This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
. m going to start with the public debate about sea-based avia- ,0n- It reminds me of that fine sequence at the end of the great j^0v’e’ Casablanca. I am sure you all recall that, just after Ufnphrey Bogart—as Rick, the cafe owner—has shot the Ger- 0130 Colonel Strosser in order to permit the Lazlos to fly to safety n ortugal, Claude Raines, the Vichy French Captain of Police, „ ns t0 a subordinate and says with a wry smile and a fine pause, ° 0nel Strosser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.” by do I say that I believe the public debate, year after year, ^erely rounds up the usual suspects and thus misconstrues a 4et) er *ssues? If one were to listen primarily to the public fo atC' °ne wou^ get tf*e impression that the main question be- re ns is whether the Navy is to continue to fly from carriers that is erate Conventional aircraft such as the F-14 and F-18 or whether it J"0 rnove immediately to much smaller carriers designed to carry y Vstol aircraft. At the very least, the public debate would m to tell us, a major question we must decide now is the m er of such large-deck carriers that the Navy is to have for the several years. By “large-deck,” I mean anything above, say a ’ tons that can carry high-performance conventional take-off tanding aircraft, that is, CWs, CVs, and CVNs. a , e will have, for some years, 8 conventional large-deck carriers, e . ^ nuclear powered large-deck carriers, all of which presently n or are under construction. The only capital investment we the t0 rna^<e *n or<fer to maintain these 12 in service until nearly SLp tn<^ °f tbe century the Service Life Extension Program, or ^ Ptogram—a set of lengthy overhauls that begins with the toga next year. There is also widespread agreement that a 13th 1 &e~deck carrier is needed in order to maintain 12 deployable ^ bedecks, since one will always be in the SLEP program for the number of years. So the 13th large-deck would need to come l9s ^orce by the time the Midway retires sometime in the late S' This being the case, the Administration has recommended py3t a '-3th large-deck conventionally powered carrier be built in tart'980 baSt year’ *n FY l979, C°ngress Pr0P0sed that a nuclear au Ktr constructed this year instead. The President vetoed the ,, 0r'Zation bill, not on the issue of “whether a 13th carrier but 't'hat kind of carrier.” But one way or another, if the issue of its tivara^ter'stics can get sorted out between the legislative and execu- ranches, a large-deck carrier is quite likely to be authorized the' l980' On rbe other hand, the high unit cost of carriers and lrnportant role in sizing the rest of the Navy make it seem e y that more than one more large-deck will be authorized in | Neither the large-deck aircraft carrier, such as the Enterprise (opposite), nor the fast, powerful fighter plane, such as the F-14s on that ship’s deck, are the issues, says the Under Secretary of the Navy. The Administration is agreed with the Navy that there will be plenty of need for both for some time to come. That also answers the questions as to the ways carriers might be used in the future and whether shore-based aviation might be substituted for ship-based air. What, then, are the central issues? They are the future of powered-lift aircraft, the role of the cruise missile, and the attitudes taken in the Navy and in the Department of Defense toward innovation. |
®ntral Isrhab f Cu.. UI.^u.1 AirloHnn | 14: |
the near future. So there seems to be evolving a broad agreement to keep and maintain 13 large-deck carriers for some time. There are those in both Congress and the Executive Branch who want more and those who want less, but in my view neither will prevail.
Even though the propulsion system and the tonnage of the 13th carrier is a hot issue, the questions of whether the ship is to be of approximately 60 thousand tons or approximately 90 thousand tons, and what her exact characteristics are to be, in the long sweep of things, are not the sort of issues on which the entire future of naval aviation rises and falls. They are certainly not trivial issues. But there is much more general agreement in the government about the number of large-decks to be maintained for most of the rest of this century than the public debate reflects.
If the number of large-deck carriers is really not issue, then the great debate about the F-14 versus the F-18 must be the heart of the dispute about the fu' ture of sea-based aviation. Right? I similarly respond to that question in the negative. It is no secret that within the Department of the Navy, uniform and non-uniform, at the senior levels, our first preference in 1977 was to proceed with an all F-14 Navy fighter force, the A-18 for Navy light attack, the F-18 for the Marine fighter, and the AV-8B for Marine light attack. As the budget process proceeded throughou that fall and into the winter, it became clear that that program was more expensive than could be afforded within the guidance under which we were going to have to operate. Under those circumstances we decided, at the Department of the Navy level, t0 recommend that, if a reduction had to be made, ollf second choice' was a program which would continue the all F-14 fighter force for the Navy, maintain A-7S for Navy light attack, develop the AV-8B for the Marine light attack, and make the F-4S last as long aS possible for the Marine fighter force. The ultimate decision that was included in the President’s FY 1979 budget was to proceed with the F-18/A-18 develop' ment, to provide three-quarters of the Navy’s fighter force (18 squadrons) with F-l4s and the rest with F- 18s, to use F- 18s for Marine fighters, and A-18S f°r Navy light attack, and to defer for the time beinf the decision on whether to use AV-8Bs or A-18S Marine light attack, depending upon the progress the AV-8B program. A year later, this past winter-
1 e administration proposed to Congress termination 0 the AV-8B program.
With that by way of background, I suggest that p0rne of the public discussion of this issue has been ar off the mark. It has not been off the mark in stating that there was a Navy Department recommendation at one stage of the budget process that ^as reversed—that is true. But some have used this CISion to argue that the decision to procure six fluadrons of F-I8s for the Navy marks a grand depar- e ln strategy for sea-based aviation—a decision j t0 8° *n harm’s way but to use the carriers only letnam-type wars in the future, where sophisti- ated Soviet threats would not have to be faced. That ls not true.
Yes, the
superi
Well
ass^^ t*len’ ^ the public debate is off the mark in , tuing that the main issue is either the number of
of conventional
F-14 is optimized for maritime air °nty and fleet air defense and is particularly equipped to 'defend the fleet against the long- 8e stand-off threat of Soviet Backfire bombers ed with air-to-surface missiles. And the F-18 is ^Ptimized to be a strike fighter. But the F-14 is far 0rn useless as a dogfighter or escort, and the F-18, p appropriate air-to-air munitions, will also be far <>rn useless for fleet air defense against a long-range c nd-off threat. Moreover, three-fourths of the ,.avys fighters will still be F-l4s. So, I do not be- eve tfiat the decision to proceed with the F/A-18 can °nably be characterized as one which puts the ^ ers or sea-based aviation primarily in the busi- -j-^Ss of responding only to third world contingencies.
F^A-18 force will be a highly capable, high fi ,0rrnance suite of aircraft for carrier aviation ter and attack for essentially the rest of this cen- fi fe~^eck carriers or the type
ter-attack aircraft that will fly from them for issu « the rest of this century, what is the major
substitution of supposedly cheaper land-based aviation for sea-based aviation. This question needs to be parsed. We need to look at specific missions in order to make any sense at all out of the discussion that is usually carried on about land-based versus sea-based aircraft. In the field of antisubmarine warfare we already use land-based aviation to a great extent and it makes an extremely valuable contribution to our antisubmarine warfare effort. The P-3s are a relatively low cost and high payoff force for the foreseeable future. But for many areas of the world, such as in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (where basing rights could be in question under some scenarios) for wide ocean areas quite distant from land bases, and for quick response to a fleet commander’s needs, obviously sea-based ASW aviation forces are going to continue to be essential also. How about anti-surface warfare? The Soviets have a Backfire to attack our surface ships. If the Backfire is so good, why don’t we have one as well? I think the answer to this is straightforward. Anti-surface warfare is not our toughest problem, given our existing assets and the weapons we can put on them. We have today, and will have for the foreseeable future, a number of ways to do the anti-surface warfare mission: with carrier- based aircraft, with surface combatants armed with missiles such as Harpoon and Tomahawk, and with submarines armed with torpedoes and missiles as well. To be sure, there may be some utility in equipping our land-based ASW aircraft with, for example, Harpoon in order to provide them with a surface attack capability. But we have a number of ways to do the anti-surface mission and I don’t see that an American Backfire should be high on our list of priorities for accomplishing it.
The most sophisticated part of the debate of whether we should or should not substitute land- based aviation for sea-based aviation centers around anti-air warfare.
Why should the Backfire threat not be dealt with by land-based aviation? It seems to me, that as a first
The F-I8A Hornet on its first flight, at St. Louis, on 18 November 1978. This aircraft, "optimized to he a strike fighter” for both the Navy and the Marine Corps, “will be far from useless for fleet air defense against a long-range stand-off threat. ” The single-place twin jet aircraft, built by Northrop and McDonnell Douglas, is credited with a top speed of Mach 1.8.
of
this is coming to be a real possibility in some parts
approximation, the problem is different in the world’s major theaters. In the Pacific Backfires flying out of, for example, the Kamchatka Peninsula into the open reaches of the Pacific, are not readily dealt with by land-based interceptors because of geography. In the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, the problem is a more complex one, because routes that the Backfire might take from bases in the Soviet Union pass over or near countries with which the United States is allied or at least has a close relationship. Keeping in mind these differences, the issue whether to substitute land-based for sea-based aviation for the mission of maritime anti-air warfare is, I believe, most easily understood as part of the problem of developing naval force structure in general. People often like to try to design naval and other forces according to very specific scenarios which represent a snapshot in time. The reason for this is simple—it makes the job easy for the analyst, particularly the analyst who wants to use quantitative methods. The problem is that naval forces are particularly vital and useful for dealing, not with a snapshot in time, but with the much more dynamic problem of the transition—a transition we want to prevent—from peace to war. If one
A UH-46A helicopter preparing to carry cargo by the netload from the combat store ship Sylvania (ATS 2) to a carrier. This “vertical on hoard" mission is one of a number which for long have been carried out satisfactorily by helicopters. Under current conditions, there seems no need to develop a VSTOL aircraft for such tasks, most of which often call for low speeds, short hauls, and much hovering.
assumes we won’t look at the problem until war is already underway, or that wars only arise from causes which pull an alliance together rather than fracture it, or that land bases are available sufficiently far in advance of hostilities for logistics to be in place and for political arrangements to be made, then, in many circumstances, land bases are going to be cheaper than aircraft carriers as platforms for anti-alf maritime warfare in these regions.
But wars don’t come about that way. Our focuS should be on the real way wars evolve from crises> not on their abstract essence. Wars arise through diS' turbing developments which divide alliances rather than unify them. Wars can also evolve out of criseS in parts of the world in which the Soviets have acquired overseas bases when none, for political reasons, are available to the United States. Increasingly the world. I believe that it is for reasons such as these that the decision has been made to proceed to construct another large-deck carrier and to maintain ^ large-decks for the foreseeable future. So on the toplC of substituting land-based for sea-based aviation, aS in the other elements of the public debate over naval aviation, I hear more an echo of Claude Rainess great line from Casablanca than I hear the clash 0 solid arguments on pressing current issues.
Well, what are the issues in sea-based aviation* especially if I want to dismiss so many that seem t0 some other people to be so highly relevant?
One is the future of powered-lift aircraft.
First of all, why do I use the term powered l*ff rather than VSTOL? It has been suggested to me as a more general and more useful term to describe, ovef" all, any aircraft in which a portion or all of rbe engine thrust is diverted or vectored to provide m1’ or acceleration in a different direction. Powered 1*^ includes a wide variety of concepts including VSTOC STOL, STOVL, rotary wing, compound rotary wing* vertical attitude take-off and landing, and many others. Why.am I quibbling over language? In Paf£ because the VSTOL debate has, in the past, often centered around enthusiasm or lack thereof for very spe' cific types of aircraft. More recently it has centered around the Navy VSTOL type A and type B Pr°' grams. VSTOL is sometimes not taken to include rotary wing vehicles, but the term powered lift cef' tainly does include them. Indeed, helicopters are by far the most important powered lift vehicles in ns^ today. So I’m using “powered lift” because I want to suggest that there is some utility in broadening fbe normal debate.
Why is powered lift for sea-based aviation an in1' portant issue? This has been succinctly stated by rbe
*nto the carrier forces for many years: changing
the
very
f ■ lrnportant step of putting helicopters on our sur- >nfl COm^atantS' f?urt^er’ there may be advantages in *§ht maneuverability for certain kinds of ^wered-lift
aircraft—vectored thrust is one exPie. Moreover our recent seabased air platform les have shown us that powered-lift aircraft atlng off of large-deck carriers may show some
°Per;
°Per;
Ch' f
le of Naval Operations several times over the rse of the last two or three years. Powered lift t ates for us the possibility of introducing flexibility toe non-carrier part of our surface forces. If other fart types could be based on smaller ships, this u d help make it easier for us to introduce flexibil-
y >nto the fleet in the same way it has been introduced •
the IT11SS*ons an<d capabilities of ships by changing r ,aircraft that are assigned to them. We have al- y been doing this for several years by taking the ^ ational advantages, such as being able to operate po en 3 Carr*er ‘s slowed, damaged, or even without
finally, although we anticipate having 13 largely carriers out to the end of this century, when the $y*~resta^s finally begin dropping out of the force, we d at least examine the possibility that following ffiul ^me’ ^or che 2 1st century, it may be possible to Pla t^le nurr,her of our primary aircraft-carrying c orms at sea, our carriers, by building signifi- o y smaller and more numerous ones. This will y he possible with further development of ad-
Though “the multiplication of our carrier forces by substituting small decks for large decks is far in the future,” the “potentiality of having, say, several dozen rather than only one dozen carriers is one that we should not pass up lightly. ” Consider how much better the Navy could do its work if this trio of medium-sized ships, the Cleveland (LPD 7), Alamo (LSD 33), and Iwo Jima (LPH 2), could carry not only the landing forces they now can carry, but also fighter or attack aircraft to suit the occasion.
vanced powered-lift aircraft. Such aircraft and any such multiplication of our carrier forces by the substitution of small decks for large decks is far in the future. But the potentiality of having, say, several dozen rather than only one dozen carriers is one that we should not pass up lightly. The point is that that issue—the ship issue—need not be decided for some 10 years or so, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when we have to decide what size ships to replace the Forrestals with. To have that alternative available, however, we need to begin serious work on powered-lift aircraft development soon.
I certainly am in no position to evaluate now whether high performance powered-lift fighter attack aircraft can be a reality at a reasonable cost in the 21st century, or whether powered-lift aircraft of adequate reliability can be available sooner for other missions. On the other hand, I do not believe that even the very best aeronautical engineers are capable of making a very good prediction, much less a decision, about that now either.
Over the past year or two in the Navy Department we have been evaluating the lessons learned from the studies that industry has provided to us on the VSTOL type A and type B programs. One lesson which seems to me clear with respect to the non-fighter/at- tack, the VSTOL A, missions—early warning, antisubmarine warfare, marine assault, and suchlike—is that the job of designing a VSTOL A aircraft at a reasonable cost that can lift relatively heavy payloads, achieve the speed of a jet aircraft such as the S-3A, land and take off of very small surface platforms in very high sea states, and demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in reliability is a very formidable task indeed. I have a hunch that something will have to give. For these non-fighter/attack missions, we must be especially attentive to the possibilities of using what we have for a while, through conversions in lieu of procurement, service life extension programs, and the procurement of modernized versions of existing aircraft. The pressures on resources are simply too great for us to do otherwise. We should also continue to pursue the possibility of using powered-lift aircraft—the fewer types the better—for these missions. But I think this will happen sooner rather than later if we do not demand too much of ourselves. For example, we must ask how important speed is, really, for these non- fighter/attack missions, given the possibility of dispersed basing or staging. A number of these non- fighter/attack missions—marine assault, search and rescue, vertical on board delivery, and some ASW are, after all, done by helicopters today. Less demanding speed requirements for some of the other missions could open these missions to low disc-loading aircraft of various sorts and ease the development problem significantly.
As far as high performance fighter/attack carrier aircraft go, a combination of the F-14 and the F/A-18 will last well into the 1990s and give us some time to assess our program. If we can get off the mark now with the engine and other developments needed for high performance powered-lift fighter/attack aircraft, then we will know by the end of the 1980s whether such aircraft will be available and whether it makes military and financial sense to replace the For- restals with small carriers and conventional aircraft with powered-lift ones. If high performance powered-lift fighter/attack proves impossible, too costly to manage, or does not provide us with a true improvement in operational capability and flexibility, we still have several years before we have to begin developing a conventional take-off and landing
follow-on to the F-14 or the F/A-18.
Another major issue for the relatively near term has to do with the AV-8B—an improved version of the current Harrier with doubled range and payload for the Marine close air support mission. The administration has proposed terminating the program this year. It was a close call, driven I believe by the objective of using a common aircraft—the F/A-18—f°r as many missions as possible. For the long run, however, whatever Congress decides to do on the AV-8 program, our extensive experience with the AV-8A has confirmed the importance of the basing flexibility that powered-lift can provide for future fighter/ attack aircraft. And for those who think they have the last word on range and payload limitations 0 such aircraft, whether, land- or sea-based, whether Harriers or some other design, I suggest that in the interest of avoiding self-embarrassment they checK out the results of the British work with the ski jump. It would not be the first time they’ve shown us the way of the future in sea-based aviation.
Finally, what about the role of cruise missiles? 1 will note just one or two main points. As long aS men fight, and I fear that will be for some time> naval aircraft will have a very major role in protect' ing our island nation’s security. Furthermore, the military importance of being able to execute multipl£ re-strikes rapidly, to deliver large ordnance loads, t0 attack moving targets on land, to do quick poststrike assessments, and to recall strikes once launched—to name but a few examples—will mean that those aircraft will have pilots in them.
But to attack certain heavily defended p0'nt targets—such as ships and the next war’s equivalent of the Thanh Hoa Bridge—and to perform spec*11 missions in which heavy pilot attrition might be e*' pected, such as defense suppression, I confess to a degree of enthusiasm for pushing cruise missile ^e' velopment. As the aviator’s partner? Certainly- his replacement? Not as far as my poor vision extends. -
1 hope I have said enough to, at least, provoke thought about some issues regarding the future 0 naval aviation. I have tried not to deliver a party line. The only issue about which I feel strongly ‘s ‘l philosophical one.
The development of weapon systems, in my vie"’’ is an iteration. It is a process in which, on the one hand, technology creates opportunities, new aP' proaches, which we are later able to use in unexpected ways. And, on the other hand, it is a process in which we plan ahead to accomplish known m,s sions and design technology to cope with specibc problems. Both sides, both attitudes toward devel
the
m is to perpetuate our current poor perceptions n judgments far more than they deserve. We
never have gone forward with helicopter de-
8 to be able to. . .
aope
'inside and outside the military. They tend to
°Pment, are important. To rely too heavily on plan- airj& for certain specific current missions and on what ay seem to be cost-effective ways to accomplish
Would
Ve opment after World War II if we had been forced Wait until we could foresee using helicopters to attack tanks with wire guided missiles, drop and nterrogate sonobuoys using sophisticated signal Processing gear, sweep mines, and lift 16 tons verti- y» and moreover until we could calculate accu- ately the cost effectiveness of doing these jobs. But Se are some of the most important missions that st World War II helicopter development has ^ f°r the 70s and ’80s. It didn’t happen the Us r Way around. The possibilities only occurred to s after we spent some painful years working out a new way to fly.
the other hand, to develop every new technoly that comes along and only then to seek ways to k " 0lt ’’ is to waste time and effort and to proceed ^ a sort of philosophy of development by emotion.
must neither solely push technology and then fo ^°r ways t0 expl°it it nor design technology specific missions. It is only when one’s mind is ^ to both of these attitudes and approaches that b[^a ’■‘‘toughs in the art of war really become possi-
g
naers°n once said that all political thought, in ofy clvilization, is divided into two parties: the party be mern°ty and the party of hope. The same might Sa’d, I think, of the business of developing mili- tjc^lCaPabilities in general and naval aviation in par-
talk to a lot of people who represent the party of f ttory. They know that if you begin to move away a known and proven military capability, you etter have something demonstrably more effec- ln hand to take its place. The wisest of these bi u’ ^owever, preserve what is proven in order to the' °n worst simply continue to re-live
fa *r ■ °Wn Past successes ancl to cleave to the Iar they often do it with personal style and c°nd ^°U Can reco8n‘ze them by the forceful and g0^escending way they say, “Hell, you’re never
^ also talk to a number of members of the party of
js .lrnPatient with the slow pace at which innovation ’ntroduced by our bureaucracies and they search job °US^ an<f restlessly for better ways to do the th ' kest these continually test and season °wn ideas and stress those that can make a
quantum jump in some recognized military characteristic—greater firepower, or mobility, or surprise. The worst are the passionate sub-optimizers—the ones who have come across some new idea, only distantly related to military capability, and want to get on that pony and ride it, no matter what. My point is that the ablest members of the party of memory and the ablest members of the party of hope have more in common with one another than is often supposed. It is only through their interaction that we become better able to defend our country. The best of both parties know that our objective in thinking about and developing naval aviation forces of the future, or any other forces, is not to avoid potentially interfering with somebody’s favorite other program, is not to avoid at all costs being wrong. Nor is it our objective to develop something new, a new aircraft, or a new kind of high performance airframe, for its own sake. We should not be trying to preserve tail hooks forever, nor to repeal the laws of physics.
Our objective is none of these. Our objective is to be able to go in harm’s way and to put the enemy on the bottom. Fast. Period. If it helps us do that, whether it has a tail hook or a rotor, whether its rumored that the Deputy Assistant Secretary, or some senior officer, or the budget examiner, likes it or not, we want it. We’ll let the rest of them catch