The Last Great Air War Battle

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.

VADM J. Metcalf III, USN (Ret.)

It may be premature to declare that the initial stage of Opera-’ tion Desert Storm was the last great air battle to be fought pri­marily by airplanes. Watching the war on television and marvel­ing at the technological prowess of the newest in combat aircraft can lead to just the opposite conclusion. It is too easy to overlook the significance of the first U.S. cruise missile fired in anger and thus fail to realize that a revolution in warfighting is under way.

The revolution is a possible replacement for the manned bomber in future conflict. Why is man still aiming the weapons of war, like a spear-carrier in a Roman legion, when the technol­ogy to replace him clearly exists? The man-in-the-loop was powerfully demonstrated to the w arid by the Desert Storm’s air

The vertical launchers of the USS Fife (DD-991): “The first cruise missile that crashed into Baghdad arrived with all the stealth of its $100-million manned counterpart, the F-117 stealth fighter.”

commander, who with obvious pride narrated videotapes of laser-guided bombs going through windows and plunging through roof tops. The issue is—why is a man still required to bring his airplane to the target, risking his machine and himself, just to line up the sights?

The first cruise missile that crashed into Baghdad arrived with all the stealth of its $100-million manned counterpart, the F-117 stealth fighter. Is there some technical obstacle to building a cruise missile that will fly through designated windows or boresight a roof? Actually, the cruise missile.that can match the best manned system already exists or is on the drawing board. Many of the cruise missiles that flew to their targets in Desert Storm were superior to manned aircraft, judged by the criteria that count: hit the target; leave no downed friendlies behind to become prisoners.

In the matrix of missions flown against Iraq, relatively few cruise missiles were employed. Why? The direct answer is that only small numbers of conventionally armed cruise missiles were available. The real answer is much more complex.

Before Desert Storm the cruise missile was an orphan, weakly supported by the people who state requirements, the operational commanders. For the most part, it was a matter of confidence; war planners are unwilling to trust the outcome of future battles to the unknown and untested. These factors translated into low research-and-development and procurement budgets for cruise missiles.

There arc good reasons to denigrate the cruise-missile systems of today. The Navy's Tomahawk is part of what—at best—can be termed an awkward warfighting system that has many per­ceived and real shortcomings. In the perceived category, the accuracy of the cruise missile is still questioned even though tests have demonstrated the missile’s ability to make a field goal from 600-plus miles, hitting within yards of the target. The most sig­nificant shortfall in today’s Tomahawk system is mission plan­ning. It is awkward, overly complex, and unresponsive, and it cannot meet the battlefield’s flexibility requirements. A cruise- missile mission can take months to plan if the requisite terrestrial mapping is not available. Even under best-case conditions, it may still require days. Neither a battlefield nor an afloat planning system exists. Current guidance systems can target only known, fixed locations. A search-and-destroy capability does not exist. Some consider the 1,000-pound warhead too small—even if it can thread a needle.

All of these warfighting shortfalls can and will be fixed. It is a matter of priority and attitude. The most formidable obstacles fall into the realm of change and mythology. Many who fly air­planes view the cruise missile as a threat. Navy carrier aviation proponents react like their great-uncles, the big-gun battleship advocates of the 1930s. In the Air Force, pilots do not see a need for cruise missiles because they believe they can do anything with a manned system that can be done with a missile. There was, is, and will be enormous resistance to change.

In the realm of mythology, the strongest opponents are Penta­gon analysts who have decided that the cruise missile is very expensive. But—expensive compared to what? The Tomahawk is usually compared to an iron bomb; $2 million versus $55,000. The comparison excludes the launching platform—the airplane, its equally expensive support system, and people. The Navy or Air Force attack aircraft or bomber requires pilots and mainte­nance crews—people who must be paid, trained, and housed. Several thousand cruise missiles might require no more than a dozen technicians. Furthermore, cruise missiles do not require air bases with commissaries and government quarters.

The argument is often framed in an adversarial “us-against- them” relationship—the missile against the manned aircraft, rather than a systems comparison. The computer technocrat in air-conditioned splendor is matched against the white-scarf, stick-and-throttlc community of warriors. The hard fact is that military judgment on weapons should be made on the basis of ordnance on target and targets destroyed, against the cost in dol­lars and lives. The mystique of Top Gun is great, but so was the romance of the horse cavalry.

The strength of the airplane is that it can deliver large amounts of ordnance. The strength of the missile is that it is precision ordnance, which can hit the target without risking prisoners or casualties. Enhancing either system to do the other’s job is a waste of resources. Stated another way, spending money to auto­mate the airplane to do the job of the cruise missile—in an era of reduced spending—means less ordnance on target.

Admiral Metcalf retired as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Surface Warfare (OP-03). He commanded U.S. forces during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada.