This letter to the editor in the
Armed Force Journal says it all...
F-35B’s true mission
Lt. Cmdr. Perry Solomon, [“Hovering at a
precipice”, July/Aug AFJ] missed the mark in his criticism of the Marine
Corps’ all-in selection of the F-35B STOVL as being unnecessary and the
wrong choice.
The author seems to have either
misunderstood or merely forgotten the Marine Corps’ primary mission. The
article also centers on the dangerous assumption that the U.S. will
always have air superiority in all future conflicts. Operations Desert
Storm and Iraqi Freedom are cited as the only evidence for this
contention, a sampling that is too selective and incomplete.
The F-35B, like the Harrier before it, was predicated on the very
opposite assumption: that peer (or locally superior adversaries) will
either attain air superiority or the next worst thing, the capacity to
target and disable/deny access to all friendly airbases or airports. The
true archetypical modern-era scenario comes not from Desert Storm, but
from the high-intensity battle envisaged during the Cold War, in which
Soviet and Warsaw-Pact forces would first have struck all U.S. and NATO
air bases, disrupting, debilitating, or perhaps outright denying NATO
its vital airpower.
In this adverse scenario, short take-off and
vertical landing (STOVL) combat aircraft would be immune to the loss of
airfields, continuing to conduct combat operations while operating from
easily and quickly relocated dispersal sites around the battlefield. It
was for this very reason that the British Harrier “jump-jet” was created
and deployed, and for the same reasons that the Marines obtained so
many copies.
Such threats are very much in play today.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s doctrine is similarly based on
ballistic- and cruise-missile saturation attacks, alongside
aircraft-delivered precision guided missile (PGM) strikes, on all
Taiwanese and regionally “friendly” airbases, out as far as Japan, South
Korea and even to Guam. PLA doctrine also calls for attacks on American
nuclear aircraft carriers and their escorting carrier battle groups.
Thus, both U.S. land-based and naval airpower may be denied in-theater
access in a future conflict with China, at least in the crucial early
stages, as posited by the CSBA’s “Air-Sea-Battle” document of 2010.
Ironically, this adverse scenario is one in which the F-35B is not only
meant to continue fighting, but the option the Marines are already
opting for, en masse. Indeed, the F-35B STOVL combat aircraft might be
the only combat plane still able to fly, fight and win, on or near a
target zone such as a Taiwan under attack, siege or occupation.
Unlike the author’s assumptions of guaranteed air superiority, the
Marines always plan, equip and train to fight and win in even the most
adverse scenarios. They cannot and do not assume that they will have air
superiority and leisurely fly-ins to regional airbases or conventional
carriers just outside the immediate combat zone. Their primary,
mission-generating case studies include Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and
Inchon, not just Desert Storm and OIF. To that end, they are opting for a
penetrating combat aircraft that can deploy forward into hostile
territory with as much vital airpower as possible with their amphibious
and land-borne elements. Also, unlike conventional combat aircraft
(including the Navy’s F-35Cs), F-35Bs can operate off Navy LPD ships and
helicopter carriers, increasing dispersal, survivability and
combined-arms forces’ effectiveness by a factor of many times.
The Marine Corps’ all-F-35B force gives some badly needed redundancy,
robustness and flexibility to the Air-Sea-Battle Operations Concept.
— Howard Kleinberg, defense systems engineer-analyst, Department of
Public and International Affairs, University of North Carolina,
Wilmington, N.C.
Well said Mr. Kleinberg. Unfortunately the "Horde" of spinners, and deceivers about this program will never listen to reasoned debate.
Like jihadist, they are locked into a belief system that has them chained to a course of action in which they seem to have lost control.
