Is The Air Force The Enemy Of Space?

spacedaily.com ^ | 21 Aug 03 | Publius Rex

[RightWhale]

Blame Congress, not the AF. Actually, since we elect Congress, both houses now, blame the votors, ourselves.

[Prof Engineer]

ping

[mbynack]

I had the honor of meeting General Jumper when he went through F-15 pilot training just before I retired from the Air Force. He is an exceptionally bright individual with a enviable service record.

MAJOR AWARDS AND DECORATIONS

Defense Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster
Distinguished Service Medal
Defense Superior Service Medal
Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster
Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters
Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters
Air Medal with 17 oak leaf clusters
Vietnam Service Medal with five service stars
Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal

He has over 4000 hours of flight time in everything from small cargo planes to the top of the line AF Fighters. He also has 1400 hours of combat time during two tours of Vietnam.

If General Jumper says that bigger rockets aren't a priority for the Air Force, I would believe him. Satellites are nice, but steel on target is what wins wars.

[Kozak]

Were the Battleship Admirals the enemy of air power?
I bet there were plenty of Hoplite generals who stood in the way of developing the Macedonian Phalanx. The established bureaucracy will always try and prevent change, it's more of a threat then any enemy...

[Kozak]

Especially since a space based weapons system called THOR, basically orbiting bundles of kinetic kill "rods", capable of what amounts to a guided meteor storm anywhere in the world within minutes makes most Army, Navy and Air Force weapons systems obsolete. The country that grabs THIS high ground will rule the world for quite a while...

[Kozak]

If General Jumper says that bigger rockets aren't a priority for the Air Force, I would believe him. Satellites are nice, but steel on target is what wins wars.

Oh I agree, check out THOR.

[mbynack]

THOR sends a 10 foot long, 1 foot diameter rod into a target at 12,000 fps. It sounds like it would be good for high value assets, but would be too expensive for large scale use. I also think that this violates the treaty that we signed limiting weapons in space.

[hchutch]

That can be dealt with.

It's not a weapon - it's a landscaping device. :)

[narby]

The real breakthrough in space will be when someone has the guts to build a horizontal launch, air breathing first stage, reusable orbital launcher.

There are several very practical ideas about how to do that (not the X-30) on the drawing boards.

My favorite being the turbojet powered craft that would launch lightly loaded, hit a KC-135 for fuel top off, and light a rocket in its tail to boost to 300k feet and mach 6, where it kicks out an upper stage that will go into orbit.

Now THAT is a practical method to get small payloads into orbit. And since you could fly it almost every day, assembling larger structures in orbit is a no-brainer.

But the article is right, the AF will not want it. But not because they're trying to protect turf (indeed, such a vehicle could be the most important thing they flew), but because if such a thing were built, the Chineese, and worse, Al-Quaeda would buy one quickly.

Quite simply, space fairing governments want space travel expensive and rare, so only they can afford it.

[FreedomPoster]

Some interesting comments on this general subject from Cold War rocket scientist / science fiction writer / political operative / Modern Renaissance Man Jerry Pournelle are here:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/SPACECOVER.html

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/gettospace.html

[FreedomPoster]

Pournelle (see my previous post) has been a long-time advocate of that approach.

[Salgak]

1. EVERY flag officer has an agenda. Recall the story of Billy Mitchell and the Battleship Admirals. 4 Stars on each shoulder do NOT prevent you from making errors in judgement. . . .

2. You want steel on target ? Ever hear of Project THOR ?
Imagine a 50 pound crowbar, fin-guided, dropped on a target from orbit. You don't NEED explosives. One would do a main battle tank, all by itself. Space-based sensors for guidance, and voila, you've just wiped a ground force with zero friendly casualties. Alas, you've also pretty much eliminated the need for all but cargo, and maybe recon pilots. And RPV fighters are already in prototype... the Pilots' Union, and ESPECIALLY the Fighter Pilots' Union know VERY well that Space and Space-based weaponry will pretty much make them obsolete. . .and worst still make all the remaining pilots "trash-haulers". . .

[hedgetrimmer]

ping

[texson66]

Well, as dedicated and bright as General Jumper may be, his mission is to protect the careers of the "fighter pilots"!

Everything the AF does now in space is "how can it help the guy in the cockpit" do his mission. It is a perfectly valid approach for the AF, but there are a lot of space missions (manned and unmanned)which go well beyond the arena of the atmosphere and are of great strategic importance and "outside of the box" for fighter jocks!

Right now, the USAF is in the same situation as the US Army was in 1915, "What in the heck are we supposed to do with those flying machines?". Hopefully, the "spaceies" will get their own Billy Mitchell to produce a separate operating service in space.

[mbynack]

I think that it's a matter of competing priorities. The current problem is conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq and space based systems aren't as cost efficient as jets and guided weapons. It takes a lot of money to put an object in space - thousands of dollars per pound. Each THOR projectile would weigh almost 2.5 Tons and could only be used once.

I think that you're correct about some people in the Air Force protecting the fighter pilots. I saw a lot of resistance to unmanned aerial vehicles when I was in. Some of it was justified, but a lot of it was fear of change.

I think that it would be very difficult to justify taking money from manned aircraft development and putting it into space-based systems without a clear objective for the space-based platform and a detailed cost-benefits analysis showing that it has some advantage over manned aircraft. Maybe a space-age Billy Mitchell is the answer.

[mbynack]

the Fighter Pilots' Union know VERY well that Space and Space-based weaponry will pretty much make them obsolete. . .and worst still make all the remaining pilots "trash-haulers". . .

I seriously doubt it. It costs several thousand dollars a pound to put something in orbit. I can't imagine any scenario where space-based weapons would be more cost effective in a conventional war.

As far as your comment about all flag officers having an agenda I agree. Most of them have the agenda of protecting the US using the best strategy and equipment that they're aware of. I've never met an Air Force Flag officer that felt that Air Power could be used by itself to win a war and I've never met an Army Flag officer that felt that ground forces could win without airpower.

[MalcolmS]

I justwish the author would tell us how he really feels.

[RightWhale]

I justwish the author would tell us how he really feels.

He will, in Part Two.

[Salgak]

How much does it cost, in logistics and ops costs, to take out a target in the conventional fashion. Weapons cost, logistics cost, operations and maintenance costs, etc.

It's a wash, with CURRENT launch costs. Given some research cash, we could drop on-orbit cost to a hundred bucks or less per pound, and THEN space-based weaponry really shines.

And I rellay admire your naivete about flag officers. Fighter pilots run the Air Force, that's why we have insufficient quantities of tankers, airlifters, bombers, etc.

Generals are all about winning the LAST war, not the NEXT one. . .

[mbynack]

I doubt you could ever get a consensus on how much it costs to fly a mission because there's so many ways to compute it. We figured the direct cost of a one hour sortie at about $3400, but another base located 80 miles away flying the same model aircraft figured it at $5100.

The munitions cost depends on the type of munition. A dumb bomb is a couple of thousand and an Air Launched Cruise Missile is over a million.

The 4800 lb THOR projectile is going to cost 9.6 million dollars just to put it in space at $2000 a lb.

I don't doubt that the price of these systems would come down, but you get a lot more "bang for the buck" using conventional weapons from a UAV or A-10.

The only use that I can see for something this costly that could only hit stationary targets is for taking out deep bunkers with High Value Assets inside.