DoD Shifts to Capability-Based Procurement
To recent developments in U.S. defense policy testify to the deep problem defense faces despite the post-9/11 additions to the budget. One is a shift from threat-based specifications to capability-based system choices. The other is the decision to amalgamate Navy carrier-based and Marine Corps land-based fighter/attack aviation.
In the past, before development of a new weapon system could be approved within the Department of Defense, its sponsors had to certify that it would meet a series of requirements, including an ability to deal with a formally approved threat. Whatever one might think about the quality of threat statements, during the Cold War it was perfectly reasonable to imagine that specific U.S. weapon systems would face a well-defined Soviet threat, which was distinct from the sort of threat al Qaeda can assemble. One criticism of the threat-based process was that the intelligence agencies responsible for threats tended to err on the side of overstatement. That in turn raised the bar for any new U.S. system. Not coincidentally, it raised costs drastically. Often the last few percentages of capability accounted for a large fraction of overall development cost.
Some unfortunate assumptions were buried in this process. First, any projection tended to be straight-line. The Soviets had antiaircraft missiles, for example, which future U.S. aircraft would have to overcome. Existing Soviet systems had obvious shortfalls, but over a 20-year period the shortfalls surely would be addressed. Thus, the mid-range threat would be a perfected version of the existing threat. Details of the threat were secret, partly because anyone reading a threat statement could see the direction in which U.S. developers hoped to go. If the Soviets knew that, they could reorient their programs to produce a much more serious threat during the term of the threat projection.
The Soviets, however, also could decide to change their operating technique, and thus change the character of the threat. For example, during the Cold War it was assumed that Soviet bomber-launched antiship missiles had to be locked on to their targets before they could be launched. Projecting the threat, it was reasonable to imagine that future missiles would be substantially faster and have smaller radar cross-sections. They also would likely have inertial midcourse guidance, so that they would not have to turn on their seekers until they were close to predicted target positions. U.S. defenses, then, had to deal with smaller, faster targets. Since much might depend on the shooter's estimate of target configuration, deception became important.
In fact, the Soviets did something different: they put data links in their big AS-4 missile (Kh-22M, fired by Backfires). The launching bomber could lock missiles onto targets after launch, on the basis of whatever the missiles saw. As for deception, the Soviets developed a missile-to-missile data link that allowed the missiles of a ship-launched salvo to compare apparent targets.
Neither innovation was impossible to counter, but the point is that what had seemed most threatening-high speed and small radar cross-section-was not what the Soviets put into service. Instead, they tried a different approach based on command and control. Could U.S. analysts have been wiser? It would be foolish to imagine that they would have understood. It might be best to say that a new U.S. system should have been able to deal with the existing and short-term threats, and to admit that the longer-term threat might contain surprises not only of magnitude but also of basic character.
Similarly, U.S. stealth aircraft are designed to reduce the effective detection range of a class of Soviet-bloc air defense radars. The key assumption is that each radar operates by itself, the same way that such radars have operated in the past. Aircraft such as the F-117 and the B-2 show that this type of air-defense sensor can be defeated. Anyone operating an airdefense system has two alternative solutions. One is to improve radar sensitivity, on the theory that a more sensitive radar can pick a smaller target out of the surrounding clutter. The U.S. government tries to conceal details of the stealth performance of its aircraft to keep any opponent from imagining that just a bit more signal processing will solve the problem.
The trouble is that there are quite different solutions. The U.S. Navy's cooperative engagement capability (CEC) demonstrates that netting together several radars can defeat stealthy aircraft, even when those radars have not themselves been improved. The Iraqis tried to do the same thing with fiber optics in the desert (which was why their radars were bombed), and it seems likely that the Serbs managed to track and destroy an F-117 using netted technology.
The point is not whether stealth was a clever technological road for us to follow, but rather that a straight-line projection of existing threats may miss a major possibility—in this case, radar netting. Cutting radar cross-section might well do nothing against netting, and would carry a significant cost in aircraft performance and cash. One implication is that it was not terribly wise to spend a great deal to go beyond systems capable of dealing with current threats to those that barely beat projected future ones—because the future really is very difficult to predict.
Now think about a new fighter, such as the F-22, designed to meet a threat projected about a decade ago that still does not exist—the threat projectors having been conservative in their approach. Production of the F-22 will be expensive. It will be justified on the ground that the airplane's design makes it unusually durable in war as in peace, so that a limited (affordable) annual production run will sustain a large number of long-lived aircraft, a number sufficient for U.S. needs. On the other hand, although the airplane's electronics can be upgraded radically over its lifetime, its configuration, which gives it its low observability, cannot be changed easily. In that respect, threat projection really matters.
What happens if some new concept such as CEC just ruins stealth at some point? In that case, requirements will be radically different. The United States might well need a new airplane, but the sheer cost of building F-22s might make it impossible to begin a new program. After all, the current threat is such that aircraft already in production seem to be quite effective against it. It also can be argued that ongoing improvements to antiradar technology promise to make stealth irrelevant against surface radars, which will not survive long enough to try to detect stealthy aircraft.
One solution to the future problem is to cut back on requirements as they are stated currently. Instead of stretching to meet a possible future threat, we may be wise to look to current existing capability, so that we can be more agile in meeting unpredictable future threats. Unpredictability, after all, is the hallmark of the post-Cold War world. All we really know is that the world is quite dangerous; we do not know what sort of detailed danger we face. We also do know that a threat always can be stated which an affordable weapon system cannot meet. That threat can be used either to veto the system or to force developers to spend very heavily on new technology.
An ideal solution is to deploy what we can build right now at an affordable price, in the expectation that over a platform's lifetime it will be block-upgraded to meet increasingly severe requirements. That is much the content of the DD(X) announcement, in which it was admitted that the initial ships would not meet the ambitious manning level desired (95), but that later blocks or flights of ships would.
Capability-based procurement can become an excuse for buying systems that fail to meet any realistic requirements, as a kind of gift to incompetent contractors—but we have to hope that the Defense Department is wiser than that. It certainly seems that it now understands that the last few percentages of performance often are not merely unaffordable but also not necessary.
Navy and Marine Air Amalgamate
A second interesting straw in the wind is the March announcement that the Navy's sea-based tactical air arm would be amalgamated with the Marine Corps' tactical air arm. The outcome would be a reduction in the overall number of squadrons. Some Marine units would rotate to sea duty aboard carriers, and some Navy units would serve at Marine land bases. Opponents of the plan feared that, in a crisis, the Navy would withdraw carriers and thus the crucial support needed by Marines on the ground. Right now, the Marines use their Harriers as mobile artillery, and they hope to use short takeoff/vertical landing (STO/VL) Joint Strike Fighters the same way. If the Navy buys only the conventional take-off version of JSF, what happens to the STO/VL role?
Amalgamation probably was inevitable. Anyone interested in defense in the 1990s will remember seminars about the "train wreck," the inevitable disaster to come as defense programs were projected ahead beyond the year 2000, their costs crossing the slowly rising line of defense resources. Because much of the post-9/11 supplemental money is paying to make up for operational shortfalls (such as insufficient spares) and to replace weapons expended in Afghanistan, the train wreck still is a real possibility.
When President George W. Bush took office, he claimed that some form of transformation appropriate to a post-Cold War world would solve the train wreck problem. Surely the force built to fight the Cold War could be redesigned in some affordable way. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld espoused much the same views, and for a time it seemed that network-centric warfare was the preferred means of transformation. Most readers probably are aware that this sort of transformation—changing not particular systems but the way U.S. forces are expected to fight—has not happened on anything remotely like the desired scale. Much worse, many of those seeking a network-centric change seem unwilling to buy the required command/control and intelligence/surveillance assets at the expense of force structure. They are well aware of the way in which network-centric systems can support the existing force, but not that sufficient investment in those information systems can be had only at the expense of force structure.
What to do, then? The Navy's position is particularly difficult, because simply by its presence in many places the Navy reduces the threat to the United States. The content of arguments about numbers of carriers and surface combatants is largely one about peacetime presence, arguably the Navy's most important post-Cold War function, because it keeps disasters from happening. Of course, presence has little point unless ships present in foreign ports represent real power. That precludes one solution to the problem of providing enough surface combatants-building the smallest and least expensive ones imaginable. True, foreign frigates with little or no offensive firepower still do effective work on presence missions, but surely the bluff they represent will be called eventually.
So how do we afford enough of a fleet? We have two options. One is to extend the period that individual ships spend abroad by transferring crews on and off while the ships remain. The French Navy pursued exactly this policy to maintain a carrier in the Indian Ocean for decades. One barrier to U.S. adoption of a similar policy is that, given the breakneck pace of technological change, our carriers (and associated battle group ships) are more and more distinctive. Those trained to operate one carrier cannot easily transfer to another. To maintain a carrier abroad we would need multiple crews usable for just that one ship. Moreover, the ship would never return for a refit and soon would grow obsolete.
The alternative is to cut costs associated with the carrier. The greatest cost is her aircraft. Anything that allows portions of the overall Department of the Navy (Navy/Marines) air fleet to swing from one role to another makes for more efficient use of aircraft and reduced aircraft costs per carrier. This is not a cost-free option. A "swing" force cannot be available simultaneously for both carrier and shore use at maximum strength. Here is where the post-Cold War situation enters. It seems reasonable to imagine that maximum-use contingencies are not going to be as challenging as during the Cold War. Is this an optimal solution? Of course not. However, it puts off the train wreck in naval aviation.
Moreover, the naval air train wreck is imminent because so many kinds of aircraft have to be replaced more or less simultaneously. The demise of various stealthy successors to the A-6 means that the Navy needs a major investment in attack aircraft, particularly if it hopes to deal with intense air defenses. Hopefully, too, the JSF will restore some of the attack range that will be lost with the demise of the F-14 Tomcat.
At the same time, the EA-6B Prowler needs replacement. So does the P-3, which has proven unexpectedly valuable in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. It also might be necessary to replace the S-3, or at the least to provide a naval tanker to extend carrier air range. Finally, there is the need for a successor to the E-2, which has also proved useful. All of the replacements add up to a massive "bow wave" in the naval air budget. It seems unlikely that production sufficient to meet the needs of the carriers and the Marine ground units can be paid for at the same time that a series of new prototypes is developed.
The bow wave is not new. It first seemed imminent in the 1980s. At that time a "swing" airplane, the tactical support aircraft, was proposed, to replace the EA-6B, the S-3, and the E-2. It seemed that a single airframe could be adapted to all three roles, simply by moving palletized electronics on board. The key technology was the conformal-array antenna, which, it was hoped, could be adapted to meet the needs of all three types of aircraft. It turned out that the new technology was still quite immature, and the tactical support aircraft was abandoned. This time there is hope that a modified F/A-18, the G model, will be an effective EA-6B replacement. It may use much of the existing or developmental EA-613 system, so development cost might be minimized. Perhaps as important, an F/A-18G would be capable of executing F/A-18E/F strike missions, so the aircraft could "swing" between its air defense suppression and strike missions, thus justifying a smaller total carrier air wing.
That does leave the other two types. It is increasingly clear that the E-2C mission is vital. A future airborne radar aircraft, particularly one adapted to littoral operations, will require considerable developmental work. The existing E-2C airframe, moreover, is quite old, and it probably will have to be replaced altogether-at substantial cost.
It is not clear that the S-3 class of aircraft will survive beyond the lifetime of existing aircraft. The specialized antisubmarine warfare mission for which the S-3 was built is gone, but S-3s have proved quite valuable in recent littoral wars. One possibility would be to use a common airframe for the E-2C and S-3 successors, albeit with radically different antennas and electronics.
There seems to be much less question of whether to replace the P-3. The current program envisages a Multirole Maritime Aircraft to replace not only the P-3C but also the valuable EP-3E and, presumably, other aircraft. The high perceived cost of developing a new airframe might lead the Navy to accept the Lockheed-Martin proposal for an upgraded P-3C airframe. Other possibilities are converted airliners and even new-build British Nimrods (a model of which was displayed at the recent Navy League show).
Will the Marine/Navy amalgamation work? Without a better crystal ball, I cannot say. It has an obvious virtue in that it maintains the part of naval force structure that has to be available around the world and at the same time offers the Marines massive firepower when they need it. If the "swing" concept fails, it will be much easier to buy more airplanes than to buy more carriers.