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JSF - "Maneuvering is Irrelevant"
Posted by Bill Sweetman 8:01 PM on Oct 02, 2008
Two weeks ago at the Air Force Association convention, Northrop
Grumman briefed media on
the Distributed Aperture System (DAS) that it is developing for
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Subsystem briefs aren't always revealing, but this was
different.
As this story in DTI (p40) explains, DAS comprises six fixed,
wide-angle infrared cameras that
constantly image the entire sphere around the F-35. It's been
publicized in the past for its ability
to allow the pilot to "see through the floor" in a vertical
landing, and one of its functions is to
provide imagery to the VSI helmet-mounted display. Another is
missile warning. But one of the
DAS' most interesting capabilities is that it can constantly
track every aircraft in the sky, out to
its maximum range - which varies but, absent clouds, covers the
within-visual-range envelope.
DAS has two vital attributes in this respect: it stares, never
looking away from any target, and it
has optical accuracy, with megapixel-class resolution. (Northrop
Grumman didn't say
"megapixel", but one of their suppliers did. Bad supplier! The
naughty spot for you!) This means
that once a target is ID'd, it stays ID'd, and the pilot can see
what every aircraft around him is
doing.
Moreover, DAS is expected to track with enough accuracy and
tenacity to permit a safe high-
off-boresight, lock-on-after-launch (LOAL) missile shot with any
datalink-equipped missile.
Indeed, Northrop Grumman's DAS business development leader, Pete
Bartos - who was part of
the initial USAF JSF requirements team - says that this was
basic to the F-35 design and the
reason that it did not need maneuverability similar to the F-22.
Rather than entering a turning
fight at the merge, the F-35 barrels through and takes an
over-the-shoulder defensive shot. As
a Northrop Grumman video puts it, "maneuvering is
irrelevant".
What this says about the F-35 is that the 1995 statement of its
godfather, George Muellner, still
stands: it is 70 per cent air-to-ground and 30 per cent air to
air. Consider the USAF, by far the
largest customer, in 1995. It was expecting to get 442 F-22s,
which would dominate any
foreseen air threat (a major regional power) for decades. It was
four years after Desert Storm,where the F-117 had been the star,
combining stealth and precision attack into an
overwhelming force multiplier.
Looking back, the USAF was clearly seeking something that would
do the F-117 job while
remedying its limitations. The F-117 was a clear-night system,
unable to bomb in adverse
weather or survive in daylight, and could not hit all the
targets covered by other strike aircraft.
The JSF requirement was built around an F-117's internal weapon
load. It added a radar and
GPS-guided weapons for all-weather attack. It added situational
awareness (that is, an EW
system capable of detecting, identifying and avoiding pop-up
threats) and AAMs for self-
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defense, for daytime survivability. Finally, it added external
pylons for the "day two" missions
and the entire target set tackled by F-16s.
All this had to fit inside the tightest limitation imposed by
the joint-service JSF concept, which
was size: the Marines and the UK wanted (but didn't get) an
aircraft no bigger than an F/A-18C.
Within those limits, the JSF could not be designed for the
supersonic cruise and
maneuverability that had been included in the F-22. Moreover, it
was the first USAF
requirement written after the end of the Cold War, and the rude
shock of realizing just how
dangerous the Vympel R-73 and associated helmet-mounted sight
would be in close combat.
Rather than attempting to play a game that might be mutual
suicide, the JSF requirement
authors stressed stealth, situational awareness and LOAL. If the
fight does get to the merge,
the best thing to do in an F-35 is to accelerate through it, put
the adversary in the rear sector
and take an over-the-shoulder shot.
Of course, the use of 360-degree weapons on a fighter has an
illustrious precedent...
...about which the less said the better. If the Germans had had
an expression for "clubbed like
baby seals" in 1940, the Luftwaffe would have used it.
The other first-level observation about the JSF self-defense
strategy is that - at service entry -
the jet won't carry (internally) a missile that is very suited
to the job. The AIM-120 can in theory
be vectored in any direction, although it generally receives
updates via the radar, which cannot
update the missile outside its field-of-regard, and the weapon's
design emphasizes range and
speed rather than agility. The F-35 can carry the AIM-9X Block 2
or ASRAAM, but only on
