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are no strangers to combat, having conducted, as of last year, well over half of all coalition sorties against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

But just a few of the aircraft — three squadrons’ worth, to be precise, carry an additional mission: hunt and destroy surface-to-air missile sites, tracking them via their radiation signature and even using the aircraft as nimble bait.

The mission, known as the “Wild Weasels,” dates back to Vietnam, said Capt. “Battle Ship,” a pilot with the 480th Fighter Squadron out of

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, Germany, who asked to be identified by his call sign.

The first Wild Weasel missions were carried out by F-105F Thunderchiefs and later F-4 Phantoms. The riskiness of the job is illustrated in a vintage unit patch, which depicts an anxious-looking cartoon weasel and the letters, “YGBSM,” short for “You Gotta Be “S******g Me.”

“The F-4 would go out with the intent, a kind of hunter-killer role. They would go out, they would find the [surface-to-air missiles] being lit up, they would detect the radiation in the SAM … locate the launch location, evade the missile, and they would destroy the site,” Battle said. ” … So you’re essentially the bait. When they said you’re the wild weasel, it goes back to a hunting term. Hunting weasels go down a hole and pull out the bigger prey.”

While a successful technique, it also cost the lives of many pilots, he said.

As F-4s transitioned out of the force, F-16s took on the mission, which remains active today, albeit with improved equipment and a broader name: suppression of enemy air defenses, or SEAD.

Battle gave tours of the F-16 this week at the Paris Air Show, a short 25-minute flight away from home for the jet.

The circa-1991 jet he showed off is an F-16CJ Block 50, equipped to launch the AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missile, or HARM, and AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation missile.

The aircraft is also equipped with an AN/ASQ-213 HARM Targeting System pod. The AGM-88 and the HTS pod are atypical equipment for the F-16, Battle said, and assist the aircraft when called upon to target and take out missile and radar sites.

“We have a better sensor so we can detect threats better and more efficiently, and we’re still out there doing the same mission. We are suppressing enemy air defenses,” he said. “So capability-wise, we have the HARM, we have a full complement of bombs and weapons that are actually very effective.”

The Wild Weasel mission today is relevant in Syria, which has a robust integrated air defense system, or IADS, and where the U.S. routinely flies airstrikes on targets.

“Syria is a situation we’re involved in and, with jets out there, you want to be understanding, studying, aware of threats and realizing how lethal they can be,” Battle said.

“When you have Wild Weasels out in theater, they may not necessarily be shooting … and going to war with those systems, but we’re providing battlefield intelligence, [situational awareness], and protecting other assets and capabilities,” he said. “So it’s a full-spectrum Wild Weasel mission.”

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Jura said:

Today at 8:12 AM
while House Armed Services moving ahead with $640B top line
source:

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The House’s 2018 defense bill is likely to go far beyond the Pentagon’s spending request, with House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) telling reporters he wants to see a $640-billion top line for the base budget that would largely include items in the services’ unfunded priorities lists.

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to fund the right-sized military force, invest in readiness and continue important modernization programs. The Pentagon requested only $574.5 billion in base budget spending when it submitted the Trump Administration’s first spending request last month, and Thornberry said the House Budget Committee is eyeing a top line of $621 billion.

“I think $640 (billion) is what we need to address the problems that have developed from sequestration and the pace, the tempo of operations over the years,” Thornberry told reporters Thursday afternoon.
“For me personally, if I were to agree to a lower number, I would need some sort of added stability to the out-years. In other words, what we’ve done with the [Budget Control Act] is every year sort of scramble” to decide on a topline and then pass defense spending and authorization bills before the end of the calendar year, and Thornberry would be looking for a three-year agreement on defense spending levels to get rid of that uncertainty.

The chairman would not say a minimum spending amount he’d agree to or the exact conditions of a deal he would make with the chairmen of the budget and appropriations committees, but he said the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act as it stands today allows $640 billion in spending but that the number could drop between now and next week if a deal were reached.

“If we can get to a point where we don’t have these draconian cuts hanging over our heads, there is a value in that,” he said.

Thornberry said the $640 billion in spending largely covers the unfunded priorities list, also called the unfunded requests (UFRs), that the services sent over following the formal budget request.

“What we had identified last fall when we first developed the 640 (billion dollar spending level) and the UFRs have a lot of overlap; I wont say it’s all the same stuff exactly, but there is, as you would expect, a lot of overlap,” Thornberry told reporters.

For the Navy, that would mean a significant boost to aviation spending –10 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, for a cost of $739 million; six P-8A Poseidons, for a cost of $1 billion; and four F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, for a cost of $540 million,

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.

The inclusion of these fighter jets takes on an especially significant meaning for Thornberry, in light of the “physiological episodes” the Navy has been experiencing with its F-18 fleet, where pilots experience either hypoxia from receiving insufficient or contaminated oxygen or decompression sickness from cabin pressure issues related to the Environmental Control System.

The Navy has said it is taking an

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to solving this problem, but naval aviation leaders

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and therefore a permanent solution.

“I tell you what, if it were a question of putting more money into something, we’d do it, because there is a high sense of urgency to find out what the problem is and fix it,” Thornberry told USNI News at the press event.
“There are a number of members, including Mr. Gaetz from Florida, who are on this issue every week, talking in that case to the Navy about where we are. I do think it’s important that the

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that says four folks died over this issue. I’ve seen the charts that show clearly the problem is worse in older aircraft, so to me it adds even additional sense of urgency to modernization, which is the only way to fix some of these readiness problems. But in the mean time, every resource – the Navy says they are putting every single thing they can to identify what the problem is, but at any point if they identify more money, more authorities, anything else to speed this up, we’re with them because it needs to be fixed.”

Additionally, Thornberry said the bill provides a 2.4-percent pay raise for troops, which is mandated by law, though the Pentagon’s request included just a 2.1-percent raise. He said it emphasizes missile defense and cyber spending, and includes “significant increases in critical munitions” spending – though the administration request sought to fill in munitions shortfalls and bring several programs up to the minimum sustaining rate to achieve cost savings, Thornberry said the Pentagon didn’t increase spending as much as they could have or should have.

The chairman said he tried to move spending on the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI) from the Overseas Contingency Operations budget to the base budget as a sign to Russia that “we’re not going to quit doing that any time soon” and to “send a clear signal to allies and adversaries alike that we’re here to stay.” He said the bill asks for a report from the Pentagon on the costs of permanently stationing troops in Eastern Germany, as opposed to the rotational presence the military has today.

Though the bill does not set up a formal fund for similar initiatives in the Pacific, Thornberry said the bill includes “more money on joint training, a whole variety of policy and funding commitments devoted to that region,” which basically amounts to an informal EDI for the Pacific.

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The 2nd US Navy Ford-Class high-tech aircraft carrier has grown 70-feet longer and is now 50-percent structurally complete with the addition of the lower stern, Huntington Ingalls Industries announced.

Huntington Ingalls Uses New Construction Techniques to Lower Costs for USS Kennedy

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Jura said:

Dec 14, 2015
new vid:

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The

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wants a jumbo-sized drone that can take off and land on amphibious ships, and the list of requirements for the aircraft is daunting.

It needs to escort the

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and have comparable flight range, carry the same weapons as an

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, and execute missions ranging from electronic warfare, command and control, airborne early warning, and airstrikes — just for starters.

Too much to ask?

No way, said Lt. Gen. Jon “Dog” Davis, deputy commandant of Marine Corps Aviation. Davis, who is set to retire next month, sat down with Military.com this week at the Paris Air Show.

While the planned mega-drone, which the Corps is calling MUX, is the first of its kind for the service, Davis said officials are not backing off their long list of requirements. And it won’t be the first time, he added that a new Marine Corps aircraft has stretched the boundaries of imagination.

“V-22, impossible? Nope. F-35B, impossible? Nope. Very possible, very doable, very good,” he said. “Bottom line, the engineering — this is not a pie in the sky. This is very doable.”

The Corps maintains that the MUX, which will be a Group 5 drone, the largest class of military unmanned aerial systems, needs to be able to take off and land vertically from a ship. Davis said it will be able to fight and attack, as well as act as a V-22 escort aircraft or electronic warfare asset.

“So we’ve asked for an open architecture airplane, a truck that we can put those kind of systems on there that we can integrate, that has an autonomous take-off/land transit capability,” he said. “Then the weapons operations, sensor operations would be done by a human being.”

While the Corps has run into challenges before in search of first-of-its-kind technologies — think of the years the service spent pursuing a high-speed amphibious fighting vehicle before having to settle for a phased approach as technology matured — Davis said the companies lining up to compete for the MUX program proved it is achievable today.

Right now, he said, there are four in the running: Boeing, which has a tail-launched offering; Northrop Grumman, with another tail-sitting aircraft it calls the Tern; Bell Helicopter, with a tiltrotor drone, the V-247 Vigilant; and Karem Aircraft, which also has a tiltrotor design on offer.

Davis said he’s expecting the Marines’ do-it-all fighting drone to be fielded by 2026, but the first demonstration flights will come later this year. Northrop Grumman is planning to fly its Tern in the fourth quarter of 2017, and Bell will fly its V-280 Valor, a revolutionary new tiltrotor aircraft that Davis said is a bigger variant of what the Corps wants in MUX.

“We’ll see the impossible happen in fourth quarter 2017. How about that?” he said.

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After

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, electronic warfare is — slowly — on the mend, the Pentagon’s Deputy Director for EW said yesterday. That includes a growing budget, a new (classified)

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from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, increased interest from the leaders of

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, and, most immediately, an ongoing joint study of future jamming aircraft.

“Give me about a month, maybe two,” and he’ll have a lot more clarity on what’s called the Analysis of Alternatives for Joint Airborne Electronic Attack,

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told the Air Force Association’s

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Some backstory on why this matters: Electronic warfare is the art and science of detecting, deceiving, and disrupting enemy radio-frequency (RF) transmissions — and since everything from wireless networks to radar relies on the RF spectrum, EW can make or break a

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. After the Cold War, however, even though the

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retained much of the old Soviet EW arsenal, the US Army and Air Force largely divested theirs. The Air Force in particular retired its last high- performance jamming aircraft, the

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, in 1998 — a small number of

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remain in service — and largely ceded EW to Navy squadrons. For its own investments, the Air Force bet on

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, the F-22 and F-35, that it deemed so undetectable they

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jamming enemy radar on their behalf, as one 4-star told Colin as recently as 2014.

As adversaries grow more electronically sophisticated, however, the Air Force has come round and started studying what it calls

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. PEA might be a dedicated manned aircraft unto itself like the old EF-111, a specialized variant of the future fighter known as Penetrating Counter-Air, a

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, or a complex mix of capabilities installed on different airframes. Much is classified, much is still to be determined.

One thing the Air Force has made clear, however, is they want

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that can penetrate (hence the name) into heavily defended airspace. The alternative would be a stand-off jammer that does its mission from a (relatively) safe distance like the Navy

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Growler.

Conley, however, thinks the division between stand-off and stand-in is easily overplayed. It can create rigid service stovepipes that don’t reflect the fluidity of real combat — or the ingenuity of US troops. “I would personally advocate that we actually move away from assigning ‘this is a stand-off and this is a stand-in,'” he said. Instead of pigeonholing, he said, we must understand different capabilities in detail, then allow tacticians and operators the flexibility to use them together in creative ways.

So rather than let each service do its own thing without regard to the others, the Pentagon has started a joint (interservice) Analysis of Alternatives for all Airborne Electronic Attack. Conley made clear this does not mean there’ll be a single mega-program to build a single jamming aircraft for all services, the way the

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is building fighters for all.

“The way it’s being executed is a joint AOA, so we’re answering the question holistically, but then it will turn into service-unique investment,” Conley told reporters after his public remarks. “So we’re not going to say that this is the Joint Program office for airborne electronic attack for every EW airborne electronic program in the future…. It’ll turn into service programs.”

In other words, while Conley didn’t say so explicitly, if the Air Force wants to build its own Penetrating Electronic Attack aircraft, it can. It just has to make sure it complements what the Navy, Marines, and Army are doing as part of a common all-service approach.

PEA probably won’t enter service until the

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, but the very fact the Air Force is interested at all represents a major turnaround. Indeed, senior leaders in all the services have become keenly aware of the importance of electronic warfare, Conley said: “There is an appreciation of the dependency on our electronic warfare capabilities to make sure that the remainder of the force, all the platforms, is survivable.”

In other words: The brass realize that if you don’t have electronic warfare — both to protect your own

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, sensors, and communications, and to disrupt the enemy’s — you’re probably dead.

...

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“A Fight In The Electromagnetic Spectrum”

Smart weapons were once an American monopoly. Now Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and others have

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, the sensors to guide them to targets, and the networks to command them.

The Pentagon shorthand for this evolving threat is “

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.” In essence, A2/AD refers to layered defenses of long-range land-based missiles, advanced aircraft, submarines, mines, and more designed to keep US forces from intervening in a given region of the world. But all the A2/AD systems depend on sensors to find targets and communications to coordinate their attacks. Those sensors and communications, Conley emphasized, operate in the radio frequency spectrum — which makes them prime targets for electronic warfare.

“A2/AD is basically a fight in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Conley said. “How do we go ahead and roll back that A2/AD bubble and make it smaller?” Stealth aircraft are one option, “removing as much of the signature as you possibly can. Alternatively, you can raise the noise floor, (which) basically has the same effect, it prevents detection. Alternatively you can put in so much

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that someone can’t sort through it in time to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.”

Just like our adversaries, the modern American way of war depends on radio frequency networks. For years, Conley said, Pentagon briefers got in the habit of putting lots of different weapons systems on a slide — tanks, planes, ships, etc. — and drawing little lightning bolts connecting them. In reality, he said, connecting disparate platforms into a network is not so easy, let alone keeping them connected when the network is under attack.

Concepts for future conflict like

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depend even more on electronic warfare. “Multi-domain” refers to the desire to network US forces operating in all environments — land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace — so they can coordinate their operations seamlessly, overwhelming the enemy with

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. There’s no way to do that without a radio frequency network.

“If we want to realize multi-domain battle, we’re going to need reliable communications,” said Conley. Against an enemy who can hack and jam, we may not have all the bandwidth we’re used to, he warned, but the goal must be to transmit the essential data with confidence that it will arrive where needed, on time, and untampered with.

Getting to this goal will take money and time. The

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included over $5 billion for electronic warfare,

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of the Defense Department total, but “we are growing,” Conley said. (That growth is shepherded by the high-level

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created in 2015, to which Conley reports.)

What’s more, EW money tends to have an outsized impact, Conley argued. First, increasingly powerful components are available affordably from the commercial sector, rather than requiring expensive military-unique development. Second, a small and relatively inexpensive EW upgrade to an aircraft, ship, or ground vehicle improves the survivability of the whole system. “(It’s) this little, couple million-dollar investment which ends up having an enormous impact on a multi-billion or trillion-dollar investment,” he said.

That said, it’s still a long, long game, said Conley: “We basically got to where we are in

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from 25 years of inattention. We will get out of it with 25 years of attention.”

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One of the greatest combat pilots in history was a German named Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the Red Baron, who shot down nearly 80 enemy aircraft in World War I.

A lot has changed since the days of the Red Baron, as technology has rapidly advanced and unmanned drones have begun to fill the skies over conflict spots around the globe.

The proliferation of drones is changing the role and meaning of air combat and calling into question the U.S. military’s policy on awarding aerial combat victories. Does it count if a pilot shoots down a drone? What if a remotely-piloted aircraft, manned by a pilot in Nevada, shoots down a fighter jet?

In just the past month, U.S. fighter jets have managed to score three aerial victories — two against Iranian Shahed 129 drones and one against a manned Syrian Su-22 fighter jet.

The last air-to-air kill by an American pilot was nearly 20 years ago in Bosnia, when Lt. Col Michael Geczy, flying an F-16, shot down a Serbian MiG-29 with an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile.

No aces

Dogfighting and aerial combat have had a relatively non-existent role in the U.S. military since the 1990s.

During the first Gulf War, U.S. pilots scored 39 aerial combat victories. They scored another nine over Bosnia from 1994 to 1999, with zero U.S. aircraft being shot down during that period, according to research by Daniel Haulman, a historian for the Air Force.

In Vietnam, the kill ratio was far worse — for every plane shot down, the U.S. lost two, according to Haulman.

America’s entrance into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s saw zero aerial combat — in part because Russian MiGs in Afghanistan at the time were largely inoperable, and the U.S. destroyed what few aircraft remained during the onset of the war.

U.S. pilots decimated most of Iraq’s air force during the first Gulf War, and few Iraqi pilots were brave enough to engage coalition aircraft during the 2003 invasion, according to Haulman’s research.

To claim the coveted title of “ace,” it takes at least five aerial combat victories, said a spokesperson for the Air Force.

And for nearly 20 years, it appeared the days of American dogfighting might be over, especially as unmanned aircraft began to fill the skies in America’s wars overseas.

That period now appears to be over.

On June 8 and again on June 20, U.S. Air Force F-15Es shot down armed Iranian Shahed 129 drones over Syria — just northeast of the U.S. garrison at Tanf where special operations forces are training anti-ISIS fighters.

On June 18, a Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet downed a manned Su-22 after it threatened Syrian Democratic Forces near the village of Ja-Din, which is south of the Tabqa dam near Raqqa.

Manned or unmanned?

The U.S. military’s policy on awarding aerial combat credits is a topic that has not been discussed for some time.

“The Air Force may award an aerial victory credit to an Air Force pilot or crew that destroys an in-flight enemy aerial vehicle, manned or not, armed or not,” an Air Force spokesperson said.

According to the spokesperson, that applies to drone pilots who shoot down manned or unmanned aircraft.

If a drone pilot shoots down five or more MiG-29s, though unlikely, that pilot would be eligible for five aerial combat victories and could be deemed a “flying ace.”

Though the policy may be controversial to many, as the threat and size of drones vary greatly, it follows a historical trend. As technology has advanced, the definition of an “ace” has molded to fit the technology of the time.

In World War II, the term “observer ace” was coined for tail gunners like Michael Arooth of the 379th Bomb Group, who was credited with downing 17 aircraft but was not the pilot of the aircraft. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroic feats.

In Vietnam, Capt. Charles DeBellevue, flying as a weapons system operator, became the first Air Force navigator to earn ace status after shooting down six enemy aircraft. He was the highest scoring ace in Vietnam and received the Air Force Cross, the service’s second-highest award for valor, for his actions.

The last U.S. flying ace was Capt. Richard Ritchie, who downed five enemy aircraft in Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom II.

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A tornado that struck in Omaha, Neb., last week damaged two of the "Doomsday" 747 aircraft that serve as the national command center for the United States in case of a military attack, the

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said Friday.

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, home to the nation's four

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, was hit by the tornado June 16. The planes are used by the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State for international visits and maintain vital communications -- including those with the country's nuclear missile silos and nuclear-powered submarines -- in case of an attack.

Ten aircraft, including the two 747s, were damaged by the tornado, said Capt. Mark Graff, an Air Force spokesman. He said the other two 747s were not damaged by the tornado and can still be used as the national airborne operations center.

Of the base's eight

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, seven had minor damage, Graff said. Six of the damaged planes have been returned to flight status, he said.

The tornado was fast-moving, said Col. Pat Ryder, an Air Force spokesman. "They attempted to hangar as many [planes] as they could. Obviously, some were damaged."

Ryder said the primary E-4B -- the one that is always on alert status -- was not affected, and that the Air Force is still assessing the level of damage to the two other 747s. The tornado also damaged buildings and trees on the Nebraska air base.

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