Airpower discussion on Chaos Manor

[a_majoor]

Dr Pournelle was in the aerospace industry for many years (although many years ago, being involved in the TFX program which evolved into the F-111) and a very interesting discussion has developed there. It was inspired by the article in this month's Atlantic Monthly magazine: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/air-force

The discussion thread starts here: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q1/mail558.html#air1

Enjoy!

 

[a_majoor]

Jerry Pournelle makes some very good points here:

Air supremacy happens when you can fly and the other guy cannot. This is elementary air strategy. A second principle is that there is no prize for second place in air to air combat.

The real debate should be on missions. How many air superiority fighters does a nation need? If the goal is to win wars, would it be better to design aircraft and missiles to take out the other guy's bases at the start? What do you DO with air superiority once you have it? What is your mission in the war? That is, air supremacy doesn't win wars, although it certainly does make it possible to win them.

Once you get to that level of discussion then the sort of F-22 vs OPFOR Fighter X discussion becomes rather moot. If you can prevent the enemy from taking to the skys, then you have effective air superiority. You can gain air superiority with SOF operators dropping laxatives in the base water supply...more advanced solutions to this end could include laser weapons or electromagnetic railguns mounted on 747 sized carrier aircraft (which also takes care of enemy missiles as well as ground and naval targets).

For Canada, we are in the business of force projection (most of our  missions are half way around the world, and even distances between points in Canada would be strategic in most other nations). Wrapping our heads around this fact would change a lot of our current debate.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

True- it is better to prevent your enemy's air force from getting airborne in the first place- but I don't believe that we should put all of our eggs in that basket.  If some do get airborne and you have no effective means to deal with that eventuality, you are hosed.

 

[a_majoor]

True- it is better to prevent your enemy's air force from getting airborne in the first place- but I don't believe that we should put all of our eggs in that basket.  If some do get airborne and you have no effective means to deal with that eventuality, you are hosed.

Not that I am disagreeing there, but the point (I think) is that fighter planes might not be the only way to skin that cat.

Taking out airfields and strategic installations is the main goal, and some technological solutions also allow for dealing with enemy aircraft which do get airbirn as well. The airborne laser weapon would certainly have little difficulty in burning enemy aircraft and missiles out of the sky, given the proper sensors, and hypervelocity projectiles from railguns would have similar effects. In the shorter term, something like the Next Generation Bomber could carry out some of the air to air tasks by ambushing enemy aircraft with long range AAM's (and it could carry a lot).

You can also deal directly with the target using SOF operators on the ground, or nail them with kinetic energy projectiles lofted from non nuclear ICBM's, but those classes of solution do not deal with the enemy aircraft which escape.