Agility Boom: Fueling Innovation and the Air Force’s Blunt Layer – War on the Rocks

Is it time for the Flying force to alter faster or face defeat in wartime? That’s exactly what the service’s new chief of personnel, Gen. Charles Brown, thinks. That belief is caught in the title of a brand-new paper he launched. In it he highlights what a few of us already know: “Much of the requirements for capabilities that have underpinned our success were developed in the decade [when] today’s most senior leaders joined our Air Force,” and while much has actually changed on the planet, the Flying force remains largely unchanged. He asserts, “Urgent actions are needed now to secure the U.S. Air Force’s continued capability to provide global results on strategically-relevant timelines” by reframing means-based platform-centric disputes to rather focus on effects and desired ends.

To accomplish the essential change Gen. Brown explains, the Air Force ought to start at the essential beginning: The capability to job power is one of the distinct fundamental characteristics of the U.S. military. Called functional reach, the range and duration over which a force can successfully employ military mass underpins practically all modern-day U.S. military doctrine, strategy, preparation– and the definition of airpower. Without forecast there is no power. Without power there is no reputable deterrence. And without reputable deterrence, instability and escalation to dispute is genuine.

America’s go back to great-power competition needs a Flying force that can credibly reach China and Russia and run upon arrival— anti-access/area rejection is a substance for this very factor. Historically, the Air Force has actually consumed over dealing with the area rejection problem, ignoring the truth that dealing with anti-access is a precursor. To price estimate a former deputy secretary of defense, “In every case I know of the F-35 guidelines the sky when it’s in the sky, but it gets killed on the ground in large numbers.”

This extreme vulnerability is the facility that underpins a loosely defined maturing fighter idea referred to as nimble battle employment. This involves predicting small groups of fighters forward of main airbases by island-hopping amongst short-lived logistical nodes. While the idea has become buzzworthy in the past year as personnels work through concepts and operational units put them into practice, it’s inadequate. This work design, like most Air Force initiatives, is burdened with conventional military thinking and a failure of imagination.

Agile battle employment has the prospective to provide the most disruptive impacts of anything the Air Force can do in the near term, if the service can embrace two realizations. Services do not exclusively happen through development– however also adaptation. Second, more time should be spent understanding the warfighter and running environment to determine the right problem to fix prior to rushing into an option to the incorrect issue. In this case, it’s all about fuel.

Understand the Environment

The addresses the obstacles of modern operational reach via dynamic force work and a four-layer force model that together frame a new theory of expeditionary power projection. 3 of these layers– the contact, surge, and homeland defense layers– presently exist within the Flying force style construct. The staying layer is called the blunt force. As the name implies, its function is to discourage, delay, deteriorate, or reject aggression without large-scale force motion. Agile combat employment is the Air Force’s effort to develop such a capability.

Agile fight employment centers around releasing a fighter-based blunt force close enough to inject pause into an adversary’s tactical calculus (or enforce expense, if needed). Producing such a strategic impact from a small tactical force requires significance through proximity. The challenge to this is not insignificant. America’s 2 most formidable rivals– Russia and China– impart two distinct challenges to operational reach. In the European theater, American and allied bases are all susceptible to attack by Russia since they are too close, whereas in the Pacific large oceans and sparse surface keep American forces too far away to job power.

This employment concept addresses both of these by focusing on battle generation inside objected to anti-access areas with 2 basic concepts. First is to turn anti-access “outsiders” into “experts” by using dispersed airpower that can be generated from shorter varieties inside highly objected to areas because it is less dependent on set operating areas. Agile combat employment is lean, agile, and less predictable due to the fact that it is expeditious and austere. Functional maneuver– not firepower or technology– is the primary system to negate anti-access.

The 2nd principle of nimble combat employment is the support to sustain the fuel and munitions needed. This requires establishing temporary logistical nodes better to the foe called forward running websites where forward equipping and refueling point operations are performed to land, refuel, and leave. Since these expeditionary locations vary from little airstrips to areas of highways, the linchpin for logistics under this brand-new employment concept is the age-old C-130 Hercules. Fighter refueling is supported by airlifting in a fuel truck or by offload from a fuel bladder from the freight compartment of a C-130 staged nearby. Munitions are pre-staged or brought in through the very same manner as fuel, though refilled utilizing incorporated combat turns that permit concurrent refueling and weapons reloading on fighters with their engines still running. That way they can rapidly get airborne again.

Regrettably, in spite of the hype agile combat work in its present form is not really disruptive since none of it is in fact new. Refueling fighters at a forward operating sites has actually been exercised as far back as 1984, integrated fight turns were utilized up through Operation Desert Storm, and landing fighters on highways is an idea straight from the Cold War. That stated, there is untapped disruptive capacity, but it requires knowing more about the logistics of fuel.

Comprehend the Fuel

Fueling an all-jet fleet needs a huge effort– a twin-engine fighter completely afterburner. Accordingly, fuel consumes a majority of nimble combat employment’s logistical problem. Despite attempts to rapidly get jets back in the air, roughly 80 percent of the time fighters spend on the ground and vulnerable to attack is due to refueling. In spite of this apparent issue, people may be amazed to discover that these operational ideas do not utilize aerial refueling, even though the Air Force proved its potential 100 years earlier. The factor is necessary to comprehend due to the fact that it in fact has nothing to do with fighters– and whatever to do with bombers right away following The second world war.

At the development of the Cold War, the nuclear bomber ended up being the preeminent component of military power. To extend operational reach from the United States all the way to the Soviet Union, the Air Force looked for to establish a jet-powered, aerial-refuelable nuclear bomber. The initial probe-and-drogue system showed fantastic for fighters, but unusable for bombers. This resulted in the aerial boom, which was included on the KC-97 Stratofreighter transport-derived tanker and brand-new jet-powered tanker that was the Flying force’s top priority at the time– the KC-135 Stratotanker. These tankers were developed to refuel the B-47 Stratojet and another somewhat slower jet-powered bomber twice the variety and triple the payload– the B-52 Stratofortress.

By the 1960s the Flying force had approximately one tanker for every single bomber to support its nuclear forecast ability, and also a conventional force structure based on dispersed mass with 4,000 thirsty short-range jet fighters. The Vietnam War exposed the tension of aerial refueling an all-jet Air Force, which resulted in the advancement of the much larger KC-10 Extender to augment the KC-135 fleet. The Flying force is presently fielding the KC-46 Pegasus, however it arguably does not solve the majority of the Flying force’s tanker issues. Aerial refueling remains the most underappreciated and stressed part of U.S. military logistics, in spite of the United States having the largest tanker fleet worldwide. That’s not the problem though.

Comprehend the Problem

Today’s bomber, fighter, and tanker force structure relationship is basically unchanged from when it was developed 70 years ago to support bomber projection from far bases– not fighters. Since of this, every current Flying force tanker has been a derivative of an existing industrial aircraft and even the future KC-Y tanker is currently predicted to be the exact same. And since they are all commercial derivatives, they are constrained to run from airport-like fully grown airbases with long runways.

While a legitimate premise in the past, this is a tactical flaw when used in the contemporary world and a defect present in essentially all modern tanker requirements studies– presumed impunity from attack. These capacity drills disregard the vulnerability of assembling groups of tankers on a large ramp at an airbase in theater. Why battle a formation of F-35s when it’s more affordable (and efficient) to simply destroy the airbase– and why attack a fighter airbase when it’s far more enforcing to ruin the tanker airbase and ground an entire theater of airpower?

Figure 1: A fleet of forward-deployed KC-135s are a long-term component at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. (Source: Google Earth)

This airfield requirement and hazard from attack mean that the Flying force’s fleet of strategic inter-theater tankers can not be “experts” and are for that reason not included in nimble battle work operating principles. Nevertheless, basing tankers as “outsiders” from anti-access threats creates a logistical DILEMMA: Tankers are farther away, necessitating more fuel, which needs more tankers that the Flying force already said it does not have. This is why forward-staging land-based fuel is a vital element of agile combat employment.

The severe reality is that in its current construct, nimble fight employment shackles Flying force fighters to the bounds of earth every hour and a half due to the lack of an intra-theater tactical tanker– a restriction that weakens any reputable deterrence this blunt force is trying to attain.

Depending on a 70-year-old refueling paradigm with a 40-year-old operating principle is hardly the way to implement the National Defense Strategy. It’s certainly not innovative. The Flying force needs an “insider tanker” for intra-theater tactical refueling that is tailor-made for expeditious operations in austere airfields. That’s generally where requirements-focused service seeking ends, but it’s actually not the real issue. The genuine issue is this: The Flying force requires an “insider tanker” that does not even exist on paper which the service likely could not pay for anyhow.

Innovation Through Adaptation

The solution is not to establish a new tanker, but to establish a new capability. To achieve this, the Flying force needs to believe less like the ultra-rich Tony Stark and more like the resource-constrained MacGyver. Development often generates thoughts of development and production– however it likewise comes from adjustment. To price quote Michèle Flournoy, “What can we do in the next five years with what we have, but use it differently. … It’s really about changing our mindset and how we imagine utilizing what we have.”

The Flying force may not have adequate tankers, but there is something it does have in excess, whose Korean War design requirements also take place to be almost similar to the attributes needed for a tactical tanker capable of supporting nimble battle employment– the C-130 Hercules. It so takes place that while just a couple of allied nations have tankers, nearly everyone has C-130s. 2,400 C-130s in 70 versions have actually been constructed, and there are currently over 400 of the current C-130J in service throughout 18 countries.

While it may seem uncommon to refuel jet fighters with propeller-driven tankers it’s really quite common. In reality, the Marine Corps runs a tanker variant of the C-130, though they are drogue systems not compatible with Flying force fighters. While the aerial boom requirement is an engineering restraint that bounds services, the qualities of the C-130 and its large cargo hold provide adequate opportunity to innovate.

Figure 2: Air Force KC-97 (left) and Marine Corps KC-130 (right). Propeller-driven tankers aerial-refueling numerous generations of U.S. jet fighters. (Source: U.S. Flying Force and U.S. Navy)

Dexterity Boom

The Flying force ought to host an open competitors for business to establish a modular roll-on/roll-off aerial boom system for the C-130: Dexterity Boom. This competitors would be similar to Agility Prime, the Flying force’s flying vehicle competition, with one distinction. Rather of utilizing competition to accelerate the commercial market’s body of engineering understanding, Agility Boom would rather utilize competition to rapidly determine and field an ingenious solution. This is not more demonstrating or prototyping. Rather, it’s an ingenious technique to developing an ingenious service with a sense of urgency that will really reach the warfighter. It ought to be publicized in a manner that is open and transparent to the warfighter, the taxpayer, American allies– and America’s enemies.

Figure 3: Proposed Dexterity Boom elements on a C-130. (Image by the author)

To reduce the barrier of entry and increase the number of individuals, the competition ought to be simplified by breaking it into two engineering problems. One element of the competition would be to develop an establish a roll-on/roll-off boom module, while the other component of the competitors would be to establish a new roll-on/roll-off fuel tank. Compared to other bleeding-edge technology efforts, neither of these are hard problems to resolve. The essence of a roll-on/roll-off ability is that a freight aircraft is temporarily adjusted for other usages by leveraging its freight hold with modular missionized pallets. This method has been utilized on the C-130 for many years and has actually transformed the cargo airplane into everything from an intelligence collection platform to a submarine hunter.

Figure 4: 3,600-gallon Benson Tank(left and center)or twin 1,800-gallon fuel pallets(right). Both increase the maximum fuel by 40 percent.(Source: Air Force/Navy/Public Domain)Palletized fuel is not a brand-new idea either. In the days before the C-130 might aerially refuel, to extend its variety it utilized to carry a palletized 3,600-gallon fuel tank. There are existing commercial offerings that utilize twin 1,800-gallon palletized tanks. A fuel tank this size supplies a 40 percent fuel increase to a fully fueled external-tanked C-130’s capacity. For perspective, this tank alone has enough fuel to extend the range of a development of F-22s an additional 500 miles. A completely sustained C-130 with this tank could supply sufficient fuel to minimize the dependency on the current tanker fleet and without consuming the 40-foot cargo compartment as transferring a whole R-11 military fuel truck does. A C-130 will eventually carry less fuel than a conventional tanker, but it likewise burns significantly less fuel. Due to the fact that of this, two C-130s almost equate to a KC-135’s worth of fuel capacity and fuel burn, enhancing the notion of dispersed logistics supporting nimble fight work’s distributed airpower property.

Figure 5: C-130s bring less fuel than other tankers, but they also burn it at a comparatively lower rate. (Image by the author)

ACE in the Hole

Pessimists will quickly discount this idea as an invisible replacement for jet tankers and optimists will see it as a remedy, however it’s neither. Realists know something needs to be done, and warfighters understand that developing several alternatives for decision-makers eventually develops multiple issues for the foe.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper desires the Department of Defense to be bolder and promote a culture of taking greater risks. At the very same time, senior leaders continue to lament the struggle to acquire and scale innovative innovation in the Department of Defense. They have it wrong. Rather, they must be asking about how to scale services, not innovation– and how to do it with a sense of seriousness. Disruptive and effective services do not always have to need clean-sheet designs and bleeding-edge technology that need years of research to establish. For less than the cost of a single fighter, the Air Force can increase the functional reach of all of its fighters.

Agile combat employment introduces enough logistical obstacles– fuel need not be among them. Agility Boom is a proposition to address this problem, though specifics regarding competition, engineering restrictions, specific technical issues, and system integration are information in a future that does not yet exist. The Flying force ought to initially be dedicated to constructing a trustworthy blunt-force layer to support the National Defense Technique. Otherwise, it does not matter how technically advanced a force is on paper– tactical radiance without any functional translation is the most expensive course to tactical atrophy. Speed up change or lose.

Mike Benitez is an officer with over two years of service in both the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force. He has actually served in numerous operational, training, and personnel positions, along with military fellowships in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Company, Congress, and Silicon Valley. The views expressed are those of the author and do not always show the main policy or position of the Department of the Air Force or the U.S. federal government.

Image: Department of Defense