to indulge in exaggeration and make-believe, it’s enlightening to have a look at his propaganda website. Below is a microscopic sample of some of the tacky improvident ‘air power’ bum-sprays (don’t know what else to call it) you’ll sample therein. Kopp has no misgiving about making a twat of himself or impotently attempting to undermine air-power decision-making in media. Not much chance of that, but he’s taken to sharply questioning the professional competence of RAAF and ADF, as part of his exotic drivel.
"…it is now an irrefutable fact that Defence have lost the capability to objectively analyse and understand capabilities in contemporary and future air power in the region." Carlo Kopp, APA
A laughable tirade from a hapless wretch with no purview on restricted data but who managed to persuade himself he’s more informed and blessed with analytical capacities and disinterested objective judgement than the professional cadre of a western military. That sort of thing used to be called a delusion of grandeur. Kopp doesn’t limit his boof-headed harangue/denigration to RAAF, he attacks ADF competence and leadership as well. Perhaps AIRMSHL Houston becoming ADF Chief put a burr under Kopp’s foreskin, as Houston wrote a formal explanation why the F-35 JSF is the ‘right’ and only suitable available aircraft for RAAF some years ago. Houston would be clearly demarcated enemy in Kopp’s world. Kopp knows there’s no chance for F-22A if anyone with air power brains and professional experience commands ADF, so Houston must be kneecapped with pretentious cheap shots. It’s vapid and bloody pathetic, but so is Kopp, and explains his fulminating over ADF’s alleged incompetence in air power comprehension.
ADF consists of committed people with access to the best training there is experience, Intelligence, hard data, and detailed tactical simulation and analysis of that data within a SEA tactical setting. Defence undertakes endless tests to refine definition of capability need and expanded capability. RAAF participate in international exercises, it is current, skilled, ready and informed of pending air power developments. ADF is investing in the best air power tactical simulators available to hone pilot awareness and ability and aircrew can rehearse and refine any mission objective planning in SEA. Complex simulated interoperability training with allied forces is now viable outside of exercises. No potential opponent has that training and awareness edge.
Kopp is some chimp who drifted into air power journalism and somehow convinced himself RAAF and ADF are out of their depth and area of core competence-they should stop what they’re doing and listen to him and do what he says. Maybe not megalomania, but certainly barking. To a few of his scrawls;
"The Americans may not solve their block obsolescence problems until later in the next decade, leaving a genuine window of strategic vulnerability should the more vocal proponents of RAAF capability reduction have their way in Canberra." http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Flanker.html
Webster’s Dictionary: Obsolete adj. [1. no longer in use or practice; discarded 2. out of date; passe-vt, -leted, leting, to make obsolete, as by replacing with something newer. [like F-111C replaced with F-35A for instance]
The question is which airforce made the USAF and USN obsolete en-bloc? PLAAF or RuAF? Neither are qualitatively or quantitatively close to displacing US air power with new designs that are more capable. The largest best-funded modern airforce is USAF and the second largest advanced airforce is the US Navy. A direct or indirect insinuation that US air power is suffering block-obsolescence is laughable at best. The US is ensuring it’s a full generation ahead of possible opponents so it’s building new designs-existing aircraft were not made obsolescent until the Yanks made them so themselves, and that’s what they’ve been doing since about the mid 1950s. This is how they remain in front of the capability curve and ensure any opponent has no doubt who will hold contested air. It’s a long-running deterrent strategy that works, especially in Australia’s interests. The F-111 was a good example, the Yanks replaced it with the F-15E long before they had to, and right after it had proved itself the best battlefield interdiction/strike aircraft there is-they did it because they could. Who could compete with that? The expensive Typhoon revealed that even Europe has serious limitations that prevent it competing with the audacity and flourish of new US designs and technologies (will be interesting to see if Euro UCAVs are in the hunt, or also rans).
Kopp argues from the presumption that US air power is already obsolete. US aircraft are, of course upgraded, consolidated and replaced as necessary, but it’s been a long time since a serving US fighter or bomber could have been accurately described as obsolete. The recently retired 1960s designed F-14 Tomcat BVR fighter was still a competitive formidable fighter at the end of its operational service. The B-1 did not make the B-52 obsolete, and nor did the B-2, because each has a role and combat niche, and this fact shows how silly the notion of block obsolescence is. But Kopp uses the block obsolescence bogie-man, combined with the assertion that US air power is over-stretched, implying its ANZUS partner Australia is more vulnerable to the scary Asian horde than ever before. In reality, US air power has not been heavily committed since Operation Iraqi-Freedom, and anyone following developments knows it’s become a lot more lethal in the interim. And if ADF can defend Australia with so few fighter attack aircraft and bombers, how many more would we need? A squadron of F-15E would about do it, and the USN might float by with a flat top-that not going to overload the USAF and Pacific Fleet kids. Kopp jabbers this irrational theme because if he doesn’t how can he make any case for an RAAF F-22A stick? The problem is, he appears to swallow his own propaganda bum-spray.
Obsolescence is not a definite something, it’s always relative to context and theatre of operations-change theatres and relative obsolescence changes. US is the only force that suffers no relative obsolescence within any theatre. What matters is effective operational capability and survivability which in joint-network-warfare is indeterminate, due to network effects that provide emergent capabilities the original aircraft don’t have in isolation. This elucidates the flaw in asserting one aircraft type is necessarily ‘superior’ to another-it is context that actually makes it so. In isolation superiority may be obvious, but in the network context it’s no longer so clear, or even necessarily true. This is where Kopp always gets it so wrong, he doesn’t seem to realise that integrated emergent capability is immensely more significant in theatre combat context, than simplistic baseline meta-data capability comparisons.
Maximised raw performance is always going to be the Holy Grail in air warfare, but electronic stealth and networking has likewise become as critical, and it’s actually and indeterminate and continuously variable operational element. The end-capability is the sum of emergent network properties that don’t exist outside the network context, yet all Kopp’s impoverished "air power analysis" is predicated on isolated meta-data and intuitive presumption-that subjective fluff gets you nowhere. He does this because he asserts Su-30s with AL-41F, R-172 and ALCMs are going to degrade and blind the ADF network, leaving raw baseline performance as the measure of relative air power. One look at Wedgetail and JORN should indicate even to him that ADF mitigated that obvious predictable risk well over a decade ago. An opponent banking on that possibility is risking everything if it doesn’t work immediately, and simplistic conventional approaches aren’t going to work.
The network is rapidly becoming the core of ADF capability, and network emergence is the greater than the sum of all parts effects that it generates. The otherwise discrete capability lines between isolated systems and platforms are becoming less distinct. Australian C4I is designed to produce optimal capability emergence and the force mix and introduced platforms necessary to produce that emergence are in the pipeline. Some big kid with a website has at best an unclear inkling of what the emergent capability is. Declared hostile Flanker aircrews have a very good chance of becoming shark shit.
Kopp’s myths of block-obsolescence and over-commitment of US air power are the pretext behind his fear campaign. If he really believes that he’s paranoid, either way, Kopp’s several sausages short of a BBQ. Absurdity has never hindered Kopp’s impressive capacity to construct superficially ‘plausible’ but none-the-less unmitigated bum-spray. Everything he’s penned on the topic of air power since ~2001 is coated with it, yet editors still publish him, though more responsible publications have given up on him. Apparently some still believe air power bum-sprays sells better than fact-based quality writing by rigorous objective air power journalists.
I find facts and relationships far more engrossing than any amount of the other fluff, but do know there are major factors that can’t be known, so to assert outcomes is futile, through subjective/objective analysis processes-Kopp seems to think he can know via that means. Primary facts and their implications are the life-blood of credible, though always inadequate analysis, and the even more inaccurate subjectively derived interpretive or translational secondary ‘information’. Analysis and information are always more-or-less suspect, because even when you’re confident you have determined something you can still find out later that you were labouring under a false-premise all along (and it shock’s you to the core). Yet Kopp still manages to pretentiously label himself a "military analyst" while displaying very little commitment to the value of facts and their implications, within his invariably twisted and agenda-driven "air power analysis" charade.
The result is a muddle of endless bungling nonsense, of no worth to anyone, as the basis for sound informed comprehension, guidance or decision-so what’s the point of any of it? It certainly isn’t for ‘informing’ the public or political domains, because it’s obviously aimed squarely at bamboozling and frightening the public with imaginary bogie men, to shape debate and effect a desired end. That is propaganda-raw brazen propaganda. Propaganda works by telling 90% truth to gain general credibility and trust, then slip in 10% lies and spin for the result desired, and it almost always goes unnoticed or unquestioned by people who want to believe the illusion spun. Any one can do it, I could be doing it to you now, and if you want to believe me, you won’t even notice. Propaganda succeeds because people generally won’t examine things logically or carefully, first-hand, so they won’t detect it-it requires work to do that. if Joe Blogs seems to know their stuff, then they’re given credit they don’t merit. It’s safer to give no credit and to not want to believe a thing-that’s a discipline, and most people aren’t disciplined. If you want what is different to what is actual, then you won’t be inclined to settle for what really is actual, you will tend to believe what you wanted to believe, regardless of what it actual, and if someone makes that so much easier for you, and appears to believe it to, you’re caught-hook, line and sinker.
The discipline to not do that comes from a need to find out things directly (not second hand) and only a disciplined approach can get you to anything remotely worthwhile, but it isn’t easy to sustain all the time. Kopp never has doe that. At APA, the contemporary fine art of, "making nothing look like something *", is thriving. If fear isn’t a valid element of analysis, and myths don’t produce lucidity, then what are they, but conspicuous symptoms of agenda and spin within what amounts to mere propaganda?
* See: "The Triumph of the Air Heads", ABC Radio National, Occam’s Razor, 25th Feb 2007 (transcript or streaming)
In the same quoted sentence above, Kopp then ramps up the fear-factor further buy claiming a mysterious Canberra lobby wants to gut RAAF, despite the fact Kopp’s plan to acquire ~60 x F-22A instead of the vastly more suitable ~100 x F-35A strike fighters, would produce a similar outcome. A lot less of everything needed, in particular, a lot less credible regional-strike capability, than RAAF has in the pipeline. But under Kopp’s bold vision of future RAAF air power capabilities, the retention of a chronically obsolete early 1960s designed F-111C will naturally do a considerably better job at defending Australia than the world’s most advanced fifth generation fully networked stealth strikefighter-F-35A.
This force-structure proposition is directly related to why Kopp insists the ADF and RAAF require F-22A and why he inversely contends the F-35A is unsuitable. Kopp goes on to say this a couple of paragraphs after the last quote;
"…The belief that the F-111's heavyweight counter-air strike capability is now irrelevant also conflicts with the reality that the best way to fight an Su-30 without an F-22A is to shut down its basing from day one of a conflict - and if possible convert the Sukhois to scrap metal in situ - neither achievable with a handful of standoff missile shots." http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Flanker.html
The straw man behind this sentence is likewise loaded and spun for the reader’s derailment and fear-factor. It does not reflect RAAF’s strike capability development planning, or active projects. Individual deliverable combat stand-off heavy-weapon loads of Super Hornet Block II and F-35A are not dissimilar to what is operationally achievable in practice with the current F-111C. New integrated weapons in the pipeline are certainly premium items. New aircraft will be supported by air refuelling-a support measure RAAF F-111s have not enjoyed.
Mr. Kopp also argues as though all targets exist at or near to maximum combat mission radius-they don’t. Maximum combat radius is itself another misleading and bogus notion when forward basing and refuelling capability is on hand, but more so given that only key high-value targets would be prosecuted at ‘maximum’ viable strike ranges. The range of a long-throw stealth cruise missile must be added to effective strike radius, plus other weapon range variables i.e. missile flight altitude, speed, terrain, defences, prevailing weather, AsuW or LAM target. An F-35A with evolved JASSM-ER ~1050 km range (same dimensions as JASSM and likely to be acquired) plus A-330 tanker support, can reach targets in south central Asia, as could a P-8 737 plus JASSM-ER.
Kopp jumped all over the 2004-2014 DCP Project AIR 5418 concept of a AP-3C with JASSMs, yet he’s now furiously beating-the-drum about Chinese new-build H-6K "cruise-missile carriers", and how devastating these would be. But they’re fundamentally the same as a long-range AP-3C with JASSM or a P-8 737 with JASSM-ER. When China does this Kopp thinks it’s fiendishly clever and a credible strike threat but when ADF proposes going down a similar long-range ‘cruise-missile carrier’ path, Kopp screams it’s unsurviveable madness and that ADF has completely lost the plot!
China doesn’t have a long-range stealth cruise missile, and doesn’t have regional over-the-horizon-radar coverage, so how could a cruise missile carrier capability work better for China, than for Australia? Of course, the Chinese version wouldn’t work better at all. Kopp went bananas and poured scorn on the idea, because if Project AIR 5418 came to fruition, there would be no remaining justification for retaining the F-111C. That was the point behind his objection at the time because strategically, it was an excellent strike capability development path. Orion would have been a superb long-range long-endurance initial capability platform, but the Orions already had a full-plate, and integration cost was also cited as reason to not proceed with that aspect of AIR 5418.
If a cruise missile carrier is to be developed RAN must have sufficient manned AP-3C replacements to achieve its other critical ASW, AsuW, SAR roles. With a BAMS support acquisition, and subsequent reduction in manned patrols this may yet occur, particularly in conjunction with a JASSM-ER and the tactical speed enhancement and range extension that refuelling would provide a P-8 737 JASSM-ER heavy strike platform. If speed and alleged vulnerability to Flankers is Kopp’s argument against the platform role, then he should go and yap that crap at the ankles of a B-52H aircrew and see if they don’t set him straight about subsonic cruise missile carrier operations. USAF plan to retain their slow B-52H standoff cruise missile carriers for as long as the F-35A.
No one should pay heed to Kopp’s illogical inconsistent ranting on the topic, because if he were actually interested (or rather disinterested) in Counter-Air surge capability on Day-1 he would never have attacked that element of AIR 5418. How is a Flanker to shoot down an AP-3C or P-8 if the Flankers are converted to ash trays and JORN provides more than adequate warning of airborne fighters the moment they pop-up? Orion has the endurance to withdraw well beyond a Flanker’s radar range to wait it out? The Flanker can’t stay in the area long, but a P-3 or P-8 can and a Flanker will not even know they’re out there, but RAN aircrew would know precisely where the Flankers are at all times, and fly tactical with respect to them. This is a piece of cake to achieve with very high survivably when you have a networked OTHR to keep you out of the scan volume of a Flanker. If SEA states obtain capable AEW&C a JASSM-ER delivered from such a platform would immediately circumvent the AWAC, whilst remaining undetected well below radar horizon (~600 km distant at AWAC’s ceiling altitude). A RAN AP-8 737 with JORN and Wedgetail support plus refuelling would be a credible, survivable long-range precision maritime and LAM capability, that adds considerable deterrent value to ADF. Any high-value target that needed to be struck could be reached quickly (as made clear below).
A RAN cruise missile carrier is a very sound idea for effective multirole survivable strike capability growth-it should be developed.
If Australia wanted to further extend strike mission reach, well into northern SEA, it has the option to develop and operate from Australian Island territories of Christmas Island (10-30S, 105-39E) and Cocos Islands (12-09S, 96-56E). Each of these can be fortified and act as a smaller version of Guam or Diego-Garcia-a forward strategic strike base. With AWD-DDGs, FFGs, ANZAC, AP-3C, hydrophone array and Patriot SAM area and point defence, these could be defended and operated sustainably in combat. Most of SEA is then within strike reach. High-value East Asia targets that can’t be easily reached can be with minimal A-330 tanker support.
ADF definitely doesn’t need 20 tankers and 50 evolved F-111s plus 60 F-22A escorts to hit distant targets, as there’s a major ADF branch called sea power, that Mr. Kopp drastically underrates, if he acknowledges it at all, within his air power publication spiels and Internet bum-sprays. He certainly doesn’t give an indication he understands what it can do. If Australia needs extra strategic flanking leverage, plus range, it could acquire several Navantia LHDs, ‘fitted-for-but-not-with’ STOVL F-35B capability. Achieving credible long-range F-35 strike range quickly is not a major or insoluble hurdle if it becomes necessary to develop it. Kopp exists in a 2-D world where it’s air power or nothing, but the most credible and viable threat to Australia is submarines-mainly from SLCMs and sea mines. SEA Flankers are more than manageable compared to the persistent asymmetric submarine threat.
By today’s standards the F-111C has far less impressive weapons and the sensors are very dated, it has rudimentary comms. It has no towed decoy, no BVR capability and no survivable WVR capability due to poor agility. It has high radar and thermal signature as well as visual signature, no rapid look-n’-shoot targeting assignment, no passive IRST. It’s nevertheless a reliable aircraft that suffers from progressively reducing survivability from age and lack of development. Kopp and some nostalgia tragics propose investing many billions to keep these dated airframes in RAAF service beyond 2020-2030. They’re bitterly and irrationally opposed to buying the world’s most advanced and most survivable tactical maritime strikefighter the US can mass-produce-though I can not fathom why. By the time the F-111s are withdrawn they will have been in RAAF service for ~38 years.
Kopp always point’s to the F-111’s unrefuelled range, but that also is over-rated. RAAF don’t think F-111C range is all that superior or beneficial at present (see below), and it’s not so straightforward in operational practice. The F-111s were designed to fly a fuel-consuming Hi-Lo-Hi mission profile in order to survive deep-penetration strikes into rear areas. There has never been probe air-refuelling support for RAAF F-111s so they’ve actually always been range-limited in ways refuellable aircraft like RAAF HUGs aren’t. For example, if during a penetration mission it became necessary to out-run an interceptor on the other side of the air-sea gap, the F-111 would need to burn a lot of fuel that it can’t replace via tanking. Consequently, a substantial fuel buffer was pre-allocated for long-distance supersonic after-burning evasion and escape. The F-111 is too lacking in turn radius to engage WVR fighters using self-defence IR missiles, although ASRAAM could launch over-the-shoulder and well off boresight if helmet cuing was incorporated. It wasn’t, so afterburning escape remained the only survival option for the aircrew and a far better option than WVR IR missile shots any day, especially now that BVR missiles would almost certainly bin a Pig long before that became a last desperate act.
The large fuel buffer insurance policy meant effective combat range was further limited in all combat roles in order to provide the reserve for survivable egress. Although F-111 has vastly superior range on paper, in operational practice, it can’t stretch its legs. If the buffer were not available they wouldn’t survive an encounter with almost any fast fighter. Now that genuinely long-range and equally fast Flankers, with excellent BVR radars, IRST, plus formidable BVR missiles have entered SEA, the F-111 can no longer provide a sufficiently large enough fuel buffer to escape, plus enough fuel to reach deep-strike targets. The range issue has become much more limiting. The Pigs have lost much of their previous unique operational range advantage and loiter time.
A partial short-term solution is to buy extra A-330 tankers, to make the F-111 mission-viable and more survivable, but even then, they remain easily detected by Flankers and vulnerable to long-range BVR missiles and SAMs. There’s no fix for this, but to add JASSM and viable MIDS/LINK-16 (JORN tactical data display) to keep them well clear of airborne fighters. Post ~2015 any frontline aircraft flying combat missions in SEA that can be easily detected and tracked, will have a brief life expectancy, and the F-111C would be one of the easiest to detect and track. If the survival plan is to keep them away from fighters, then this amounts to a large number of soft mission-kills and sharp and unacceptable reduction in effective strike capability, per 24 hour period.
Note: A ‘mission-kill’ is where the mission is aborted to preserve aircraft and aircrew-something the ADF must always do. It may involve jettisoning weapons to increase speed and endurance, as the aircrew beats a supersonic retreat back across the air-sea gap. RAAF precision strike weapons are not cheap or plentiful enough to waste in that way, nor are they easy to obtain at short notice during combat. RAAF can not afford to jettisoning them unnecessarily. Upon that rationale low-observability was one of the main reasons RAAF procured the F-111C during the mid-1960s, to provide higher survivability and fewer mission-kills. The F-111 achieved low-observability through low-level terrain masking but this is now growing too risky as regional (and extra-regional) capability steadily improves. Consequently, high altitude stealth aircraft, that don’t need to fly exposed deep-penetration missions to achieve precision, but instead use stealthy long-range standoff cruise missiles, are now required for the very same reasons. Namely, to maximise survivability and reduce mission-kill, so guaranteeing expensive scarce precision munitions hit more targets, more often. That’s what credible strike capability is, something Kopp doesn’t seem to quite realise because no matter how you ‘evolve’ an F-111C, it’s always going to be detected early and intercepted, plus will provide an opponent early warning. Aircrews don’t want that under any circumstances, no matter what strike radius is, because they will die. To prevent this implies a steadily growing rate of forced mission-kills. There’s no way around this, RAAF can’t and won’t engage in attrition but even an evolved-Pig would be quickly attrited if detected and missions were not aborted. In other words, RAAF and ADF would still require a new aircraft that eliminated the mission-kill problem for the foreseeable future. F-111C has reached the end of the line in RAAF operational service. F-22A will not turn it all around because F-111 is to archaic to fit into an integrated modern allied network, so why mix it with F-22A when they are intrinsically incompatible at the interoperability level? The natural integrated network partners of F-22A are F-35 and Super Hornet, so there’s not a choice left to be made.
In the F-111C there’s no glass cockpit display with colour moving map and JORN real-time regional picture, it’s a RWR and archaic 1960s radar, which if used in search mode will tell everyone in South East Asia approximately where you are, through simple passive triangulation tracking. The crew operates with few cues of what’s going on around and in front of them. In order to escape being detected by early warning systems and targeted by SAMs, or intercepted, they fly a considerable TFR ingress and egress distance below 200 ft @ ~600 knots (faster the better). That fuel-inefficient hi-lo-hi mission is commonly necessary, plus climb-out after egress, the point where the aircraft is most likely to be intercepted. If F-111C is detected early at 2010, even briefly, the chance of returning is poor. Even IOC Flankers in SEA mean that post 2010 the fuel-limited F-111C stands a fair chance of being intercepted unless they have dedicated fighter escort, and refuellers to support that package.
That implied need for a long-range fighter escort is the entire reason Kopp wants F-22A-to escort a handful of clapped-out bombers with inadequate weapons, sensors and no worthwhile network capability.
That’s what’s behind all of Kopp’s APA bum-riots. He’s fixated on a single goal, at any cost, regardless of merit of force-structure mix, or merit of those individual aircraft. RAAF and ADF know Kopp’s pet paradigm is high-risk, deeply flawed, hopelessly inefficient, inadequate and massively expensive-Carlo chucked a wobbly. Consequently he attacks RAAF leadership and ADF competence-what a nugget. Even 100 self-escorting new-build AESA F-15E would be half the price and more effective and survivable for longer, but even that option would suffer from rising mission kills.
Note: missiles are meant to kill aircrew not aircraft. A damaged aircraft may fight but dead aircrew crash. Kopp won’t get his face torn off his skull ejecting into windblast at 600 knots. ADF want aircraft that make RAAF aircrew feel confident this isn’t their fete. Kopp hammers processes directed at providing that and that shouldn’t need explanation or justification.
The F-15E is cheap compared to the F-22A, and long-range F-16D Block 60s are cheaper still, but the F-35A is cheaper than all of them, but an order of magnitude improved survivability, which translates to very low rates of mission-kill, in RAAF operational context.
This is the right aircraft for the RAAF/ADF context.
Currently the F-35A cost per unit is ~$48.6 million US, or ~$61 million au. ~100 x $61 million = $6.1 billion. AIR 6000 capability replacement is currently earmarked for up to $15.5 billion. i.e. "AIR 6000 Estimated Phase Expenditure: Phase 2A/2B - $4500m to $6000m for each of Phases 2A and 2B; Phase 2C - $2500m to $3500m" - ADF Defence Capability Plan 2006-2016 (public version). The catch is that the final phase may be F-35A, F-35B or UCAV, so total unit costs will be between ~$6.5 (STOVL costs more) and $7.5 billion, depending on UCAV capability costs and desired performance. In other words, there remains ~$9 billion of other air power capability and support to be acquired under Project AIR 6000 beyond the core unit costs. This will pay for deep maintenance, basing needs, weapons, block upgrade, training facility, probable software development unit, several simulators, spares and other support. Even this is not likely to soak up all $9 billion so there may be other significant capability involved. The clear implication is affordable accessory options are possible that could make a significant difference to extended operational capability. It’s also not out of the question for final phase funding to increase.
Note: 24 new Super Hornet Block II are unrelated to Project AIR 6000 phase costs.
On average 15 to 20 F-111s are available at a given time from a total of ~26 operational airframes within a total RAAF fleet of ~36 airframes (unavailable airframes are either in deep maintenance/upgrade, mothballed or cannibalised). The pending new ~100 low-RCS strikefighters means RAAF aircraft post 2011 will realistically manage to place about three times as many stealth stand-off weapons on counter-air targets, within a 24-hour period, compared to what F-111s can presently potentially achieve.
Kopp apparently thinks that fewer larger bombers are the superior option in Counter-Air role-wrong!
Higher numbers of new strike aircraft, plus lots of networked sensors and long-range stealthy cruise missiles will quickly saturate and overwhelm a SEA opponent’s capacity to launch and sustain enough CAPs or interceptors to effectively engage around-the-clock, in any weather stand-off attacks. That’s something 15 to 20 available F-111C’s won’t achieve on Day-1. Higher attacker numbers are not a disadvantage. Numbers allow flexibility, and are more problematic for a defender to defeat or negate. The coordinated strike effect is greater than the sum. In short, more strike missions succeed, and attacks occur from a larger number of directions simultaneously, with a lower percent of mission-kill, more hits, and the result is steadily improving survivability. It throws the opponent into reactive chaos then overwhelms and degrades.
For example: What would be more difficult for RAAF to deal with? ~20 available Su-30 with 6 x 2,000 lb ALCM missiles (120 missiles per sortie), or ~80 available Su-30 with 4 x 2,000 lb ALCM missiles (320 missiles per sortie.)? The first force of 20 aircraft can mostly be intercepted and defeated or else result in numerous mission-kills, but the second force of 80 is harder to effectively intercept or address (even with 100 defenders, let alone 60, or 30, as with most SEA air forces). This means a significant proportion of the withering 320 missiles of the second force of 80 aircraft are going to be successfully launched and many will hit intended targets. A second attack will be even more successful.
Once the F-111C is replaced this will effectively be the strike capability advantage RAAF will enjoy. Compare the meagre 2006 standoff strike capability, to RAAF/ADF’s pending 2012 standoff strike capability-a massive increase (at least three times as many weapons potentially on targets). No small Flanker airforce in SEA can hope to survive that type of counter-air assault. The other operational consideration is the F-111’s only standoff weapon the AGM-142, is not stealthy, although it is extremely fast to compensate. This missile is an Israeli variant with ~120 km effective range. These were procured in modest numbers and are meant for critical hardened high-value targets-not general bombardment. It’s not clear the AGM-142 would be available in sufficient numbers for counter-air strikes, so that role may have to be prosecuted with Paveway LGBs at night, at grave risk given Su-27 IRSTs and BVR IR missiles in a cooler sky. The F-111C does not carry GPS/inertial weapons so delivery of more survivable JDAMs, JSOWs or Harpoon Block II LAMs are out of the question (carries 60 km AsuW Harpoon).
The new RAAF F/A-18F Block II (IOC 2011) will have hundreds of JSOWs (~120 km range, or ~500 km for upcoming powered JSOW-ER) and the pending F-35A (2012, ~2014 IOC and ~2016 FOC) will have thousands of JSOW and JASSM (~450 km range, or ~1050 km for evolved JASSM-ER). On top of this, under Project AIR 5418 the HUG Hornets will receive between $350 - $450 million worth of evolved JASSM. A conservative unit cost for JASSM is ~$550 k (au) so that’s enough for up to ~800 JASSM. Those combined with hundreds of Super Hornet JSOWs can certainly demolish every major air force and navy platform in southern South East Asia, in any weather condition. After that its JDAMs (JDAM-ER?) plus LGB for closer targets and stand off weapons for distant remnants-as required. The F-111C can not do anything like that in operational practice, and neither the F-111C nor F-22A have GMTI mode to guide new precision standoff ALCM weapons to moving targets.
This whole ‘future’ RAAF strike concept of Kopp’s is piss-weak and fatally flawed.
As the sometimes-scathing physicist Wolfgang Pauli would have said, the idea is so poorly considered that, "it’s not even wrong". There’s no modern air power paradigm here-there’s nothing even to reject! It’s no use talking-up these aircraft, RAAF know them inside out and what their achievable evolved operational potential really is compared to new options. That is why RAAF wants to pull the plug on them.
Kopp’s flip dismissal (as quoted above) of RAAF’s replacement counter-air capability as merely, "…a handful of standoff missile shots" is pathetic. RAAF’s strike force capability planning is immensely shrewder, more deterring and a downright daunting capability, much harder to detect, intercept, or adequately resist, and will hit about three times harder. Under current RAAF capability-planning ADF will win an air battle in SEA for the foreseeable future.
The F-35A is set up for Hi-Hi-Hi strike missions that maximises fuel-efficient fast-cruise (above weather), maximises range, provides better situational awareness, extends comms footprint, increases stand-off missile and bomb range, increases BVR weapon range, extends sensor footprint, and minimises reach of most SAMs, plus provides early warning of attack. The F-111C is a blind deathtrap in comparison, and RAAF are right to replace it with modern self-escorting networked strikefighters soon as possible.
Brendan Nelson’s decision to acquire 24 Super Hornets was a bloody good one, otherwise Australia would have had a severely downsized RAAF, with only 71 Hornets to defend a continent, and with only about 50 available. I don’t care what any cheap critic says regarding this decision, that would have been a very dumb and very unnecessary outcome given the wealth of the country (disgraceful really!). That outcome should not have been considered, and if Defence didn’t request it, then the relevant question is; why didn’t they? RAAF might have wanted a bit of wriggle-room to get into the JSF, but this should not have been the preferred option. Clearly the government was more than ready to cough up the necessary money if extra capability was requested. If there’s a problem here its not with the governmental side of things.
Nelson did the right thing and that should be properly acknowledged.
Air power journalist, Andrew McLaughlin recently wrote an excellent review piece (often does) giving RAAF’s considered public view point, here’s an excerpt;
" … A networked JDAM and JASSM armed F-111 would seem to offer Australia a formidable strike capability. But, and despite some impending and significant capability improvements, the ADF doesn’t envisage a role for the F-111C in the future networked Air Force. RAAF leaders see the high levels of system integration offered by the F-35 and, to a lesser extent, the F/A-18F, as being of critical importance rather than the F-111’s long range and speed capabilities, even with a limited networking capability. "The F-111 is not a networked aeroplane and it would not survive in the future networked environment," AIR MARSHALL Shepherd told senate estimates. "The longer you keep an aging platform in service, the risks increase. Those risks are financial, technical and operational. If we take 2015 as the sort of time line, we believe the F-111 will not be operationally feasible beyond 2015. It does not have a data-to-data machine transfer, so it can not fit into that fifth generation force." What also cripples the case for the F-111 is its increasing need to be escorted by fighters in contested airspace. "a burden increasingly anticipated for the F-111C (but not the F/A-18F Block 2 or F-35A), as the former lacks both (an) on-board air-to-air self-defence capability, as well as any measure of high level low observability (stealth) to improve mission survivability," says a special edition of ADBR Entrepreneur. For the RAAF at least, the F-111’s time has passed. …" Australian Aviation, "Fighter Battles", Andrew McLaughlin, April 2007, p38.
JORN OTHR is able to detect and track Chinese PLAN ASuW missiles launched in the Taiwan Strait. JORN is being continuously upgraded and optimised to track ballistic missiles from North Korea, to cue Alliance ballistic missile defence systems with initial trajectory data. At shorter ranges JORN is being increased in power and sensitivity to detect stealth aircraft (it can) and ALCM and SLCM size missiles, plus small timber craft in open water. JORN has been tracking wake-turbulence of aircraft rockets and missiles for years, as well as region-wide wave height and wind speed.
The possibility a state could make a successful unobserved counter-air strike on RAAF Base Darwin is very low, though SLCMs could come in quickly from the very wide littoral (but Hornets are based well inland at RAAF Base Tindal for that reason). There are few significant military air or naval movements in SEA that will go unobserved. Australia’s less interested in demolishing things as it is in rendering them irrelevant. Kopp seems to think ‘air power’ means one weapon must destroy another, but that ‘cure’ can be far worse than the disease. Real air power is when you don’t have to.
Central Asia and N-E Asia are the areas of real interest as that’s where a credible viable strategic threat would originate.
Note: So much depends on China; what it does, not what it says. There’s been no NET democratic political reform during this period of economic capitalisation. All the West is seeing is trade policies, political-reform tokenism (at best), and increasing lock-down of local information, and micro-management of all dissent. What China wants, like the West, is advanced technology weapons in very large numbers so it can wield military power and influence. Beijing is not interested in political reform, democratisation, or a reduction in the police state, nor relaxation of information control and filtering. Just the contrary, Beijing knows precisely what it wants and isn’t giving a millimetre to incidental Western ideas. They want market capitalism in a stripped-down format, minus non-essential Western cultural baggage that we implicitly associate with a ‘free’ capitalist democratic state. Westerners presume democratic reform is intertwined with capitalist economic growth, but the Chinese have shown it’s not.
Democratic reform may be intertwined with free-flow of information and ideas, but Western business and governments have helped ensure that this isn’t happening in China (probably should stop that). Democracy works best when sufficient distributed resources are available to allow it to operate, so law and order can work efficiently and sustainably. Take away or reduce the resources and corruption and criminality set in and undermine it-look at impoverished democratic states. The Chinese think they already have sustained law and order and now wealth with a large modern military-so what’s democracy for? Where does it fit in? Human Rights? They have already decided they don’t want free-flow of information across borders, and democracy isn’t to be entertained. The picture is clear, the function of the Chinese embrace of global capitalism was to get money for advanced weapons to provide power and strategic leverage. It has zilch to do with democratic political renewal. What we see now is probably not going to change much for a considerable time, at least that seems to be the plan-this current China we see will become a more dominant and capable military power.
For example all UN member states agreed to abide by and actively support the following rights, in the interests of enduring global peace and their respective National Security interests;
Article 20.(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
Article 20 (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association [such as forced ‘conversion’ to religion for instance].
Article 26. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29 (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
Article 29 (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. - UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
Such a major power without current commitment to Human Rights and Democracy, has to be regarded very warily, as the principles codified above were formulated specifically with the aim of producing favourable conditions in all states, that would greatly reduce the chances of another global war occurring. As seen in Article 29 (2), democratic society is specified, China agreed to it, and is a permanent member of the UN Security Council-but where is the Democratic society and full observance of Human Rights? It’s in Australia’s interests to get much more insistent and persistent on that front. If nothing else we could save a lot of money defusing an avoidable major arms build up. END NOTE
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Kopp is desperate to paint the F-35A/B/C as less capable or optimal than it is in RAAF service:
"The common thread running through all of the US service roles is a primary strike optimisation, reflected in the avionics and airframe design of the aircraft. Single service roles have been clearly traded down to achieve commonality. The JSF will not provide the payload-radius of the Navy A-6/A-12A deep strike aircraft [F-35A will have 1.37 times the internal fuel of an F-15C, and with only one engine, less weight and less drag this will equate to about 1.7 times the range of the Eagle], nor will it provide the relative agility advantages of the Air Force F-16A against its original Soviet opponents. [A few paragraphs earlier in the same document Kopp writes; "…The F-16A was like the F-15A aimed at air superiority, but limited by radar to mostly day VFR combat. While exceptionally agile, the 6,800 lb internal fuel capacity severely limited this aircraft. …" The F-35A has 18,480 lb of internal fuel (2.7 times more than an F-16C) and virtually the same T:W as an F-16C Block 60 at 50% fuel, plus far larger wing area and control surfaces. To cheaply assert F-35A will somehow be less agile or less than a stellar A-to-A fighter is ridiculous and irrational-at best. Everything points to F-35A being a far better A-to-A capability than an F-16C ever was, especially when distributed sensors, avionics integration, low-RCS, electronic warfare and network capabilities are included. Also, what good is mere A-to-A agility if you can’t detect your opponent? Agility is of no consequence in that case. As pointed out in the last blog entry, with regard to F/A-18 HUG and MiG-29, agility has very little to do with who will win that A-2-A contest. An opponent generally won’t detect an RAAF F-35, given JORN and Wedgetail, but RAAF F-35A will certainly detect the opponent, regardless of role, orientation, or flight regime in plenty of time to set ambush. That’s why it’s got 360 degree sensors plus integrated A-to-A laser-tracking and ranging of BVR targets, plus sensational A-to-A sensor and avionics integration. That level of integration can be used to auto-cue the autopilot to kinematically defeat an A-to-A missile, plus optimise AESA EW, jamming, laser attack on IR missile seekers, countermeasures release and missile decoy deployment-automatically. That’s why it has so much computer grunt and coding. The A-to-A laser scan and tracker allows a passive launch and guidance of BVR active radar missiles to an active terminal homing phase, thus denying the opponent a warning that an attack is underway until the final few seconds. By the time they hear/look at their RWR and realise it’s an active homing seeker, its already too late. This gear is not for A-to-G Mr. Kopp, the aircraft was built to be a BVR razor, not just to survive, hide and escape from BVR opponents. With 4 x AIM-120C/D, or probable 2 x MBDA Meteor + 2 x AIM-120C/D internal missile load it will take plenty of kills in a BVR role within SEA. Potentially 8 x AIM-120C/D or 8 x MBDA Meteor could be externally carried also.] The aircraft has a more complex and expensive avionic suite than would be required for any of the single service roles, as it rolls all three requirements into one package. The JSF's stealth capabilities are more narrowly optimised than those of the F-117A and F-22A, reflecting the need to survive mobile battlefield and littoral defences rather than penetrating an Integrated Air Defence System in depth." [Someone with a death-wish might consider penetrating an intact IADS, but if you operate F-35A you pickle-off JASSM-ER and return to base as you and your wingman’s 8 x JASSM-ER slam into IADS command centres, radars and comms infrastructure. F-35A will specialise in quickly blinding and collapsing a distributed IADS in hrs-so what’s your beef? By 2018 RAAF will potentially be able to surge ~500 JASSMs and JSOWs on the first day, and ~380 each subsequent day. If in 2012 90% of Day-1 weapons (~100 JASSM and ~80 JSOW) of RAAF hit their targets, what SEA military could absorb it and return precision fires or operate an effective IADS Day-2?] http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-JSF-Analysis.html
Note: Bit of a shame about Kopp, he’s got knowledge but no commitment, minus pet agenda. Too busy inventing fiction to wet old bones that were examined and dispensed-with long before he ever gnawed on them. He’s alienated anyone who might have once given any credit. Good practical ideas are rare as hen’s teeth, and the best are the sum of many inputs, not the result of a self-promoting tosser who supposes he has a franchise on brains.
I could continue but have shown in just a few snippets the sorts of false-axioms and immature air power nonsense strewn throughout Kopp’s APA site, but one more quickie, until next time;
"…with the caveat that the larger sensor footprint of the F-22A makes it a very much better 'information gatherer' compared to the JSF." http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-JSF-Analysis.html
The whole Carlo Kopp and APA saga is a cautionary-tale of a man’s downward spiral into erratic obsession and hypothetical delirium. F-22A doesn’t have ground sensors with which to gather said information. These practically blind F-22As could have that major weakness remedied via a hideously expensive upgrade, one day, maybe, but you’d think for ~$200 million (au) this alleged ‘strike’ aircraft might come with at least one independent ground targeting sensor. Reading Kopp’s site about future Raptor ‘strike’ upgrades is more like a Christmas wish list than any sort of formal capability development plan. Basically he says future development will involve integrating further weapons and software upgrades, in other words, no new independent ground attack sensors. But the staggering Alice-in-Wonderland level of spin in this last quote makes you wonder if there’s any limit to his bum-spray:
"…By late 2002 it was clear that the F-22A was more the multirole fighter in future tasking than the air superiority fighter it was conceived to be. As a result, in September 2002 Chief of Staff General John P. Jumper announced the redesignation of the F-22A as the F/A-22A. In 2005 this was reversed by incumbent Chief of Staff General Buzz Moseley, who observed that by then the F-22A had become widely accepted in the US as a strike aircraft. …" http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Raptor.html
So if Raptor was a multirole ‘strike’ aircraft, why would Moseley bother to dump that ridiculous F/A-22A designation to change back to the original F-22A designation? The F/A stands for Fighter/Attack (i.e. F/A-18F Super Hornet) so what Moseley was implicitly confirming is what everyone already knew, the Raptor is a dedicated Fighter and not a Multirole Attack aircraft of any sort-poor Kopp must have been heart-broken!
ADF can buy ~3 F-35A for the cost of one blind dumb-bomber.
So which should it acquire? I’d hazard to say ADF wouldn’t even consider F-22A. The F-22A production line is due to run out of work in 2009-2010 and the Pentagon is so far not interested in ordering more to keep it open. Pentagon will put the inactive production facility into mothballs for possible re-activation. F-22A’s only opposing force are the uncompetitive Su-27/30 Flankers and derived Su-34 Fullback, plus S-400 SAM. These can already be defeated by the ~300% cheaper F-35A/B/C that can be acquired by the thousands and will remain in production until ~2035.
A fully developed late-build F-35 may remain viable out to 2045, when someone finally builds something that heavily eats into its survivability margin.
