Introduction
FINAB Tunnel Vision: "Game Over, Dude I Sunk Your Airfield!"
Introduction
We've been watching WW2 combat camera films on DVD and have been awestruck at how all during the war, we were bombing each other's air bases.
Even when we supposedly had "air superiority" this "airfield vandalism" took place constantly all throughout WW2. Yanks bombed the Japs. Japs bombed the Yanks. Brits bombed "Gerry"--the Germans in case you didn't know. Gerry bombed the Yanks and so on. What did any of this achieve? If despite air supremacy, the supposedly weakened enemy could always hit us "with our pants down" and take out scores of our aircraft--is very troubling in a world we can only afford 187 x F-22s; if we only had these small numbers in WW2, the Japs/Germans would have beat us after just a few airfield raids. Hold that disturbing thought....
First off, we had THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of P-51s, P-47s and P-38s mass-produced LITERALLY one whole airplane EVERY HOUR. Re-read that as many times as you need to let it sink in, maybe every hour so you can recreate the reality in your mind's eye. When a German fighter-bomber pilot was shot down after the 1945 Operation Bodenplatte airfield mission, he was escorted by an U.S. Army Air Force pilot who noted he was smugly smiling and boasting at the many flaming wrecks of our planes. Not skipping a beat, his escort took him to another part of the airfield and told him; "Look at this". It was row-upon-row of unpainted, silver aluminum, fresh-from-the-factory, P-47s lining up to replace what had been lost. Gerry was beat.
But HOW was he beat if he could always raid our airfields?
The primary contribution of air power in WW2 ETO was to facilitate the ADVANCE OF OUR GROUND MANEUVER FORCES to reach Berlin and topple the Hitler Nazi fascist government and end the war in a lethal version of "capture the flag". The secondary contribution was to force the German's weapons labs and production plants UNDERGROUND, slowing them just enough so we could topple their government before they fielded weapons of mass destruction (WMD). General Eisenhower said just 6 months delay on our part and "Gerry" would have won the war with WMDs. So while the Germans produced 33, 000 x Me-109s during the war, this quantity was not sufficiently qualitatively superior to overcome our P-38s, P-47s and P-51s to stop our bombers from forcing their labs/plants underground and to strafe/bomb our ground maneuver forces to stop them from swarming like ants and taking their ground. Game over.
Prop Speeds For Everyone--in WW2
So we know qualitative superiority is vital and the USAF bureaucracy demands it has the F-22; a very large fighter-bomber in the WW2 mode. Essentially, the USAF has been living off its 1943 North Africa paranoia that ground attack missions for Army ground maneuver forces will take precedence over raiding enemy airfields if the Army controls air power--so everything must be centralized under USAF control so it can fighter shoot-down any enemy planes that don't get bombed and destroyed on the ground during the airfield raid. Hence, the fighter-bomber is the center-piece of the USAF centralized air power bureaucracy obsessed with fighting mirror KILLERBEES4Images of itself. This mentality sort of worked in WW2 until the very end because the best speeds we could fly were prop plane speeds and 300 mph is still not too fast to see ground targets and attack them effectively. So air-to-air combat against enemy planes was at the same speeds as ground attack. Our planes could even operate from grassy fields and not need runways as long as they didn't get too heavy. Hold that thought, too.
However, with the advent of RAF genius Frank Whittle's jet engine in the Meteor and the German Me-262, air combat would be decided by jets and they fly at 600 mph too fast for close air support for ground maneuver units and need very, very long runways as we found out just 5 years later in the Korean war. When our long runways for jets were over-run and when our F-80s flown from safety in Japan couldn't hit the advancing North Korean infantry swarms were were pushed back nearly into the sea. We brought back the F-51 Mustangs and had F-4U Corsairs and A-1 SkyRaider prop planes that could operate from short runways and even mass-produced jeep CVE carriers ashore to turn the tide of the T34/85 medium tank lead North Korean communist peasant infantry. However, watching the true life story of recalled-to-duty, USAF Colonel Dean Hess in "Battle Hymn" the nemesis of the enemy airfield attack rears its ugly head yet again. Caught on the ground, Hess' men try to take off and two of his precious Mustangs are shot down by mere Yaks--you don't have to be Baron von Richtoven to shoot a fuel-laden plane down as it tries to gather lift right after taken off down a long, obvious runway. In fact, you don't even have to be in a "modern" airplane at all, you can be in a biplane or triplane like the baron's and get away with it! In 1941, Britain was holding on to Iraq by its fingernails when some fascist assholes decided to lay siege to the RAF base at Habbaniyah. Fortunately, the Germans were tapped out getting ready to invade Russia and could only spare some Me-110 twin-engined fighters to the Islamofascists. After raiding the RAF base, the triumphant Gerries fly back to their base where Gloster Gladiator BI-PLANES flown by ENLISTED sergeants were waiting and down goes the so-called "superior" German fighter-bombers. The RAF set up a constant stream of patrols so the German air base was always ringed by bi-planes ready to pounce on them at the moment of take-off and eventually, they lost so many planes by attrition, they gave up.
Page 68:
"...two Gladiators from [RAF] Habbaniya, loitering around Rashid Airfield at baghdad, encountered two Bf.110Cs attempting to take-off, and destroyed them both, much to the joy of the two british sergeant pilots responsible. Thus within two days of arrival and despite the attack on Habbaniyah on 16 May, Junck's force had been whittled down to four He.111 bombers, eight Bf.110C fighters and two JU-52 transport aircraft, a loss of 30 percent. This rate of attrition did not augur well for the continuance of a strong Luftwaffe presence in Iraq. With few replacements available, no spares, poor quality fuel and aggressive attacks by the RAF out of Habbaniya, the mathematics of attrition went in only one direction, and the eventual withdrawal of the Luftwaffe in these circumstances became inevitable."
This same kind of airfield "goal tending" is what many like legendary aviation theorist Pierre Sprey fear will happen to our handfuls of F-22s in a war against a smart and more numerous fighter opponent. They will let the F-22s use up their fuel and shoot-them down when they return to base or try to link-up with air tankers. Is the USAF on the verge of being defeated in the next war like the expeditionary Luftwaffe was defeated in Iraq by the RAF in 1941?
What does this all mean? AIRPLANES DON'T FLY.
Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) like the Small Diameter Bomb make aircraft that need obvious exposed runways and air bases an endangered species
The sad fact is that we don't have aircraft that can fly constantly like birds, we have fossil-fuel powered imitations that the majority of the time cannot fly. This is why we can be constantly caught on the ground in enemy airfield attacks even if we are supposedly in control of the "air" (which is a BS term--if you are not IN the air--you certainly don't control it); we do not have airplanes, we have more or less "spears" that can be chucked into the air for a short time--but are most definitely coming back down. Let's face the truth, shall we? At best a plane can fly one 8-hour mission-a-day, meaning for 2/3rds of the time its on the ground. If we cannot keep up a constant air cap over our airfields by rotating planes and wearing everyone out (note our super carriers can't even keep a CAP overhead, only a pair of so-called "less costly" F/A-18 Super Hornets are on deck ready-to-launch), its entirely possible that some friggin bi-planes (aircraft that sacrifice qualitative speed for maneuverability and long flight duration or range) with air-to-air-missiles could hover near our air bases and NOT LET ANYTHING TAKE-OFF. The UAV panacea people would love this mission as its made-to-order for their anti-egomaniac-fighter-pilot agenda. You could say we would shoot down the modern-day Gloster Gladiators with surface-to-air missiles but they would counter that they are invisible by stealth features--so no detection and lock-on would take place. Shoot down the few F-22s we have and its "Game over!" for the USAF or the USMC with F/A-18s...or any other expensive fighter-bomber we can only employ in handfuls.
By insisting on one airplane to do both fighter shoot-downs and bombing we have created a large runway and airfield monstrosity that invites constant airfield attack and with excessive purchase costs means we will not have enough planes to lose before going out of the Air Force business. We will be in the shoes of the Germans in 1945 one day 1 of the nation-state war, on the verge of extinction due to both quantitative as well as QUALITATIVE inferiority. The quality we lack here is of having a diversified array of aircraft types to tackle different missions so they themselves don't have to be too big and complex and can pit their specific advantages against an enemy weakness--like the Gladiator's endurance to hover over airfields--as well as cover our own Achilles Heel.
And that "Achilles Heel" is the large, air base with obvious long runway easy to spot and attack. Even if aircraft are inside hardened shelters, guided munitions can hit their roofs then penetrate to destroy the aircraft inside as the pictures of the SDB test below show.
Enter the Swarm Fighters
Compounding the problem that our uber expensive F-22s and F-35s might simply get DESTROYED ON-THE-GROUND, is the emerging Russian Beyond-Visual Range (BVR) AIR-TO-AIR threat described in detail by Air Power Australia on their web page below:
The Russian SU-27/35 approach is to carry MULTIPLE MISSILES and fire them in salvoes from BVR. Is the F-22 and F-35 so stealthy that they will not be detected by a SU-25/35 on radar or infared to avoid this first salvo? What will happen if our low-performace F-18 Stupor Hornets and F-35s have to dogfight against SU-27/35s?
Deja Thud all over again: F-35 is a Joint (air-to-ground) STRIKE fighter--like the F-105 Thunderchief--NOT an AIR SUPREMACY (air-to-air) fighter
www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-JSF-Thud-2004.html
The F-35 is a LOW performance fighter little better than the bloated F-18 Stupor Hornet
Maybe its time we build thousands of fighters with HIGH PERFORMANCE and stop hoping an anti-radar trick is going to trump everything for us?
Pierre Sprey calls for a simple, fighter shoot-down only plane that we can build in the thousands that by virtue of its small size and not having radar but only passive sensors in the October 2009 Combat Aircraft magazine article, "Front Line" column on page 29 written by the legendary Robert F. Dorr, America's most prolific military aviation writer.
www.combataircraft.net
The United States is facing a "fighter gap". By 2015, there won't be enough fighters to equip U.S. carrier air wings and USAF squadrons.
According to Pierre Sprey, it's worse than they're saying. In Sprey's view, the United States doesn't have a real fighter today. Sprey wants the Pentagon to start at the beginning and re-equip U.S. forces with new aircraft.
Sprey, 72, was a Pentagon analyst and one of ex-U.S. defense secretary Robert S. McNamara's "whiz kids", pivotal in the design of the F-16 Fighting Falcon (which ended up weighing more than the lightweight version Sprey wanted) and the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Today, the white-haired Sprey records and sells jazz music. Still, he has time to criticize the Pentagon for warplanes that are too costly, too heavy, and "have too much crap hanging under their wings."
Sprey wants to restore "fighter" to its true meaning: an aircraft designed to shoot down the other side's aircraft.
The F-22 Raptor is nearing the end of its production run. Some see the F-35 Lightning II as the answer to the looming "fighter gap". Sprey told this magazine in a July 14 telephone interview that it's the wrong answer.
Sprey is writing a book with Robert Dilger that will call for "austerely-designed and affordable aircraft tailored to missions that actually win wars". Sprey said the USAF could be equipped with 10,000 cheap, practical, single-mission warplanes instead of 2,000 bloated,"multi-role" aircraft. This boost to the US aerospace industry could be achieved, Sprey said, without spending a dollar more than the USAF spends today.
The USAF also needs a forward air control aircraft and a small airlifter, Sprey said. But most importantly it needs a "super-maneuverable new air-to-air dogfighter with all-passive electronics." The word "passive" is key to Sprey's thinking. He regards radar, radar-guided missiles, and even stealth, as useless. Sprey compared an air-to-air duel to a gunfight between two men in a dark room. "The guy who switches on his flashlight is dead", Sprey said. Sprey wants a new fighter equipped with a gun and an infrared, radar-seeking air-to-air equivalent of the AGM-88 HARM missile. "When the other guy turns on his radar, he dies."
The sole purpose of Sprey's dream fighter would be to "kill every other fighter in the world". Sprey's aircraft "would never carry a bomb", would give off no electromagnetic energy, and "would be designed from the ground up for radio silence."
Sprey said the F-16 began operating at about 20,000 lbs. but that later versions weigh twice as much. He said the F-22's official combat-loaded take-off weight ("full internal fuel, four AMRAAMs, two AIM-9s, plus gun and ammunition") is 64,500lb. "lf you actually weighed a current production airplane with all the latest 'fixes', like the extra 600 lbs. they had to add to the below-spec stealth coating, I wouldn't be surprised if this number rose to almost 70,000 lbs.", Sprey said.
He wants to "return to WW2 weights" with his dream fighter for the USAF. His goal is about 14,000lb, roughly the combat weight of the P-51D Mustang of 1943.
So what about range and combat radius? Sprey said his proposed lightweight fighter must have a very high "fuel fraction". The weight of fuel carried by the dream fighter would be up to 80 per cent of total operating weight, an engineering feat never before achieved that would give a small aircraft a combat radius as great as the F-16.
Sprey's' dogfighter "would neither be 'net-centric"' nor use a datalink to send and receive images. So what about everyone in the battlespace communicating with everyone else? Sprey said: "The pilot doesn't have time for that crap. You don't want a great big confusing head-up display. You don't want anything that keeps the pilot from swiveling his head. Clearing your six o'clock is just as important as it ever was". A fighter pilot, Sprey said, "needs to concentrate on fighting."
In his ideal fighter, "supersonic cruise" is desirable, Sprey said, but it's not really an attribute of the F-22. The F-22's "fuel fraction" is a low 27 per cent of take-off weight, or "only two thirds of what's needed for combat-useful supersonic endurance in enemy airspace". The F-22 doesn't have enough fuel because it needs room for stealth technologies, radar electronics and radar, Sprey said. His ideal fighter wouldn't employ stealth although "its small size would make it difficult to detect, "turning on a radar is a death warrant", said Sprey. "If radar doesn't count, then stealth doesn't count."
With Sprey's fighter, pilots would log more flying hours. "The F-22 is a huge degradation in our air-to-air capability because our pilots are getting 10 to 12 hours a month". Sprey thinks they need 40 to 60.
So will Sprey's dream fighter be built? It probably won't, but Sprey's ideas provoke thought in an era when clear thinking is exactly what's required.
New Operational Concept (OPCON) Needed: No More Vulnerable Air Bases
We concur, but propose we go farther than just having rows of planes to sacrifice in the inevitable rounds of air base attacks. This ain't WW2 and even Sprey's fighters will not be cheap. Old Amerikansky folk proverb: "An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure". We should use the small size of these "Swarm Fighters" to get away from the large airbase and runway altogether.
Small Swarm Fighters could have folding or detachable wings so they can be fitted into an ISO shipping container or "BATTLEBOX" to be ground mobile and not stuck to an airfield pavement. Like an aircraft carrier they can be removed from the vulnerable surface and protected below by digging the BATTLEBOX into the ground which will camouflage and protect the Swarm Fighter far better than any steel flight deck. We call this concept "Fighter-In-A-Box" or FINAB for short. FINAB Swarm Fighters could be removed from their BATTLEBOXes and even air-launched from heavy-lift helicopters like the no fuselage, Erickson CH-54 Air Crane so no runway at all is required for take-off or spot-launched like a missile at a 45 degree angle with Zero Length Launch (ZEL) techniques.
www.combatreform.org/fighterinabox.htm
However, once the mission is over, the fixed-wing plane has to roll to a landing along a long runway of some kind. Of course, the first thought is the STOVL F-35B without ordnance should be able to land vertically after a mission--AMEN---its an ideal candidate for FINAB, just put folding wings from the "C" model on it. However, it appears to be another 10 years away from being fielded and is almost as costly as the F-22! UGHH. If the "F-35D" FINAB described above were to be fielded it could participate in the dispersed air box concept but certainly not as a replacement for F-22s in air superiority or A-10s in the CAS/MAS role.
Tunnel Launch and Recovery (T-LAR)
Modern Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) leave no dirt to remove and fuse the tunnel walls smooth
While doing research into Deep Underground Military Bases (DUMBs) the solution has become available; modern Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) can in a matter of hours make very long tunnels into the ground large enough for small aircraft to pass. TBMs actually fuse the ground smooth as they bore in. Apparently even the cash-strapped North Koreans are experimenting with underground tunnel runways to avoid U.S. targeting.
North Korean underground fighter base
As legendary aerospace engineer Dr. Paul Czysz points out, the Red Chinese have many underground fighter bases built into the sides of mountains to withstand even nuclear attacks. He visited one such underground base that's now a museum of technology.
Chinese copy of our B-29 bomber made into a radar picket plane like our AWACS
Map of the CHICOM underground air base now a Technology Museum
So why not have a squadron of Swarm Fighters dispersed over a large area that's well-camouflaged and have them touch-down onto grassy "pads" leading down at a slight downward angle into tunnels where perhaps nylon mesh barriers catch them and slow them down gradually (not instantly like on aircraft carriers). Once "caught", the pilot shuts the engine down and after the net on a track slows to a stop, he gets out. The Swarm Fighter is turned around to face upwards on the track and is refueled, rearmed etc. for launch in the other direction. The benefits of Tunnel Launch and Recovery (T-LAR) is that earth is cheap; once you dig it and seal it, its yours and you can make it as long as you want to insure by the time the Swarm Fighter reaches the end opening ramp angle, its got more than enough lift for take-off. If something goes wrong, the pilot can actually ABORT and have the track brake him to a stop--you cannot do this in either land or aircraft carrier-based aviation! Digging multiple T-LARS should cost far less than trying to pave long runways and aircraft parking aprons followed by half-protective revetments followed by hardened hanger domes etc. that for all that effort are fatally vulnerable. By facing the fact that an aircraft doesn't fly for the majority of the time--and protecting it right the first time--by ground mobility, dispersal, camouflage and underground storage, we save all kinds of energy and monies trying to do it later on half-assed on the exposed surface of the earth.
The F-22 Raptor is dead. Where do we go from here?
Of course like a spoiled "daughter" (fighter pilot mafia) wanting the unaffordable "prom dress" (F-22) in the "shop window" (Military-Industrial, Congressional, Think-Tank Complex), the USAF will pout and wait for "mommy" (the American tax payers) to divorce "daddy" (the liberal Democrats that want to spend on social programs) and get a better "sugar daddy" (4th Reich Corporate Nazi Republicans who lust for war) and let the "prom" (war) go by to get what they want. The problem is this ain't the Senior Prom and when the American people need the USAF to fight, its got to go to the gunfight ready-to-kill; not with looks-to-kill.
Instead of pouting, we need to be innovating. We need several thousand FINAB Swarm Fighters (F-only designation) and several thousand "Killer Bees" (A-only designation) perhaps owned and operated by the U.S. Army--that would be able to rapidly deploy anywhere in the world, burrow into the ground and be hard to detect--much less hit in an air base strike. We strike the enemy, they don't strike us. Even if enemy planes should follow ours back to the base area, we would have planes constantly overhead or in their tunnels ready-to-launch that would instantly become airborne to shoot-down and thwart any attack. There are no runways to crater. No supplies to demolish; everything is underground and camouflaged. The T-LARs open just long enough for their Swarm Fighter or Killer Bee to launch or recover as lift for take-off or deceleration to come to a stop is achieved mostly while UNDERGROUND. The Swarm Fighters shoot down anything that flies and the Killer Bees destroy the enemy's airfields and after that whatever key infrastructure targets to pressure the enemy nation-state government to fold. Swarm Fighters secure our air bases up to medium altitudes from enemy UAV and stand-off munitions attacks by continuous overhead presence and instant launching from underground. Swarm Fighters can be used offensively if their mobile launch means be it BATTLEBOX transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) or ships (aircraft carriers or container ships with flight decks) are moving towards the enemy or if in-flight refueling is available to compensate for their small size/short range. The airborne aircraft carrier "mother ship" using the parasite principle from a cargo 747 or C-17 is another range extending option for offensive missions.
Swarm Fighter Candidates
Folland Gnat
Meet the Super Gnat
Gnat History
Killer Bee Candidates
Chuck Myers' ASP
Burt Rutan's ARES Mudfighter
Folding-Wing A-10D Warthog II
Paul Czysz's CannonFighter
Killer Bees are vectored and Airborne Forward Air Controlled (AFAC) by U.S. Army FINAB STOL Observation/Attack "Grasshoppers" with enlisted observers (Ground FACs doing a tour of duty) on-board to render Maneuver Air Support (MAS) so our Army ground forces can converge on the enemy's Centers of Gravity (COGs) take them out and end the war.
www.combatreform.org/grasshoppersmustreturn.htm
The Killer Bee must be able to survive at low altitudes under 10, 000 feet possibly beneath overcast cloud weather conditions--where even Third World country peasants can put up a wall of lead shooting everything on hand from hand guns to air burst RPGs to effect Chuck Myers' Maneuver Air Support (MAS) concept of continuous overhead presence ("COOP" or CO-OP).
www.combatreform.org/AEROCOUNSEL/bnoc.htm
This means it must be armored and aerodynamically agile with straight wings with high lift to "jink" and not present itself as a straight-line target.
The Russians know to sky camouflage their aircraft--the current U.S. Army's helicopters in dark green does not
The Killer Bee must be daylight camouflaged since war doesn't stop when the sun rises. This means it must be painted in a sky gray-blue camouflage or even chameleonic panels like James Bond's car in "Die Another Day" and/or have Project Yehudi lights underneath. An up-engined, two-seat A-10D Warthog II with folding wings that could fit inside BATTLEBOXaircraft ISO shipping containers could meet the Killer Bee requirements or a smaller design like Rutan's ARES mudfighter or a modernized Folland Gnat could suffice.
http://jmrc.tripod.com/fa/stealth/stealth1.htm
Stealth aircraft own the night. Now they want the day.
By Steve Douglas & Bill Sweetman
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN FRASSANTO & ASSOCIATES
Disappearing Act
Future aircraft such as Lockheed Martin's proposed Joint Strike Fighter might use visual stealth to blend into the sky. Sensors would measure the sky's brightness and hue and electrocromic coatings applied ove a white skin would change shade to match the background.
Lockheed Martin's F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter was the star of the Gulf War, flying behind enemy lines to hit Baghdad targets with pinpoint accuracy. At night, the F-117 was unstoppable. But by day the black jet stayed on the ground.
The F-117 isn't fast enough to outrun missiles or agile enough to dodge them, and it can't fight back because it's armed only with bombs. These limitations don't matter at night, because the F-117's stealthy shape enables the aircraft to avoid detection by enemy radar. But in the light of day, the enemy can see the black plane against the sky, and can take aim without the help of radar.
F-117 pilots train almost exclusively for night missions, and the darker it gets, the happier they are. But this is a compromise at best. In the summer, when there are only a few hours of darkness, a fighter like the F-117 can fly only one sortie per day. And the darkness that hides the F-117 also hides its targets.
Air Force generals would love nothing more than a stealth aircraft that would be invulnerable during daylight hours as well as at night. And as POPULAR SCIENCE has learned, military engineers are already hard at work on the technologies needed to build such a plane special lights, coatings, and other technologies under investigation could not only make future fighters disappear from radar screens but could also make them almost completely invisible to the human eye. By the early 2000s, stealth may be practical in broad daylight. Today's experiments exploit a principle that was demonstrated half a century ago, in a secret project code-named Yehudi. In that project, engineers mounted lights on an anti-submarine aircraft make it harder to spot against a bright sky.
Daytime Running Lights
Today's experiments with visual stealth have their roots in a 1943 U.S. Navy project code-named Yehudi. The intent of the program, which was highly secret at the time and came to light only in the1980s, was to give Navy patrol aircraft a better chance of sinking enemy submarines. During 1942, German U-boats took a heavy toll on merchant marine shipping off the East Coast of the United States. Aircraft scrambled to attack the U-boats, but submarine captains called for crash dives whenever they spotted approaching planes. By the time an aircraft got close enough to fire upon a sub, it had disappeared beneath the surface of the ocean.
Yehudi's inventors needed a way to make the antisubmarine aircraft harder to see, and they realized that camouflage paint wouldn't do the job: Regardless of its color, the airplane would stand out as a black dot against the sky. The only way to make the plane less visible was to light it up like a Christmas tree. 
The engineers fitted a portly TBM-3D Avenger torpedo-bomber with 10 sealed-beam lights installed along the wing's leading edges and the rim of the engine cowling. When the intensity of the lights was adjusted to match the sky, the Avenger blended into the background. Tests proved that the Yehudi system lowered the visual acquisition range from 12 miles to two miles, allowing the Avenger to get within striking distance of its targets before they submerged. A B-24 Liberator bomber was also modified, with similar results.
Lamps mounted on the bomber made it less visible to enemies.
Yehudi
was not put into production, because better radar had already enabled Navy airplanes to regain the tactical advantage, but the idea was revived after air battles over Vietnam. Concerned that the big F-4 Phantom could be seen at a greater range than its much smaller Russian adversary, the MiG-21, the Pentagon started a program called Compass Ghost. An F-4 was modified with a blue-and-white color scheme and nine high-intensity lamps on the wings and body reducing the detection range by as much as 30 percent.
Lamps and a blue and white paint scheme camouflaged the F-4.
Similar technology was used in the Vietnam War to shorten the distance at which the F-4 Phantom could be detected. Lighting systems were available when Lockheed's Skunk Works was awarded the contract to build Have Blue, the world's first stealth aircraft and the test bed for the F-117A, in 1974. The breakthrough that made Have Blue possible was the ability to reduce an airplane's radar reflectivity to less than one-hundredth of what was considered normal in the 1960s, slashing the effective range of enemy radar. Reducing the radar reflectivity so radically meant that the designers of Have Blue also had to reduce its visual and infrared signatures, according to a rule of thumb known as "balanced observables."
This rule says that a stealth aircraft should be designed so that every detection system arrayed against it has roughly the same range. There is no point in building an airplane that is invisible to radar at five miles if optical sensors can see it at 10 miles.
Have Blue was the prototype for an aircraft that would make its attack run at a moderate altitude of 10,000 to 15,000 feet, close enough to designate the target accurately, but high enough to elude medium-caliber gunfire. At the time, the designers' goal was an aircraft that would be as stealthy in daylight as at night. The designers realized that visual detection depends on a number of factors, including the position observer, his angle of view, the position of the sun, and the presence of haze or clouds. Altitude is extremely important. A jetliner at its cruising height always appears brightly lit in the sky, because dust and moisture in the air beneath the aircraft scatter light onto its underside. There are relatively few particles of dust and water in the thin air above the airplane.
So the higher the plane flies, the more light is scattered onto it, and the darker the sky behind it. The dark color that absorbs as much light as possible provides the best camouflage for a high-flying airplane.
So the higher the plane flies, the more light is scattered onto it, and the darker the sky behind it.
The dark color that absorbs as much light as possible provides the best camouflage for a high-flying airplane. But even the jet-black Blackbird and U-2 spy planes look brighter than the skv when seen from below as they cruise at 80,000 feet. At lower altitudes, there is less light-scattering atmosphere below the aircraft, so lighter colors provide the least contrast.
Even this light gray C-17 at low altitude is dark underneath and needs Yehudi lights
For Have Blue, Lockheed devised a scheme of graduated grays, lighter on the bottom and darker on top. The aircraft's designers also planned to test light apertures, which would be installed on the sides and undersurfaces of the airplane, about two feet apart. (Seen from a distance, the individual lights would blur into a single KILLERBEES4Image.) The apertures would be connected to a central light source by fiber-optic lines, and controlled by sensors on the upper side of the aircraft. The sensors would "read" the background light and adjust the skin's luminance to mirror it. This system never flew on Have Blue, possibly because the first aircraft was lost in an accident. Work on visual stealth continued, however. In 1980, the Air Force tested a small aircraft, probably unmanned, under a project known as IMCRS (what the acronym stands for is not known). The aircraft's lower wing skins incorporated slit-like Fresnel lenses to beam light ahead of and below the aircraft, in the direction of the most likely threats.
The IMCRS experiment may have been related to a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency program known as Active Camouflage. Under that program, a small, powered drone was fitted with fluorescent lamps and tested at the White Sands Missile Range with so much success that the project has since been reclassified as Top Secret.
Neither of these lighting systems were adopted for stealth aircraft in the 1980s. They were complex to install, and their effects were difficult to predict and test. Carefully designed conventional camouflage worked well enough under most circumstances to ensure that an aircraft would not be visible before a radar could detect it.
So why were the first F-117s painted soot black instead of a toned gray scheme that would provide better camouflage? One Lockheed engineer recalls that the commander of Tactical Air Command "didn't believe that real fighter pilots flew pastel-colored airplanes." One Air
Force source close to the program says that some senior officers doubted the F-117 could survive in daylight, and wanted to ensure that nobody would try it.
Color Counts
Light colors would be optimal for the underside of the future Joint Strike Fighter which will fly relatively low for ground attacks. Some experts say the best color for a fighter Is pink, but pilots may object.
The higher an aircraft flies, the darker it should be to hide from enemies. The F-117 was originally painted a dark black, but has recently been seen in gray. Black is one of the least stealthy colors for daytime flying at medium altitudes. In fact, the British Royal Air Force is painting its trainers black to make them more visible and reduce the risk of collisions. Black isn't much good at night either, because there is nearly always some light from the moon. That's why the latest F-117s have been seen in a more sensible gray color.
The B-2 stealth bomber's underside is a very dark gray. Many people think that it is designed to attack only at night, like the F-117. This is unlikely, because the B-2 was designed to bomb Russia, and the most direct route from the United States lies smack across the Arctic Circle, where the sun shines 21 hours a day for a large part of the year.
The B-2's underside is dark because it cruises at altitudes as high as 50,000 feet, where a dark gray blends into the sky. It does not use an "active camouflage" lighting system, but it may have an upward-facing light sensor that tells the pilot when to increase or reduce altitude to match the changing luminance of the sky. It appears likely that active camouflage will make a comeback in the 2000s.
Improvements in radar stealth have reached a point where visual and infrared signatures are the dominant concerns. One sign of increasing interest in the non-radar aspects of stealth is that the Air Force has commissioned a new flying laboratory called FISTA II (Flying Infrared Signature Technology Aircraft), to replace a vehicle that has been used since the early 1960s to measure the heat signatures of airplanes. A modified tanker aircraft, FISTA II carries not only ultra-sensitive infrared KILLERBEES4Imagers, bit also a visual imaging system, an indication that the Pentagon is becoming serious about visual stealth.
Modern follow-ons to Yehudi are both more effective and easier to install. Instead of individual lights, the Pentagon has tested thin fluorescent panels of the type already used on military aircraft for nighttime formation flying.
A civilian technician working at the isolated Tonopah Test Range airstrip in Nevada says he witnessed a test of an F-15 Eagle with a prototype system. According to the technician, the fighter virtually disappeared as it lifted off the runway. "We had no problem acquiring the aircraft from about a mile away," the technician recalls, "but at distances over two miles it became harder and harder to spot. Although it was a crude system, it was pretty impressive. Trying to pick out the aircraft against a clear blue sky was next to impossible. The only time we could easily spot the aircraft was when it produced an unexpected contrail." (Contrails form when the water vapor in aircraft exhaust freezes.
Summary/Conclusion
The death spiral we are following based on overly large and expensive handfuls of planes operating from bloated, vulnerable air bases is a paradigm we cannot continue in the face of an increasingly lethal battlefield where high explosives are steered with greater and greater precision. We must have stealth on the ground--as well as in the air--and the latter must include daylight hours where visual detection and not just radar avoidance must be achieved. Otherwise, just one enemy air and/or ground strike on our vulnerable, limited numbers of high-tech planes on the ground could "sink our air force" in one fell swoop.