Air University Review, November-December 1984
William S. Lind
DURING the second year of the American Revolutionary War, a Hessian jaegcr captain offered an interesting comment on both his enemy and his own army. He wrote in his diary:
During these two years the Americans have trained a great many excellent officers, who very often shame and excel our experienced officers, who consider it sinful to read a book or to think of learning anything during the war. For the love of justice and in praise of this nation, I must admit that when we examined a haversack of the enemy, which contained only two shirts, we also found the most excellent military books translated into their language. For example, Turpin, jenny, Grandmaison, La Croix, Tielke's Field Engineer, and the Instructions of the great Frederick to his generals I have found more than one hundred times. Moreover, several among their officers had designed excellent small handbooks and distributed them in the army. Upon finding these books, I have exhorted our gentlemen many times to read and emulate these people, who only two years before were hunters, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, tradesmen, inn-keepers, shoemakers, and tailors.1
Captain Johannes Ewald went on to add a "von" to his name and to attain the rank of lieutenant general in the Danish service. He also acquired a deserved reputation for being a military intellectual of the first order and the premier authority in Europe on insurgency and counterinsurgency during the Napoleonic period. His personal and professional achievements spoke strongly for one of his most deeply held beliefs: that ideas are important in war.
It is not surprising that an eighteenth-century gentleman would have held such a view. That century saw such an intellectual flowering that there have been few fundamentally new ideas since. It was a time when to be educated meant to be interested in ideas, to read extensively and seriously, and often to write and publish as well. Literary and other types of journals, the ancestors of Air University Review, first appeared in the eighteenth century, and a high percentage of the literate public read them. Salons were formed in which educated men and women met regularly to discuss what they read and what the leading thinkers of the day were saying.
Especially in the Germanys, the century saw a great revival of interest in the classical civilizations and in history generally. Both classical and modern history may have helped form Ewald's belief in the importance of ideas in war. Certainly, both argued strongly for such a view. Ideas such as the oblique attack that gave Thebes victory over Sparta at Leuctra in 371 B.C. and the double envelopment Hannibal used to crush the Romans at Cannae stood out prominently in classical history. Modern history offered not only battles where one side had decisively outthought the other but explicit records of the thoughts of great commanders, such as the Reveries of Marshal Maurice de Saxe and the Instructions of Frederick the Great. Military professionals joined their colleagues in other fields in endeavoring to define new questions and issues and to think about them logically and comprehensively.
While the specific military issues themselves have changed in the last 200 years, the existence of vital issues--issues which must be thought through carefully and correctly if combat is to result in victory--is still very much a fact. The Air Force faces a large number of them today. To offer just one example, which school of fighter design is correct?
Currently, three schools of fighter design are contending with one another: the "current-approach" school, the "missileer" school, and the "lightweight-fighter" school. Each has a very different approach to fighter design. Which one is best? Our decision on which one to adopt will have significant influence on our chances for success in future aerial conflicts.
The "current-approach" school is the easiest to understand because it is exemplified by most of the fighters the United States now buys, including the F-14, F-18, and F-15 (less so, the F-16). In general, American current-design fighters have the following characteristics:
They are large and heavy by world standards. The F-14 and F-15 are among the largest fighter aircraft in the world. The F-18 is twice the weight of a MiG-21. Their large size makes these aircraft relatively easy to see in air-to-air combat.
They are designed for a high, supersonic top speed but cruise subsonically. Time at supersonic speeds is restricted to a few minutes by afterburner fuel limitations. Maneuverability (including energy maneuverability and transient characteristics) ranges from marginal (F-14) to fairly good (F-15).
They incorporate large amounts of complex electronics and depend heavily on these electronics, especially radar, in combat. They are designed to emit electronic energy essentially all the time when tactical.
Weapons include radar-guided air-to-air missiles, infrared missiles, and cannon.
They are designed in the expectation that some, but not all, combat will be "beyond visual range" (BVR).
They are expensive--$30 million or more each.
One of the conceptual alternatives to these fighters is often called the "missileer," a name given to an aircraft of this type proposed in the 1950s. The missileer is not a fighter at all, as a "fighter" is currently defined. It is merely a platform that launches air-to-air missiles. The theory behind the missileer is that high performance can be put into the weapon insteadof the aircraft. Modern radar-guided air-to-air missiles are so effective, missileer proponents argue, that even the hottest fighter has little chance to evade them, so aircraft performance is irrelevant. All that will be needed in future air combat is something to carry these missiles aloft and launch them toward radar contacts. A variant on the missileer argument is that the missiles themselves can be carried by ships or land-based; the aircraft is needed only to carry the radar.
General characteristics of a missileer would include:
A large, heavy aircraft, perhaps along the lines of an A-6. Large payload and long loiter time are the most important performance characteristics. Logically, a Boeing 747 or a blimp could serve adequately as a missileer-type fighter.
No supersonic speed; no combat maneuverability.
Heavy electronics suites, including powerful radars and heavy ECM/ECCM.
Main (possibly sole) armament consisting of radar-guided air-to-air missiles; possibly some infrared missiles for last-ditch self-defense (as with the AIM-9s carried by Royal Air Force Nimrods in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict).
Design based on the presumption that all combat will be BVR.
All-weather and night capability.
Multiengined.
Very expensive--at least as costly as an A6-E Prowler ($67 million per aircraft in FY 1984).
The second alternative to current-design fighters is the so-called lightweight fighter. The F-16 reflects some, though by no means all, lightweight-fighter concepts, as does the F-5. The basic idea behind the lightweight fighter is that most air-to-air combat is dog-fighting. Proponents argue that BVR rules of engagement are seldom feasible because of identification, friend, or foe problems, and even if BVR were allowed, radar-guided air-to-air missiles have such a low PK that few kills would be achieved before the "fur ball" stage is reached. Characteristics of an ideal lightweight fighter would include:
Small size--smaller than an F-5--for minimum visual signature. Correspondingly low weight, perhaps around 10,000 pounds. Excellent combat maneuverability, especially transient characteristics.
Comparatively low top speed, perhaps around mach 1.8. Supersonic cruise capability. High fuel fraction for long range and ability to outlast an opponent in a dogfight.
Mostly passive electronics to locate, identify, and count enemy aircraft through their own emissions. Radio and radar silence presumed for most tactical flying. "Short-squirt" radar for brief "looks" in the direction indicated by the passive radar warning electronics. Very good outward visibility (replacing most electronics) for dogfights.
No radar-guided air-to-air missiles. Infrared missiles and guns for armament, plus passive radar-homing air-to-air missiles to force (radar-dependent) enemy to shut down his radars.
Presumption of no BVR combat, except possibly with passive radar-homing missiles.
Visual weather/day capability emphasized, based on the presumption that enemy attack aircraft have poor accuracy in bad weather and at night. The fighter would inherently have a good clear night capability since infrared works better at night than during day and enemy night bombers would have to use their radar.
Single-engine turbojets. Turbojets are much better than fans for supersonic cruising, and singles have less supersonic drag.
Inexpensive. The F-16 costs only half as much as an F-15; lightweight-fighter proponents estimate that a true lightweight supercruiser would cost about half as much as an F-16.
Which of the contending schools is correct? Much depends on finding the answer and following it in future fighter-development programs. The Soviet Union is today following the "current-design" school; new Soviet aircraft are conceptually similar to our own. If either of the other schools is correct, we have a great opportunity. If, for example, future aerial combat is dominated by dogfighting, the Soviets' current-design fighters would be at a severe disadvantage if faced with lightweight fighters (as Soviet-built MiG-23s have been when confronted by Israeli-flown F-16s). The side that is first to adopt the best approach (if the current-design school is not best) will threaten its opponents with massive and rapid obsolescence.
How is the Air Force dealing with this and similar issues today? Do we see the sort of widespread reading, writing, talking, and thinking about them that their importance demands? Hardly. Ideas, apart from those relating to the "how to do it" aspects of narrow, specific jobs, play little or nopart in the life of today's average Air Force officer. The average officer appears to read little if at all about warfare, writes less, and in general leaves the issues that will largely determine whether he wins or loses in combat to some nameless "they" in some remote headquarters. Intellectually, the Air Force officer corps appears not merely sluggish but moribund.
In a recent discussion with one former editor of Air University Review, I asked how many copies of the Review he thought were actually read. He replied that he had once discussed this question at some length with his colleagues and that they subsequently attempted an informal survey on the matter. The result? They concluded that of the 28,000 copies of each issue sent out, probably about 500 were thoroughly read.
Last year, I engaged in a series of exchanges with an Air Force colonel in the pages of the Review. Our arguments were on an important and difficult issue--the problem of defining what constitutes quality in military equipment--and they were somewhat sharp in tone, even contentious. Later, I asked the current Review staff how many letters the exchange had generated. The reply: two.
Intellectual activity naturally generates a demand for the raw material of thought, books. Where is the professional bookstore on your air base?
The situation is particularly bad in terms of writing. The entire U.S. Air Force officer corps of 105,000 people has just one combat-oriented military journal that deals with issues above the level of tactical technique--Air University Review. Imaginative articles written by Air Force officers on controversial subjects seldom appear in its pages. It does not compare very well in this respect with other military journals, such as the Marine Corps Gazette, the Army War College's Parameters, and the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
Several years ago, a since-retired officer then on the Review's staff wrote to me, "We have just completed the Ira C. Eaker Essay Competition. There were around seventy entries from across the Air Force. The quality of most of the essays is poor. The level of thinking is rather lower than the sophistication in writing. If there is a renaissance in military thinking, it is confined to a few individuals. The Air Force is such a difficult place to surface new ideas with a great deal of opposition to the discussion of any issue that is controversial or which may run counter to current policy and doctrine."
Why do so few Air Force officers read or write about issues vital to their own future? As always, there is no single cause. Military professionals, like all Americans today, are products of a society that wants recipes and formulas, a modernistic milieu that teaches people what to do, not how to think. They have little time for consideration of issues that lie beyond the boundaries of their daily jobs. There is little if any obvious reward in the service for reading or writing. But there is one factor that is particularly marked because it is unique to the Air Force. It is censorship.
My discussions with officers from all the departments indicate that the Air Force officer faces tighter restrictions on publication than officers from other military services. If an Army, Navy, or Marine Corps officer wants to write and publish a controversial article, he can. But if his Air Force counterpart writes a similar piece, he faces a severe hurdle: the policy review process. While the other services either do not require policy review or permit the individual officer to say what he wants to with a disclaimer that his views do not represent official policy, the Air Force routinely denies permission to publish articles that conflict with established policy.
The effect is crippling. An article that cannot be published might as well not be written, and since the rigidity of Air Force policy review is well known among Air Force thinkers, most of them see little point in writing. The intellectual quality of published material is poor because only articles that are essentially irrelevant to significant issues or that support established policies are allowed to see the light of day. The result is that critical thinking is left to outside civilians, and the officer corps--the group that will be most directly affected by policy--is rendered mute.
The lessons of history here are only too obvious. Time and again, military services that have ossified, that have perpetuated incorrect or outdated views and policies, have paid a heavy price in blood and failure. Unless a service has a vibrant internal intellectual life, all the budget allocations which the nation can afford and more are not likely to make that service successful in combat. Ideas are as important to us today as they were to our ancestors in the Revolution. What would those ancestors who, according to Captain Ewald, wore rags so that they might buy books about their profession, think of a policy of suppressing innovative ideas that could lead to success in war?
The success of the Air Force in any future combat is too important, and critical thinking is too necessary for success, to allow the current Air Force policy review process to be perpetuated. The Air Force must allow its officers at least as much latitude to publish controversial materials as is given to their counterparts in other services. Few actions would pay greater dividends than ending the Air Force's unilateral disarmament in the war of ideas.
Alexandria, Virginia
Note
1. Captain Johannes Ewald, Field Jaeger Corps, Diary of the American War; A Hessian Journal, translated and edited by Joseph P. Tustin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 108.
Contributor
William S. Lind (A.B., Dartmouth College; M.A., Princeton University) is an advisor to Senator Gary Hart, president of the Military Reform Institute, and Resident Scholar at the Institute for Government and Politics of the Free Congress Foundation. He previously served as legislative assistant to Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio. Lind has been a frequent contributor to the Marine Corps Gazette, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and the Review.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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