U. S. Naval Aircraft and Weapon Developments in 1988

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As one of his last acts as President, Ronald Reagan released the budget for fiscal years 1990 and 1991. The Bush administration’s budget for next year will revise Reagan’s two-year submission to reflect the administration’s changes to and congressional action on the 1990 por­tion and the reallocations for 1991.

One principal and two secondary con­siderations are impacting the defense budget in general, and U. S. Navy pro­curement and development programs in particular. The overriding and most obvi­ous factor is fiscal constraint. The less obvious considerations are the Bush ad­ministration’s view of how best to serve national security interests, and the prog­ress of arms control negotiations within the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks, and the Conference on Disarmament in Europe (CDE), where confidence and security building mea­sures (CSBM) are being discussed. These secondary considerations will dictate the directions fiscal constraint will take within the Department of Defense.

Fiscal Constraints and Cuts

Fiscal constraint shrinks the already constrained Reagan defense budget, pre­sented to Congress in January 1989 and limited to 2% real growth, still further to zero growth beyond inflation. President George Bush’s overall guidelines for his defense budget, announced to Congress shortly after his inauguration, provide for a 3.1% increase over the fiscal year 1989 budget to compensate for inflation, but cut Reagan’s $305.6 billion fiscal year 1990 defense proposal by $6.3 billion to $299.3 billion. Budget plans for the fu­ture call for real growth of 1% in fiscal years 1991 and 1992, followed by 2% real growth in fiscal years 1993 and 1994.

The National Security Council’s on­going look at the force posture necessary to protect national security interests will undoubtedly drive the forthcoming cuts to some extent. President Bush’s national security advisor, retired Air Force Lieu­tenant General Brent Scowcroft, is al­ready on record advocating the with­drawal of U. S. carrier battle groups from their forward-deployed positions around the globe, substituting smaller numbers of surface combatants armed with cruise missiles. If the National Security Council endorses that position, budget cutters could argue for drastic cuts to the U. S. Navy’s fundamental force structure, which would negate the progress the Rea­gan administration made in rebuilding the fleet.

Even if the Navy escapes these funda­mental force structure cuts, the Soviets are sure to continue to demand the inclu­sion of naval forces in arms limitation agreements. Since late 1987, virtually every U. S. official visiting Moscow has been bombarded with Soviet arguments that naval forces must be included in con­ventional forces talks, as well as the START negotiations, in order to reach meaningful agreements. Already cap­tured under START are Trident, Posei­don, the nuclear-armed variant of the Tomahawk land-attack missile (TLAM- N), and their Soviet counterparts. The Soviets would also like to see carrier bat­tle groups captured, especially in light of their nuclear capability, which the Sovi­ets consistently describe as a “strategic nuclear reserve.” The air power display that Admiral William J. Crowe put on for Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Akhromeyev on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) last summer appar­ently reinforced the Soviets’ significant fear of the power of U. S. carrier battle forces. Limiting them seems to have be­come a Soviet obsession, though not yet a formal position at any arms talks.

Fiscal constraint has manifestations other than the common budgetary sur­gery. One the Europeans have been em­ploying for some time is codevelopment. Some codeveloped weapons are now appearing in the U. S. arsenal, most nota­bly the point defense Rolling Airframe

Missile codeveloped by the U. S. an Federal German navies. But other codevelopment programs have been fa'' ures, such as the low-cost antiradar drone Locust, a joint U. S. Air Force/Luftwaf'^e effort. The benefits of codevelopm^eIlt consist primarily of shared developmen costs and risks, and larger producti°ⁿ runs to keep unit costs as low as possible- The principal drawback is the vital neces sity to either agree or compromise ^olJ requirements. Major codevelopmen programs in their infancy are ^tn U. S./Federal German navies’ long-ran?e air-ASW capable aircraft (LRAAC^ effort, the U. S./Royal navies, surfae ship torpedo defense program, and ¹ U. S. Air Force/Japanese FSX. , codeveloped derivative of the Gene^r‘ Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon among other things, antisurface strike.

joint development, between services the same country. Several success' joint development programs are AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewin ^ programs, the advanced medium-m¹¹-- air-to-air missile (AMRAAM), and ¹ ^ ground-launched and sea-launched oru ^ used a leader/follower service appr°^a' while the cruise missile programs ployed a joint program office.

The Navy is currently using both V proaches in developing new joint de^v . opment programs. The Navy advan tactical fighter (NATF) and reciprocal ^ Force advanced tactical aircraft f°‘ the leader/follower approach, while . new Joint Remotely Piloted Vehicle fice is an example of the joint progj ^ office. Joint development for munih⁰ weapon programs has had a better s cess rate than platform programs. Th>⁵^ probably because the requirements f°^r ^ latter tend to get involved with basie e ments of the services’ individual proaches to basing, operational emp' | ment, and doctrine, while the former principally with the destruction of sin¹¹

DYNAMICS

_r(J^^ts once the release point has been

_C|j*ⁿ this development and acquisition Hie"³¹⁶’ how are particular naval capabil- _Cu ^s faring in the development and pro- h,_lJ^^r,lent arena? Tables 1 and 2 provide | jetary and status overviews of se- arvi ^Nayy research, development, test, p_f(. Valuation (RDT&E) programs and ffemcnt programs, respectively.

ifSic Nuclear Strike

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N| j_s°^r Purposes of this analysis, TLAM- Pi- : ^c°nsidered a tactical nuclear power I)5^JC₍^c>i°ⁿ weapon, leaving the Trident '°ften described as the Trident II)

missile as the only naval strategic weapon currently being developed and procured. In March 1988, Congressman Lcs Aspin (D-WI), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, cited the entire Tri­dent program as the perfect example of how such a program should be managed. Each milestone has been met on time or early; this record continued into 1989 with the on-schedule 26 January comple­tion of Oat pad launch testing. The first Trident D5-capable submarine, the USS Tennessee (SSBN-734), was commis­sioned in December 1988. Initial opera­tional capability for the new Trident D5 missile is scheduled for December 1989.

The Soviets are anxious to limit the

The Navy’s budget-driven force cuts have not curbed the Soviets’ obses­sion to include more U. S. naval forces in future arms limitation agreements. The nuclear-armed vari­ant of the Tomahawk has been caught, but the Soviets would like to see the other Tomahawks and the carriers covered also.

Fiscal constraints have spawned sev­eral successful codevelopment pro­grams, including the Navy/Air Force AMRAAM, fired here from an Air F’orce F-15.

number of Trident submarines since they consider the D5 missile exceptionally accurate, providing a hard target kill ca­pability. One of the principal themes in the 1988 book The Navy: Its Role, Pros­pects for Development, and Employment, written by three retired Soviet naval offi­cers with an introduction by the late Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, centered on the de­struction of enemy ballistic missile sub­marines at the start of any NATO/Warsaw Pact war. (See feature on this book in this issue, pages 131-148.) This is necessary, they tell the reader, because sea-launched ballistic missiles will increase their “combat effectiveness” through “an increase in accuracy and range of fire, the use of multiple warheads, their guidance to different targets, an improvement in countermeasures to antiballistic missile systems, and an increase in their operat­ing reliability and simplicity.” Though the authoritativeness of this book in an era of glasnost’ is open to question, this depiction probably accurately reflects Soviet naval threat perceptions generated by the Trident D5 missile.

The size of the Trident submarine fleet and resulting procurement of the D5 mis­sile will not be known until START is completed. Twenty-one submarines are programmed or planned, requiring 504 embarked missiles plus “pipeline” spares and test missiles. Procurement held steady at 66 per year through fiscal year 1989, dropping to 63 proposed for fiscal year 1990 and only 52 for 1991 as production tapers off.

Strike and Antisurface Warfare

This year as last, the A-12 Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) is key to future naval capabilities in these mission areas. Despite the Air Force’s unveiling of two

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of its highly classified stealth aircraft, the F-117 fighter aircraft and the B-2 bomber, the Navy has released remarka­bly little about the A-12. Officially, all that is releasable about the aircraft is con­tained in the following response to this author’s media query:

“The A-12 Advanced Tactical Air­craft is an attack aircraft which will replace the A-6 Intruder. Incorporat­ing industry’s newest technologies in its design, the A-12 will exceed the A-6 in performance and survivability. The A-12 will be built by McDonnell Aircraft Company, St. Louis, Mis­souri, and General Dynamics, Fort Worth, Texas. The engine will be a derivative of the General Electric F404 engine, and will be developed and manufactured at the General Elec­tric plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. The A-12 will have integrated avionics and an integrated electronic warfare system. It is designed to incorporate further advances when they become available.”

Other details have leaked to the press but are not confirmed by Navy sources, including the nomenclature of its two en­gines, F404-F5D2, and the assertion that the initial development aircraft are cur­rently under construction with production to commence in 1990. Also, the A-12 contractors are reportedly party to a memorandum of agreement with contrac­tors on the Air Force’s Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) and the Army’s Light Hel­icopter Experimental (LHX), which com­mits them to the use of Triservice Joint Integrated Avionics Working Group stan­dards for common avionics. Trade jour­nals indicate that the A-12’s sophisticated avionics package may not be ready for the first few airframes, so the current state-of-the-art package Grumman devel­oped for the cancelled A-6F Intruder may be fitted to the first dozen or so A-12s.

The key to the A-12’s success once it penetrates enemy airspace and acquires its targets will be the ordnance it can de­liver with precision against its aimpoints. One critical development program under way to develop effective ordnance for the A-12 and other Navy strike aircraft is the Advanced Interdiction Weapon System (AIWS). The press has defined AIWS as an unpowered, kinematically efficient airframe with an inertial navigation sys­tem, which will sell for $50,000 or less in fiscal year 1985 dollars. McDonnell Douglas, Texas Instruments, and Boeing Aerospace Corporation were selected in January 1989 to develop competing de­sign concepts. Milestone II full-scale engineering development (FSED) of the winning design or competing designs will be decided in July 1990.

AIWS constitutes half of the joint standoff weapon system (JSOW) pro­gram. The Air Force is involved with a NATO codevelopment program called the modular standoff weapon system (MSOW) which, in the interest of com­monality, was competing with improved versions of AIWS within the Department of Defense for approval. The compro­mise reached involved integrating com­mon preplanned product improvements (P³I) into the systems at some unspecified future date while continuing development of the baseline systems. In addition to the funds allocated for the Navy portion of the JSOW program listed in Table 1, the Air Force has allocated to JSOW $24.7 million and $34.6 million for 1990 and 1991, respectively.

Power projection also can be accom­plished by “silver bullets,” expensive missiles with a high probability of im­pacting their aimpoints with sufficient accuracy and explosive power to destroy them. Examples of such a system include the TLAM and the planned long-range conventional standoff weapon (LRCSW), variously known in the past as the ad­vanced sea-launched cruise missile and Excalibur. In December 1988, the De­fense Acquisition Board gave Milestone 0 approval (program launch) for LRCSW and designated the Navy as the lead ser­vice for concept definition of this joint Navy-Air Force effort.

Meanwhile, Tomahawk procurement and upgrades continue. On 14 December, the Navy issued a contract to McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Corporation, Mis­sile and Defense Electronics Division, for development of the Block III Tomahawk all-up-round (AUR) cruise missile. The $29.7 million contract integrates into the existing Tomahawk AUR a global posi­tioning system (GPS), time of arrival software, improved digital scene match­ing area correlator, and an insensitive munitions warhead/extended range pay­load section. Engineering work is ex­pected to be completed in October 1992, at which time the Block III Tomahawk improvements will be incorporated into the production line.

Calendar year 1988 Tomahawk orders reflect a significant evolution in the pro­gram. (See Table 2.) This shift in produc­tion to conventional land-attack versions will significantly enhance the Navy’s capability to project conventional power against high-value enemy land targets. The difficult problem of identifying which high-value enemy land targets are worth these “silver bullets” remains, however.

Air-to-ground ordnance procureme^n! declined in 1988. (See Table 2.) On the positive side, RDT&E on air-to-ground munitions is up considerably.

Antiair Warfare

The follow-on to the Grumman F-14V Tomcat is perhaps the most important issue in the antiair warfare mission area. The Navy ATF program is certain to be expensive. The Air Force is currently es­timating the flyaway unit cost of its ^ver' sion of the ATF at some $35 miH>°ⁿ (1985 dollars), but that is certain to g^r°'^v as do all aircraft programs; evidence sug­gests it may double or even triple. Earl; production runs of the F-14D upgrade Tomcat are budgeted at slightly rnore than $50 million at low levels of produc tion (24 per year), with the potential ⁰ that falling slightly as the production H^nL matures, or more dramatically if the p^r° curement rate is raised substantially- Can the Navy afford to launch a cost) new development program with the A Force at a time when it is already deve oping several costly new airframes, su^c as the A-12, the V-22, and the Advance Tactical Surveillance Program? Develop ment of the Navy ATF would certain j proceed concurrently with the Air For¹-¹' ATF, but significantly different NaU requirements are likely to drive ¹ flyaway costs well beyond the A Force’s projected $35 million (1985 d° take into account the significant RDT& investment such a development prog^ra requires before the first platform can delivered. Grumman has offered an an native in the form of an F-14 airfr^aIJ' with the new generation avionics of I ATF; other alternatives include the de^v^ opment of a variant of the A-12 based ⁰ the old McDonnell Douglas F5D Mis^s^ eer concept—a subsonic truck with ¹¹¹ siles for the carrier air defense role. S° of the $64.7 million budgeted f°^r Navy ATF may be used to investigate . tematives to that potentially costly ^a frame.

Two significant upgrades to the Gn> man E-2C Hawkeye carrier-borne ^ea ' warning aircraft are in progress. ‘ Group I update includes the new A> ^ 139 radar in place of the APS-l2^a'^j high-speed processor, and the imp^r°^v. _e Allison T56-A-427 engine to repla^{ce 1} T56-A-425. The first E-2C with this W date has been in preliminary evalua' ₍ and is scheduled for delivery to the I jj in mid-1989. The Group II update '' replace the APS-139 radar with the A

45, providing a strong over-land capa- ^u«y that this essentially open-ocean sys- ,^ern lacked, and will also include the umt Tactical Information Distribution ystem, Global Positioning System, and ^a|j enhanced main display unit that will d color for easier recognition of infor­mation. The first Group II-equipped '²C is scheduled for delivery in Decem- * The fiscal year 1991 budget ^lects a procurement increase to nine q^{0iti tbe} 1990 total of four to receive the ^r°^uP II improvements.

espite the programmed improve- ^ents to the E-2C, there is limited f°wth left i_{n w}hat is essentially a 30- ai/p⁰^ ^a*^rframe design. Consequently, fc'2 replacement constitutes a major _re ¹¹¹⁰¹¹ °f ⁽he Advanced Tactical Support i rement funded at development start- fo °^Ve*^s°f $ 10 million and $1.5 million .^r fiscal years 1990 and 1991, respec­

tive!

a. Other aircraft the ATS aircraft will _v,^e.y ^succeed are the Lockheed S-3B the 'p®’ ^t*^le        14A-6D Intruder tanker, and

air         Prowler electronic warfare

Prov ¹ Defense Review Board ap- _Ju,^ved the ATS aircraft requirement in quf ^with a draft operational re-

¹⁰ P^rornuI§^ate(I iⁿ early to

PriY^¹*⁶          Defense Advanced Research

_0Ve|^ects Agency (DARPA) has taken _aj_r, P^r°gram management of the Navy _Co *P Program, the Naval Air Systems 5g_en^man(I will remain as the design Pro ^C?' DARPA is currently focusing on 'vhil ^S1°^{n re}9^uirements for the airship th_e Referring other design reviews until r_eg, ■ ^avT identifies its specific mission l9gg^lrernents. Reports surfaced in early be_en ^l^^at DARPA and the Navy have _ex^anable to reach agreement on their th_e ^reiationship and the direction that of fP^r°§^ram should take, given the lack shir>^,SCa^ y^ear 1990 funding for the air- jP ^s sensor.

of j_n ^a 9Uest for more jointness in an era ye_ar ^r,^easinS fiscal constraints, the fiscal ^CaUed f ^ ⁽l^ef^ense authorization bill gr_airi ^{or a} joint Navy and Air Force pro- ^ya_nc °^f^,ce to develop the Navy’s ad- the ^air'fo-air missile (AAAM) and ^va_nCg(J^r Force’s product improved ad- (Am_r ^medium-range air-to-air missile tioq A AM). The catalyst for this addi- Plar,_n   bid was the Air Force’s

P^ro(f^uct improvement of AM­ity _Sp ^aPProaching the level of capabil- ^CesSo_r^Cl^^led f°^r the Navy’s AAAM, suc- rpeyqj- ^{to tb}e AIM-54 Phoenix. In the de^Q^1IIle’ AAAM entered the formal optUgr^^fion/validation phase of devel- fe_anis ’ ^ar>d two competing contractor liyr^ ’ ”^ughes/Raytheon and General 'cs/Westinghouse, received con­tracts on 30 September 1988.

Budgetary authority, orders, and deliv­eries of air-to-air ordnance are generally down, though Navy budgetary plans for the AIM-120 AMR A AM show a distinct reversal of this trend may occur in the next two years. Procurement of the AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles has been completed, and there is no money allocated to buy more of these missiles. AIM-54 Phoenix procurement plans are also down slightly. RDT&E spending for the AAAM will be consider­ably higher if the fiscal year 1990 and 1991 requests hold. Surface-launched missiles show a similar trend with the exception of the RIM-116A rolling air­frame missile, which is now gearing up to full-scale production.

Antisubmarine Warfare

The budgetary data clearly indicate that antisubmarine warfare is a field for major growth. Congress has tended to authorize and appropriate whatever ASW RDT&E budget the administration pro­poses and has frequently added funds to the request. In most cases, RDT&E in ASW is growing at a significant rate, not just for advanced and engineering devel­opment of specific systems, but for re­search and exploratory development as well. Undoubtedly driven by Soviet ad­vances in quieting their new classes of submarines, these large development sums may net only minor incremental gains in detection technology until a major breakthrough in technology can be perfected.

In the meantime, a significant fraction of the development funding in the budget is directed at improving the acoustic pro­cessing technology of platforms other than submarines—surface ships and air­craft—which have been largely consid­ered secondary ASW platforms to the submarine. As U. S. submarines’ acous­tic advantage over their Soviet counter­parts has eroded, the fortunes of other ASW platforms have improved. One need only look at the fiscal year 1990 and 1991 requests for surface ASW system improvement, $72.1 million and $117.9 million, respectively, where since 1963 there was none, to see evidence of this trend. Submarine ASW technology is not being ignored, however. The Navy’s budget earmarks almost $1 billion in RDT&E for submarine sonars and com­bat systems.

In January 1989, the Navy awarded a full-scale engineering development con­tract for LRAACA to Lockheed Aero­nautical Systems Company. The Lock­heed design includes a stretched P-3 airframe with a new cockpit, flight con­trols, construction materials, and im­proved engines that increase time-on- station to at least four hours at a range of 1,600 miles, the Update IV ASW avion­ics package under development by Boe­ing for both the LRAACA and backfit into P-3Cs, and the new Mk-50 advanced lightweight torpedo. Critical design re­view of the detailed Lockheed design is scheduled for November 1989.

The Federal German Navy has de­clared its intention to collaborate in the development of the LRAACA. but may exclude the aircraft’s Update IV avionics system. The Germans anticipate a re­quirement for 12 aircraft, while initial U. S. Navy requirements total 125 air­craft. Germany could provide up to 10% of the funding for development of the new LRAACA airframe if German com­panies participate in the effort. Italy and the United Kingdom are also interested in codevelopment options.

Critical design review of the Boeing Update IV package was completed in July 1988, and the first prototype is scheduled for delivery in July 1990. Other upgrades are under consideration

As U. S. subs lose their acoustic advantage over Soviet subs, the U. S. Navy is looking to such other ASW platforms as LRAACA, which is in design.

for older P-3B and P-3C airframes, in­cluding those in the Naval Reserve:

►  An improved processing and display system that will double the P-3B’s sono- buoy processing capability from 16 to 32 at a time and enable the P-3B to employ the modern directional frequency analyze and record sonobuoy that is the most ef­fective sonobuoy against modern Soviet submarines

► The acoustic system upgrade to ASW