Re: STOVL Discussion
Sea Skimmer said:
F-14D said:
Couple of things:
USAF's main opposition to STOVL, and this will no doubt show up in the next generation, is that they assume that there will always be a 9,000 ft. hard surface runway wherever they go--and if there isn't, well then it's just not worth going there.
Also because they assume that if you don't have a real air base, you'll never be able generate enough sorties to survive enemy counter attacks and soon have all your ground personal and operating equipment destroyed. If the enemy lacks the ability to counter attack or other assets such as the navy can prevent it, then an airfield can be constructed at will anyway. This is why the USAF has about fifteen squadrons worth of Red Horse engineering teams specifically to repair and construct combat airbases. The USMC also has engineers trained for this job, and US Army engineers are capable of large scale assistance. You might notice the US got pretty far in the Second World War building its own hard surface and matted airfields all over the world.
Meanwhile since the USAF has more air refueling tankers then the rest of the world put together it is also simply capable of conducting fighter operations at distances no one else can on a sustained basis.
STOVL always ends up meaning less range or less firepower or some other major drawback which turns into a harder time fighting to keep your airfields operating and winning air superiority. All STOVL can do is remove the need for a large runway, but the runway is the hardest to damage and easiest to repair component of an air base.
I hesitate to jump back in on this sub-topic, because it is incidental to the main subject, but since I've seen this argument before, let me offer a few thoughts, FWIW:
First, if you do have a well-defended operational base with a 9,000 ft. or so runway fairly near to your intended target(s), STOVL is very hard to justify. That's a given. STOVL is there to answer the question, "What if you don't".
USMC championed the Harrier for one simple reason: It could get there faster than anything. During the Vietnam War they learned that in the overwhelming majority of the cases, once the call for fixed wing air support went out, if it didn't arrive in 20-25 minutes, the results of the battle was already decided. It didn't really matter that much to the ultimate outcome how much air arrived after that. At that point it could help decrease the casualties on one side, or add to them on the other, but wouldn't change how the battle came out. USMC realized that the
only way to insure fixed wings got there fast enough was if they had a fixed wing that could be stationed closer to the conflict and was flexible to move around as needs dictated. The point of air support is that it is supposed to be responsive to the needs of those on the ground, not that ground ops would only take place within a certain distance of immobile bases. That meant STOVL.
It's true that CTOLs generally have greater range (although the AV-8B had greater radius than the Hornet [not sure about the Super Hornet, but the F-35B has greater than the E/F, according to USMC]), but that's kinda irrelevant in the context in question. The AV-8B or the F-35B can increase its range and/or by making a CTO, but again that's irrelevant. In the case of the -8B, all that matters is what it can do with a ground roll of 300 meters; that's the reason for its existence. After all, no one compares the F-16's payload/range if it had to operate solely from a similar strip. A related point is that because the STOVL is going to be based closer to the action, it doesn't matter that it can't fly as far as a CTOL
so long as it can fly the distance it needs to for its mission. It's true that USAF has scads of tankers, but now you're into a very expensive massively complex operation, which still doesn't get you around the transit time and basing issue. During Gulf War I, USMC Harriers never required USAF tanking, because they were close enough that they didn't need it. In fact, had the ground war played out like they thought it was going to, the plan was that AV-8Bs would move forward as the troops did, operating from roads.
In that war, they were able to use their STOVL capability to generate a high sortie rate from airfields using techniques that others couldn't. For example, the first half of the runway was used for multiple landings at the same time the 2nd half was launching strikes. They've also used a FOB near Baghdad unusable by other aircraft. Similarly, when the move into Afghanistan began, they were able to operate from damaged airfields well before more conventional a/c.
As far as rapidly constructing combat airbases, if I remember the "bare base" concept, it assumed that the runway and apron were already there, and they could "rapidly" build the rest. Runways really aren't that hard to damage anymore. Hard to destroy, absolutely, but not that hard to damage. For example, using our 9,000 ft. runway example, you don't have to destroy it, just deeply crater it in three or four properly spaced locations. Add in some delay-fused explosives, and you're going to keep the CTOLs on the ground for quite a while. The STOVLs will be (gingerly) operational again as soon as you fill in one of those holes. In fact, depending on how they're spaced, they may not even need any filled in before you can fly.
As with everything else, there are always tradeoffs. Without some breakthroughs, I'm not all that convinced that we'd see a STOVL F-X F/A-XX. On the other hand, though, there will definitely be a need for the flexibility STOVL brings in other roles. Of course one critical question has to addressed, at least from USAF's point of view: If you don't have a base big enough to have a 9,000 ft. runway, where are you going to put the golf course?
