Libya reveals much

 
The limited war being waged in Libya reveals several truths:

1. As I said in my last post, UAVs could have made this operation vastly cheaper and more capable.
A Tomahawk missile costs over a million dollars. Using one to take out something that isn't a million dollar target doesn't make sense. A UAV dropping smart bombs could do the same job for so much less--and with even less warning.

2. The bottleneck isn't the technology. It's the military top brass and their patrons/future employers in private industry, with a titanic vested interest in expensivo manned weapons systems and cruise missiles. The problem with UAVs is that they don't make as much profit for military contractors and they don't give pilots enough glory. Landing a plane on a carrier under combat conditions, at night, in rough seas, is one of the bravest, most skilled things I can imagine a human being doing.

Another is a President standing up to those promoting the status quo and getting our armed forces the tools and training they really need--including UAV carriers and aircraft.

That this foot-dragging is a real problem is borne out by a comment on my last post quoting Aviation Week about military aviation top brass disdaining UAVs.

3. President Obama should use the Libya incident as an excuse to light a fire under the military to greatly expand UAV roles and to hasten the development of UAV carrier systems. There's plenty of money to be made here by military contractors--just not as much.

4. For Libyan-type operations we especially need the UAV equivalent of the A-10 ground attack aircraft. Its rapid-fire cannon could kill tanks as fast as it could do attack runs on each one.

The US Navy should have had the tool Obama needs in Libya--long ago

Part of President Obama's problem is that he should have had a tool that Navy foot-dragging has denied him: UAV carriers.

Our assault carriers--much smaller than the big ones you always see on TV--are designed for choppers and Harriers, so they don't have a catapault. UAVs could fly off them just fine, and we've had the technology to mate assault carriers with UAVs for a long, long time. But flyboy top brass don't like planes without people inside them.

But imagine if we had just one assault carrier off the Libyan coast with a complement of reconnaissance and hunter/killer UAVs. Then we could make Libya a no-fly zone without risking live pilots and without having to bomb anti-aircraft emplacements (UAVs are so stealthy it's really hard to hit them--and if they do, no American pilot is lost or captured.)

Reconnaissance UAV circling high overhead can spot Qaddafi's mercenary-piloted choppers and fighter/bombers and hunter/killer models could do the rest.

We wouldn't even have to announce a policy, but just do it on the down low, like we do in Pakistan. We can even take them out on the ground when no one's inside them.

Tanks can be hit the same way. And one thing about using mercenaries--they're a lot less willing to die for you. Once aircraft and tanks start disappearing, we don't have to get them all.

That's if the Navy had done its job instead of lavishing most of its attention on manned fighters and giant carriers. Assault carriers with UAVs are far less, well...romantic.

Mainstream newspapers need real military columnists

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote a column on military procurement titled "Behind the battle over the F-35 fighter engine." My comment:

The Washington Post needs at least one columnist who isn't a political partisan AND who has a technical background that includes military science.

This column makes that need obvious, because Ms. Parker doesn't know what she's talking about, and applying what she does have expertise in--Beltway shenanigans--is not sufficient to paper over her lack of understanding of the underlying facts.

Congressmen vote for unneeded military projects because big government contractors make sure to subcontract subsytems in every state, and every congressional district if they can.

So their support for a project only tells us that a subsystem is/will be built in their district.

There is a strong argument for supporting multiple military suppliers of things like jet engines, but not to have multiple engines for one aircraft for one purpose.

Our military needs a variety of aircraft. So spread the enginemaking across several manufacturers. Don't, as another savvy commentor said, create chaos in the parts supply train with different subsystems for the same use in one project.

As for the F-35 itself--as another commentor said, we barely need the thing. Maybe someday China or someone else will truly challenge us in nation-to-nation war, and we should maintain our technological edge for such a circumstance.

But for the foreseeable futures--decades--what the military needs more than anything else is:

1. Highly trained troops with the ability to speak a little of at least one in-theater language and know a bit about the local culture.

2. A new rifle with the accuracy of an M-16 and the reliability of an AK-47.

3. UAVs, UAVs, UAVs, and pilots and mechanics and everything else for them--big ones that can carry bunker busters, smaller ones with machine guns, strategic reconnaissance ones, little hand-launchable recon ones, and ones in between, and more.

The Air Force slow walked UAVs because the generals are ex-flyboys. Time to catch up.

4. Navy UAV carriers with matching UAVs that have the reinforced landing gear and folding wings needed. A couple of these could put an end to Somali piracy, and do so cost-effectively.

And in general we need technology and human resources that help us fight insurgents who main weapons are roadside bombs and terrorizing locals.

All of these come far, far before a second F-35 engine. But Boeing, Northrop et al don't manufacture highly trained soldiers, so no one's lobbying for what our military really needs--or turning congressmen into their shills.