELLFIRES) as the most equipped MQ-9 Predator, and each of the rockets will cost 1/10th as much.

Further, while Predator operators (pilots, sensor operators, and everyone who supports DGS operations) are some of the most under-celebrated Airmen of the past generation, even they are optimized to reconnaissance and attack rather than integrated combined arms and support to maneuver forces (something that is still best done on-the-scene rather than remotely). Finally, ability to operate from austere fields with minimal logistics radically enhances the Joint Force commander’s options for force disposition, but even A-10s can be limited getting into and out of unimproved fields due to their sheer size and weight. (Don’t even ask when an RPA will be built that can handle austere / rough field ops.) Something small, propeller driven, light, and manned may be the answer.

Maybe the Chief is on to something. We should be seeking ways to do the “low-end” even better — and even cheaper. As he said “we should be trying to get better as an Air Force.”

But this is where the Air Force finds itself on the horns of a dilemma, and it makes me wish that the Defense News article had not made up “the Air Force never intended to use the [F-35] as a direct replacement for the A-10, which is a single-mission platform dedicated to close-in attack.” First, I can’t find that quote anywhere else in the press conference (or any statement close to it). Second, we have said that. Since the 1997 QDR, we’ve justified the procurement plan of 1,763 F-35 based upon a one-for-one replacement of F-16s and A-10s.

So yeah, we said it.

And that’s why it is such a bold move by the Chief to talk about how we are thinking about an A-X — echoed by Commander of Air Combat Command’s “we may need to consider another weapons program.” Even Senate Armed Services oversight has acknowledged that the future needn’t be the A-10, but it must be effective. (Senator Kelly Ayotte in the 16 NDAA: “I welcome the opportunity to work with the Air Force to begin to identify the required capabilities and mission platform that could eventually replace the A–10.”) The ball seems to be in our court as an Air Force.

We’ve been true to our commitment to the Joint Force Commander and the American People. Airmen have earned an incredible track record of success every single time the President called upon the Military instrument of American power. We’ve changed the way states fight in response to the dominant impact of airpower. But we’ve used up all of the slack in our system. We are not only no longer able to maintain qualitative superiority, and we have Airmen standing the watch every day with known inferior equipment. We cannot delay recapitalization, but we need to stop the “burn the bridge” absolute commitment to generational leaps in our entire combat fleet that force us to look at only high-end replacements.

We need high-end for the high-end fight — and low-end for the low-end. Its the only way to have both — to afford both.

So yeah, comparing the A-10 to the F-35 is silly. Acting like a 30mm cannon and a titanium bathtub preserves the 20th century’s legacy of global alliances and Pax Americana backstopped by conventional airpower is even more silly. In fact, it’s dangerous. And that’s why the SASC, and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and COMACC are all talking about an “A-X.” The Chief has offered that the “capability gap” that A-X has to fill may be in “low-end” CAS.

This should be a no-brainer. Lets optimize the low-end mission with less resource intensive airpower so America can re-invest in in ensuring conventional superiority. Lets stop talking past each other long enough to realize that we’re all talking about the same thing. We need a high-low mix.

Lt. Col. Jeremy “Maestro” Renken is an instructor pilot in the F-15E Strike Eagle, amassing 170 combat missions in three combat deployments to OIF and OEF. He is a graduate of the USAF Weapons Instructor Course and recently returned from AFCENT where he contributed to the design of the counter-ISIS air campaign. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force or the U.S. government.