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Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
Depends on the base.
Right now though a big established base is a well known target.
If a potential adversary wanted to pull a Pearl harbor 2.0 lobbing ballistic missiles at a large established US Airbase within a few thousand miles would be a fair start and effective way to knock the US back for weeks if not months of operational capabilities if partnered with air and sea denial.
Although the US employs some very good air defence missile systems not enough.
The aim of smaller bases is to establish distributed operations.
An Enemy only has so many long range precision guided munitions to spare at a time so if made to choose between three bases one large and two smaller they will assume the larger one is more capable and more of a threat.
The smaller bases though can respond and assist the larger one in defence or repair. They can also shelter addiction assets.

Before Pearl harbor one of the good management choices made by commanders was just that. To move additional aircraft from the main base field to secondary bases around the island. When the attack happened the Japanese focused on the main base. The secondary bases managed to come in and out up a fight.
It is a textbook game theory example.

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Simple calculation, the art is to estimate the unknown parameters.
 
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Brumby

Major
Depends on the base.
Right now though a big established base is a well known target.
If a potential adversary wanted to pull a Pearl harbor 2.0 lobbing ballistic missiles at a large established US Airbase within a few thousand miles would be a fair start and effective way to knock the US back for weeks if not months of operational capabilities if partnered with air and sea denial.
Although the US employs some very good air defence missile systems not enough.
The aim of smaller bases is to establish distributed operations.
An Enemy only has so many long range precision guided munitions to spare at a time so if made to choose between three bases one large and two smaller they will assume the larger one is more capable and more of a threat.
The smaller bases though can respond and assist the larger one in defence or repair. They can also shelter addiction assets.

Before Pearl harbor one of the good management choices made by commanders was just that. To move additional aircraft from the main base field to secondary bases around the island. When the attack happened the Japanese focused on the main base. The secondary bases managed to come in and out up a fight.

RAND actually published a research analysis on base defense against missile attacks a few years ago. The state of degradation and ability to recover is a function of many things like the number of aim points; CEP of attacking missiles; probability of intercepts by missile defense; hardening features and recovery capability. From memory the research article demonstrated that an air base can recover to operational status very quickly but the issue is the ability to sustain operations from repeated barrages. On the other hand, the attacking side can also run out of their inventory of PGMs very quickly and then what do they do. I will try to dig up that document.

POAs do significantly affect the number of PGMs needed to do the job. upload_2019-5-11_12-35-56.png
 

Brumby

Major
John Stillion and David Orletsky at RAND conducted the first detailed analysis of the effects of more-accurate ballistic- or cruise-missile attacks on airfields. Their 1999 report assessed the vulnerability that aircraft parked in the open had to attacks by TBMs armed with unitary warheads or submunitions. They focused on the threat to aircraft in the open because, from ODS on, the U.S. military often parked large numbers of aircraft relatively close together on open ramps without even revetments for protection. Their analysis used USAF spacing guidelines to estimate parking densities as inputs for a Monte Carlo simulation.

Figure 4.1 is reproduced from the Stillion and Orletsky report and shows several striking features. First, note, in the lower left corner, the small circle showing the lethal area for an M-9 (now called the DF-15) missile carrying a single 500-kg unitary warhead, which would damage only six aircraft. In contrast, consider the largest circle in the figure.56 This is the lethal radius for the M-9 (DF-15) ballistic missile if, instead of a single 500-kg warhead, its payload was used to carry 825 1-lb. submunitions. For relatively soft targets, such as aircraft on a large parking ramp, many small submunitions are vastly more efficient in creating lethal effects than a single big warhead. In this case, the bomblets damage 82 out of the 95 aircraft parked on the notional ramp (compared with six aircraft damaged by the single 500-kg warhead).
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Brumby

Major
A subsequent subject related RAND report published in 2015.

Table 3.1 outlining Chinese missiles CEP and inventory
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Table 3.2 outlining US bases likely subject to missile attacks.
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An illustration using the Kadena airbase.
Runway Attacks
Destroying portions of a runway to deny its use by enemy aircraft requires that the attacker “crater” it such that no minimum operation surface (MOS) is left. MOS requirements vary by aircraft size and performance characteristics and indicate the minimum length and width of unbroken runway that a fighter, tanker, or bomber requires to take off and land. To illustrate the runway targeting problem, we take the case of Kadena AB. Kadena AB has two runways, each roughly 12,000 feet long. One is 200 feet wide and the other 300 feet wide.

First, consider the case of fighter operations from Kadena. The nominal MOS for a fighter is 5,000 feet long and 50 feet wide. Thus, if an attacker can destroy enough of the runway that there is no undamaged 5,000- by 50-foot section, then the attacker has shut the air base to fighter aircraft operation until repair crews can reopen the runway. Given that Kadena’s has 12,000-foot-long runways, the attacker would need to cut each runway in two places, for a total of four cuts. (An illustrative overlay of these cuts is depicted in Figure 3.2.) Further, given the width of the runways (200 and 300 feet), each lengthwise cut would require several craters across the runway, with the exact number depending on their size and exact position.
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Large aircraft, such as tankers, required a larger MOS. As with fighters, the precise MOS required for a tanker depends on a host of factors, including the fuel load of the tanker and weather conditions. A commonly used planning MOS for tankers is 7,000 feet by 147 feet. This larger MOS yields fewer potential operating surfaces, requiring fewer aim points for an attacker to destroy to shut down the base. In this case, a single cut point on each runway could, if properly placed, close Kadena to tankers.

Given these parameters, the question then becomes whether a given inventory of Chinese missiles can destroy two to four sections of runway, and, if so, how many times they can re-attack sections of runway after they are repaired. The effectiveness of a Chinese attack on a runway depends primarily on five variables: the number of missiles, the accuracy of the missiles, the time it takes U.S. forces to repair a destroyed section of runway, the effectiveness of U.S. missile defenses, and the quality of Chinese intelligence.

There is little open-source information about MRBM warheads, but given the PLA’s emphasis on attacking air bases and the reported development of high-explosive submunitions for the DF-21C, it is likely that the missile has runway attack capabilities. Indeed, as a ballistic missile with high terminal velocity, it would be well suited to this task. For modeling purposes, we assume that the submunition characteristics are similar to those used in the U.S. Air Force’s BLU-67 anti-runway bomb—specifically, a 4.5-kg penetrating submunition carrying 2.75 kg of high-explosives. According to Air Force planning documents, a warhead with these characteristics would create a five-foot-diameter crater in a runway. A ballistic missile capable of carrying 82 of these anti-runway submunitions could dispense them at a height and velocity such that they would land within a circle with a radius 300 feet distributed around the missile impact point. The resulting density of craters inside this 600-foot-diameter area is sufficient to damage the runway to the point that no 50-foot-wide section remains clear, so long as the submunition footprint covers the entire width of the runway.
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the bottom line is May 2, 2018
F-35Bs ready for
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?
San-Carlos-FOB-Falkland-Islands-Harrier-and-Helicopter-Operations-06.jpg
 
in real world
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The Pentagon has long worried about the multi-billion dollar price tag that comes along with building a new interceptor field and its infrastructure. Influential lawmakers want a permanent site built that will support close to 1,000 jobs in their districts.
Despite mounting frustration here, a wary Pentagon has blown past a 60-day window imposed by Congress to deliver a plan for a long-debated East Coast ballistic missile interceptor site.

The Pentagon has long worried about the multi-billion dollar price tag that comes along with building a new interceptor field and its infrastructure, and has generally had little to say to lawmakers demanding answers. The Missile Defense Review released earlier this year also called into question the need to build a third domestic interceptor field.

But that hasn’t stopped Congressional delegations from New York, Ohio, and Michigan — the states with locations still in the running for any future work — from demanding answers. And they want those answers before the 2020 defense budget markups begin.

“Our congressional intent was very clear,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican who represents the New York location at Fort Drum, admonished Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves Wednesday. “The environmental impact study was funded and authorized by Congress. That has been completed. The Secretary of Defense sat in this very committee room and said on record, under oath, that he would meet our request to voluntarily provide that information to Congress.”

The 2018 NDAA
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60 days after the delivery of the Missile Defense Review to submit a location to Congress. The review was released in January. But the document also said it was kicking off a series of six-month reviews on what might be need to be set up or modernized to meet missile threats.

“Let me make it perfectly clear,” Stefanik added. “Our expectation is that we will hear from the Secretary of Defense what the preferred site is.”

The sites still under consideration are the Fort Custer Training Center in Augusta, Mich., Camp Garfield in Ohio, and Fort Drum, NY.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2012 that it would cost $3.6 billion over five years to build the site and buy 20 interceptors, but that doesn’t include upkeep and sustainment costs.

The Missile Defense Agency “has repeatedly stated that the estimated $3-$4 billion cost to build such a site would be better spent on improving the capabilities of the existing [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] system,” said Kingston Reif, director for Disarmament and Threat Reduction Policy at the Arms Control Association. “That the Pentagon punted, at least for now, on this issue goes to show how expensive and rightly controversial it is.”

Proponents of the third site had a brief glimmer of hope on May 1 however, when Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan — who was
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on Thursday — told Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat whose district includes the Ohio site that he would give him an answer “today.”

But that answer never came. A congressional staffer told me the DoD informed lawmakers Shanahan “misspoke” and “no decision has been made or will be made until the Trump Administration first determines whether an East Coast Missile Defense site is even necessary.”

Asked to clarify matters, a Pentagon spokesperson said the only statement the department would make is already in January’s Missile Defense Review, referring questions to the Missile Defense Agency. Mark Wright, spokesman for the agency, said via email, “at this time, I don’t have anything to add beyond what the Missile Defense Review has already said about this.”

So, what does the
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? Essentially, the Pentagon isn’t ready to make a decision. Since the Pentagon has already wrapped up its environmental study of the three sites, that work “will enable DoD to shorten the deployment timeline should the United States determine that threat conditions warrant building a new interceptor site. In the event of such a decision, the location selected for the site will be informed by multiple pertinent factors at the time.”

But there are options other than building a brand-new base, says Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“If you want to replicate Fort Greely,” which already houses 26 interceptors, “you’re looking at several billion dollars of infrastructure,” which the Pentagon might not have the stomach for.

Instead, the US should consider a transportable option with a small footprint for an East Coast missile defense capability, Karako said. It would use the same interceptors that are in the ground in Alaska and California but be truck-mounted so it can move between locations. Going mobile would carry a price tag “in the millions and not in the billions, plus you’re not tied to a particular location.”

But Congressional delegations want infrastructure spending in their districts, something the mobile systems wouldn’t provide. To put it more baldly, lawmakers want money spent in their districts where their constituents would benefit.

In a March 26 letter sent to Shanahan by the Ohio delegation, lawmakers pointed out that if their site were selected, it would bring 2,300 construction jobs to the presidential battleground state, along with up to 850 full-time employees.

Rep. Mike Turner, ranking member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, told Greaves this week he’s ready for a decision.

“You have three communities that are vying for this — two need to be let go,” the Republican said. “Two need to be able to be told they can stand down, and their communities and their chambers of commerce and everybody else who’s working to advocate for their community needs to understand that actually a decision has been made because you’ve completed all the data work necessary for that decision.”
it's
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Dec 20, 2018
some time ago Jul 26, 2016;
Start of US Air Force’s light-attack plane competition pushed back until next year
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now
USAF to Award Light Attack Contract This Fall
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5/10/2019
The Air Force will award a contract for light attack aircraft this fall after a formal solicitation expected this month, according to a presolicitation notice the service posted on May 8.

The
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states that Sierra Nevada and its A-29 Super Tucano possess “the capability necessary to meet the requirement within the Air Force’s time frame without causing an unacceptable delay in meeting the needs of the warfighter.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said in
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the service expects to buy six light attack aircraft, three from the Sierra-Nevada/Embraer team and three AT-6Bs from Textron Aviation. Another notification for Textron is expected.

According to the posting, the Light Attack Aircraft “will provide an affordable, non-developmental aircraft intended to operate globally in the types of irregular warfare environments that have characterized combat operations over the past 25 years.”

It will also support Air Force Special Operations Command’s mission of close air support to partner nations, according to the notification.

Goldfein told Air Force Magazine the AT-6s will be based at Nellis AFB, Nev., and the A-29s would be based at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

The six aircraft will be bought outright “so we can modify them anyway we want,” he said.

The funding would come from the $60 million remaining in fiscal 2018 RDT&E accounts and another $100 million from fiscal 2019 procurement.

EDIT
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Light Attack Acquisition Enters Notification Phase
dated May 8, 2019
:
A planned acquisition of three A-29 Super Tucanos and three AT-6 Wolverines has entered the presolicitation notification phase required for all sole source contracts.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) on May 7 released such a notification to award a contract to Sierra Nevada for an unspecified number of A-29s to be operated by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).

The notice did not specify how many aircraft would be purchased, but a Sierra Nevada spokesman confirms the notice relates to the planned buy of two to four A-29s to be based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, the headquarters of AFSOC.

A similar number of AT-6s are planned to be acquired from
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Aviation and based at Air Combat Command’s test center and weapons school at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The AFLCMC has not yet released a presolicitation notice for the AT-6, but a Textron spokeswoman confirms it is expected soon.

Last year, the Air Force had planned to buy as many as 300 turboprop fighters under the Light Attack Aircraft program. The Air Force had staged two months-long experimentation events in 2017 and 2018.

In the end, the Air Force decided it needed more information. Gen David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, announced in February that a third experimental phase will begin this year, and it will reopen the analysis to consider jets, helicopters and unmanned air systems for light attack and close air support roles.
 
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Friday at 3:37 PM
good
USS Rhode Island launches Trident II D5, following North Korea and US Air Force missile tests
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also
Global Strike Conducts Second Minuteman Test Launch This Month
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5/10/2019
The Air Force, for the second time in about a week, test launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg AFB, Calif.At about 12:40 a.m. local time May 9, a crew from F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo., launched the unarmed missile, which traveled about 4,200 miles to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The missile was outfitted with a test re-entry vehicle, with a “high-fidelity package used for operational testing,” according to an Air Force Global Strike Command release.

The test follows the May 1 test of an ICBM, also launched by a crew from F.E. Warren.

The Air Force builds its launch calendars three to five years in advance, planning for each individual launch beginning at least six months in advance, according to Global Strike.
 
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