Published Airpower Journal - Fall 1996
There is nothing so powerful as truth--and often nothing so strange.
-Daniel Webster
FUTURISTS HERALD the impact of new technologies on war-fighting capabilities and identify airpower as the main beneficiary of these technologies. However, the progress of new technologies in sensors; command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I); and standoff weapons actually seems to threaten the supremacy of airpower, at least in the conventional sense of manned aircraft (and even remotely piloted vehicles [RPV]). Why?
Extremely powerful sensors (from joint surveillance target attack radar system [JSTARS] to future ones that will smell or taste targets) and worldwide coverage by satellites, coupled with highly accurate delivery systems capable of being launched from great range, would eliminate the need for aircraft to fly to targets and launch munitions. Officers sitting in a bunker could see all possible targets by means of their worldwide satellite system; decide which ones to hit; and order small, dispersed, cruise missile launchers, artillery, or whatever to hit them.
I have no background in operations research, but it seems to me that this system should be cheaper than maintaining air bases and launching and recovering planes, and so forth. Surely, it must be cheaper to launch one-way vehicles that have only enough fuel to get to their destination than to send planes, expensive pilots, and all the fuel and systems needed to get them there and back.
DAVID SCHORR
Electronic mail
*EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary originated as an on-line discussion among the three authors on Air Chronicles, Airpower Journal’s Internet companion. Are you missing out on what’s being discussed on-line? Check out Air Chronicles at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil . It’s Airpower Journal and a lot more.
THE SUPREMACY OF AIRPOWER as we know it today is the product of technological capability being effectively subordinated to national objectives. As technology continues to provide alternative solutions to existing and developing political challenges, the nature of airpower application will certainly change. However, given the enduring reality of land, sea, and air (aerospace), this change will likely be one of form rather than substance.
The vision of officers sitting in a bunker, identifying targets, and dispatching weapon systems fails to adequately factor in the political dimension of war. Although the technologies to execute such a scenario will appear, they too will be subordinated to national objectives determined by our political leaders.
In a larger sense, the supremacy of airpower is broader than its ability to inflict destruction. Airlift, rescue, relief operations, surveillance, and special operations--to name a few--combine to create the air supremacy of today. In the foreseeable future, whether it arrives as a mundane adaptation of its present incarnation or in the remarkable form predicted by futurists, airpower supremacy will embody an orchestration of these diverse and interdependent missions.
As to the cost-effectiveness argument put forth by Mr Schorr, the situation could prove to be just as he suspects. But the history of new technologies seems to be one of paying the piper--of incremental gains being secured by geometrically increasing costs. Indeed, not too many years ago, reformers--in partial response to these rising costs--argued that we should "dumb down" our technology in order to field larger fleets of less sophisticated airframes.
Although I disagree with Mr Schorr's premise, it is rather tame when compared to the audacity of Douhet and Mitchell, who ultimately disproved the criticisms of individuals far more astute than I.
COL T. K. KEARNEY
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
I THINK IT IS FAIR TO SAY that much of the current rash of prophecy about technology overstates the case very strongly. It is much reminiscent of statements in the early 1960s by Duncan Sandys, who decided there was no future for fighter aircraft and little for bombers in the United Kingdom (UK). Missiles were supposed to do everything. We have all seen what that did to the UK's offensive air capability in subsequent years.
Excluding a yet-to-be-seen breakthrough in true machine intelligence, all of these "warfare by remote control" schemes rely on the generous use of data-link technology to connect "controllers" with remotely wielded weapons, whether unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or missiles or pilotless fighters. This reliance produces a fundamental vulnerability because an adversary can jam or engage the data link with high-power microwave or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. The ease with which an enemy can cut the "umbilical"--even with contemporary technology--leads me to be very skeptical about the whole "remote control" warfare paradigm.
Even if we see "true machine intelligence" in years to come, other issues will arise, such as teaching real, tactical thinking to autonomous systems and properly disseminating lessons learned throughout a theater of operations, so that every autonomous system can be programmed. Because humans carry a vast amount of contextual knowledge in their heads, they can filter rubbish and deception very easily. This may not be true of machine intelligence—certainly not the variety we see today. If we attempt to build autonomous, intelligent weapons today, their useful intelligence will be wholly determined by the tactical thinking of the programmers who build them. Computer scientists have a very old saying: "GIGO" (garbage in, garbage out).
There is no substitute at this time for a tactically devious human mind in a modern airplane. Flexibility and adaptability are the reasons that manned aircraft will continue to play an important role in the future. Until we can build machine intelligence that wholly emulates the thinking of a pilot, truly effective autonomous vehicles are wishful thinking.
To assume that all opponents are so stupid that they cannot jam our global positioning system (GPS), satellite and airborne radar, and radio data links is to leave us wide open to being routed by an opponent who is not so stupid. I would not like to be the operator on a super AWACS at 35,000 feet, flying the defensive RPV combat air patrol (CAP), when the bad guys take down the data links and I am sitting out there with no means of defending myself. I'm not that brave!
I see the new technology making a big difference in making weapons more effective and sensors more potent, thus swinging the loss-rate equation further in favor of the Western alliance. This will allow the retention of a substantial war-fighting capability, even with limited budgets that will constrain force sizes.
I consider the following items to be of the greatest importance in the next three decades, regardless of what many of my colleagues in the technical community may be saying:
1. Every tactical jet should be stealthy; we should develop stealth technology to the point where we can combine high aerodynamic performance with low observability. (This may be hard to do, but it is worth the effort.)
2. We should produce more potent, passive sensors for tactical aircraft and other platforms, to deny opponents the means of detecting, jamming, or engaging those platforms.
3. We should develop more intelligence in cheap, mass-produced, standoff weapons, to deny the opponent the opportunity to close to detection-and-engagement range.
4. We should create better tools for gathering and interpreting raw sensor information (on the platform, if possible); we could thus avoid the use of data links, which could betray our position and intent, and would be subject to enemy jamming or disabling.
5. We should proceed with developments in directed-energy weapons, particularly microwave-beam weapons capable of disabling inbound missiles and aircraft.
The current debate on remote-controlled weapons is very interesting because there is a concurrent debate under way in the electronic warfare (EW) community, which is very alarmed at the vulnerabilities of existing data-link and GPS-technology bases. I would like to see more EW people involved in the wider debate.
Carlo Kopp
Melbourne, Australia
--Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower
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