Tripping on Technology

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Too complex is how some military thinkers would classify this F/A-18 simulator. They wish to sim­plify the electronic light shows found in the cock­pits of frontline combat aircraft, believing that simpler means easier to afford and therefore better. Not so. Complex electronic systems are necessary to fight today’s modern battles.

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Even as far back as World War II, German ace Adolf Galland proposed a “right stuff” philosophy for fighter pilots. He said, “Only the spirit of attack, bom in a brave heart, will bring success to any fighter aircraft no matter how highly developed it may be.” Galland’s seat-of-the-pants flying and hand-eye skill for machine gunning worked well for him and his Messerschmitt. But today’s fighter aircraft are very differ­ent. Turbojets have replaced piston engines, and aircraft fly faster, farther, and higher. Electrical connections oper­ate control surfaces rather than mechanical cables and rods. The pilot’s eye is supplemented by a myriad of sen­sor, communications, computing, warning, and display systems. These advances extend beyond fighter aircraft to all types of weapons in every arena—land, sea, air, and space. These advances were essential. Today, decisions and actions that previously took minutes or hours, at ranges of a few thousand feet or a few hundred miles, are executed decisively in seconds and split seconds at dis­tances of hundreds or thousands of miles.

In earlier wars, men confronted each other in classical tests of courage, skill, and will. Then, at an accelerating pace, machines supplemented men. Modem warfare has turned inevitably to technological complexity, with ma­chines often replacing humans. In the new age of war, the man-machine complex is as much as a thousand times more capable and perhaps 20 times costlier. Just as no major enterprise could survive today without the power and speed of computers and communications systems, no major nation can defend itself today without the range, speed, and power of modem weapons, using electronics and computing as basic tools.

Now, a group of politicians and military thinkers has been trying to turn back the clock. The inspiration for this is the forced competition for the budget dollar. The rea­soning is that simpler must necessarily be easier to afford. This is not a new idea. It has been ongoing periodically throughout history. But sometimes simpler just will not do the job, or a new technology makes a prior one obsolete. Sometimes these lessons are difficult to learn.

I well remember standing on the deck of the USS Essex (CV-9) when I was a Navy ensign during World War II. We were awaiting the arrival of the first Grumman Hellcats. The Japanese Zero had proved to be a formidable opponent for the heavier, less maneuverable Grumman Wildcat. The Zero was a superb flying machine—light, high flying, and agile. To match it, naval aviators were asking for a fighter that would be even lighter, higher flying, and more agile. Instead, they got the Hellcat—less maneuverable than the Zero and even heavier than the Wildcat, but with about 50% more horsepower.

I remember the dismay of the aviators on the flight deck as the first stubby 9,000-pound Hellcat, a behemoth in its day, slammed into the arresting cables. “A Zeke will turn circles around that thing,” the pilots complained. The dis­may was increased further when the ship’s people discov­ered that this much larger airplane still required wing-fold­ing by human muscle.

What they did not realize immediately was that the Hellcat was capable of achieving higher speeds, was more powerful at altitude, and had superior armor and arma­ment than the Zero. In combat, the Hellcat simply over­whelmed the lighter and more agile Zero. During the war, radar was added to a number of Hellcats to enable them to operate at night. By the end of the war, several Navy and Marine night squadrons were flying. The score at war’s end was Zero 270, Hellcat 5,203—an incredible kill ratio of 19 to one.

In the early 1950s, I was a member of the Grumman team assigned to design and build a jet-powered light­weight fighter, the Navy’s FI IF Tiger, the first jet fighter with the “coke bottle” fuselage. Despite early problems with the jet engine, these aircraft were successful as flying machines. They had excellent handling qualities and were maneuverable. In fact, the Navy’s Blue Angels chose to fly this model in countless air shows.

As a weapon system, it was a lightweight fighter equipped with guns and Sidewinder missiles. But it was not as capable as the Vought F8U-1, an airplane with a larger, more powerful engine and higher speed. There­fore, we built two prototypes of the FI 1-1F Super Tiger. In 1957, this airplane exceeded Mach 2 and briefly held the altitude record at more than 70,000 feet.

But as we were developing these planes with superb performance and flying qualities, farsighted naval officers became interested in the possibilities of long-range radar and guided missiles. In a sense, this was the Hellcat versus the Zero all over again; this time, ironically, we were on the side of the Zero. Eventually, the Navy chose to de­velop the McDonnell F-4, an aircraft far heavier and less maneuverable than the Super Tiger. The F-4 Phantom could carry the best radar of its day, and it incorporated the Sparrow weapon system. This was a wise decision by the Navy although I could not have been convinced of that 25 years ago!

In the same period, the U. S. Air Force developed its own lightweight and simple fighter, the F-104. But the Air Force, too, saw the superiority of the Phantom. The F-104 was sold abroad, and the Phantom became the first-line fighter of both the U. S. Navy and Air Force.

One of the popular notions taught by the “simple is better” school is that weapons become less reliable as they become more complex. In his widely quoted book, Na­tional Defense (Random House, 1981), James Fallows states:

“The managerial ethic, the pursuit of high technology, the culture of procurement and indifference—of left and right—to the intangible aspects of combat have driven American forces toward more expansive, com­plex systems, designed with less and less attention to the uncertainties of the battlefield.”

In fact, new technology has usually performed better and more reliably in the uncertainties of the battlefield. According to published reports, the relatively complex F-4 Phantom achieved a sortie rate of one-per-day at the height of the Vietnam War. This compares with one every three days for the much simpler aircraft of the Korean War and World War II.

In 1980, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) was

deployed in the Indian Ocean for a record 240 continuous days; her complex electronics-systems aircraft had a 95% sortie availability. Today, the Navy’s F-14 Tomcat, with all its highly sophisticated electronic systems, flies 95 to 98% of its scheduled Navy missions day in and day out.

Complex aircraft are safe too. The Air Force’s current and complex F-15 Eagle had only four major accidents in 1983 while flying 167,000 flight hours. Yet, between 1954 and 1956, three years of operation, the F-86—a sim­ple aircraft of two generations earlier—was dropping from the sky at a rate of nearly one-per-day.

The reliability of complex aircraft was possible because of an event occurring in 1957. Sputnik orbited the earth. The dominant aerospace program of the 1960s became America’s response to Sputnik: Apollo. Its reliability cri­terion was simple: 100% and no less. The Grumman Lunar Module program, which I directed, required design­ing a flying machine that could not be test-flown. The module would only fly outside the atmosphere, and it had to function perfectly on each first flight.

Meeting these objectives required meticulous attention to every engineering and manufacturing detail, from the initial paper studies until the last astronaut returned safely from the moon. We developed new management, procure­ment, manufacturing, and quality control methods. In short, we have learned how to make things work reliably, and we have applied much of what we learned to the air­craft we are building today.

A less dramatic but nevertheless significant develop-

ment has been the improvement, over the past decade, in the methods and equipment used in maintenance and re­pair. The equipment that stays in the hangar has been im­proved, as has the training of the technicians who operate it. At the same time, the equipment in the aircraft has not only become more reliable but it also has become able to diagnose its own ills so that it can be more easily repaired.

Over the past 20 years, the United States has become accustomed to a radical rate of change. The transistor be­came the large-scale integrated circuit. The microproces­sor was developed. Computer power continued to increase by orders of magnitude as its cost shrank. Society has been continually faced with increasingly complex choices and options.

The nature of war also changed. It became clear to poli­ticians, military planners, scientists, and field command­ers that future wars could be fought anywhere on or above the earth’s surface at any time of the day or night in any weather.

In the late 1950s, the Navy recognized the need for a strike aircraft that could deliver bombs on a target in any kind of weather, day or night, and also the need for a flying radar, communications, and computer center that could manage a battle in the skies above the carrier. These are complex missions, and the aircraft to handle them have been perfected during 25 years of modification and im­provement. In the beginning, our attention was focused on the system hardware. It was only after a period of time that we began to grasp the importance of software and the need for its continuing refinement.

Today, spaceborne and aerial reconnaissance are pow­erful peacekeeping tools. In moments, we can get data vital to national security and make prompt, positive re­sponses. Satellites routinely detect and track new missile tests and weapons deployments. The E-3 AWACS is de­ployed to trouble spots worldwide to eliminate the element of surprise and thus reduce risk of war. Many nations— Israel, Japan, and the United Kingdom, for example— have seen the value of advanced early warning through aerial surveillance. In most cases, there is simply no other way to do the job.

But is all this complexity really necessary? The only way to answer this question is to examine what U. S. forces are up against.

Recently published information indicates the Soviets are building 1,260 fighter aircraft annually, compared to the U. S. Navy’s and Air Force’s combined 352. In addi­tion, the Warsaw Pact forces have an overwhelming ad­vantage in the number of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and artillery pieces. The argument for credible forces in being is particularly powerful to those who recall the blitz­krieg in Western Europe and the disaster at Pearl Harbor.

We simply cannot match the other side man for man, tank for tank, or plane for plane. They will always have more. Our forces, to be a credible deterrent, must be more capable, and capability in weapon systems is a function of technology.

Keeping ahead of the Soviets in capability is not an easy assignment. Their air defense radars and surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems may well be superior to ours today. Certainly, they are more numerous. An aircraft such as the MiG-25 “Foxbat,” optimized for the intercep­tor role and available in large numbers, is an engine and airframe combination with remarkable capabilities. Avia­tion Week reports the Soviets are deploying their next gen­eration interceptor, an improved “Foxbat,” the MiG-31 “Foxhound.” With new engines, the “Foxhound’s” Mach 2.4 speed, more than 1,000-mile range, and 80,000- foot service ceiling all rival our finest airframes.

Our response is based on a key technology. Today, the performance of the airplane is not as important as the per­formance of the electronic systems inside it. By constantly improving the sensors, computers, displays, guidance, and control systems, we can see the enemy farther away, keep more accurate track of his movements, coordinate our own forces better, and control our weapons more ac­curately over the longer distances. Today’s long-range Phoenix missile could bring down an enemy plane—even the fastest or most maneuverable—long before its hapless pilot ever sees the F-14 fighter that fires it.

After all the theorists and critics have had their say, when all the exercises and simulations of war as it might be fought have been played, it is instructive to examine reality—war as it is. What is the answer to James Fal­lows’s assertions that the new procurements of high tech­nology lead to an ineffectual defense force amid the uncer­tainties of the battlefield?

Consider three recent engagements: the 1973 Arab-Is- raeli War, the 1982 hostilities between Israel and Syria in Lebanon, and the Falklands Conflict. Each conflict was distinctly different in motivation, nature, and results. Each demonstrated critical aspects of actual rather than theoreti­cal war. Each employed varying forms of technology used for maximum effect.

In the case of the Falklands, the United Kingdom was faced with the extension of power at a great distance from home. In the case of the Israeli actions in Egypt and Leba­non, the distances were trivial by comparison. The Falk­lands campaign demonstrated a lack of adequate electronic system capability. Most Mideast conflicts demonstrated professional and efficient use of electronics systems with convincing results.

In 1973, the Egyptians were equipped with new Soviet radar-guided SAMs along with communications jamming