By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Breakthrough long-range precision-weaponry, multi-domain networking and paradigm changing stealth platforms have generated next-generation warfare tactics and Concepts of Operation, yet they do not fully eclipse the importance of Sun Tzu’s famous “mass matters” determination.
“Mass” does indeed matter in any anticipated future warfare environment, despite the arrival of disaggregated formations, wide area maneuver and long-range multi-domain networks. In any future large-scale conflict, large maneuvering formations will need to disperse across hundreds of miles to penetrate and overwhelm enemy air defenses and “sustain” gains against a large defensive force with “mass.” Essentially, the arrival of paradigm-changing range and precision does not remove a clear need for “mass,” yet an interesting research analysis from Air Universities’ China Aerospace Studies Institute maintains that the concept of “mass” will need to be re-imagined by the Air Force.
“The U.S. Air Force must rethink how it achieves “mass” by focusing on affordable, precise, long-range weapons, and leveraging integrated Joint Fires Networks (JFN). Emphasis on low-cost drones and supersonic cruise missiles over hypersonic missiles is crucial for modern conflict, reducing reliance on costly aircraft while countering advanced defenses,” the CASI essay, titled Charting the Course: How the PLA’s Regional and Global Strategies Should Influence the US Air Force’s Lines of Effort,” states.
“Mass” can build in redundancy to ensure continued operations in the event some platforms are destroyed, mass can simply overwhelm an adversaries’ defenses to ensure offensive gains “mass” can generate a series of dispersed, interconnected “nodes” able to network targeting and surveillance specifics.
“Mass” is also particularly critical in the event of a protracted war, as combat losses will generate a need for replacement weapons and platforms. This requires an industrial capacity to sustain low-cost production of combat critical assets, such as the emerging Air Force loyal wingman drones called Combat Collaborative Aircraft (CCA). Large numbers of lower-cost, highly capable CCAs can help mitigate existing Air Force deficits in the area of “mass” and fleet size, Air Universities’ China Aerospace Studies Institute writes.
“Since 1990, the Air Force has seen a substantial reduction in fighter squadrons and does not have the resources to maintain a fighter presence as it did in the 1990s. The ability to generate mass firepower with fighter platforms, therefore, is no longer the same which has driven the recent desire to build Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to satisfy the principle of mass.
The Air Force plans to acquire a large number of CCA’s, many of which are already being produced. The Air Force has awarded deals to Anduril and General Atomics to build CCAs, and the service plans to ultimately acquire as many as 1,000 CCAs to be operational by the end of the decade, according to an Air Force essay.
The arrival of CCAs comes at a critical time for the Air Force, given advances in enemy air defenses and the need for survivable forward surveillance and attack. The timing works for the service because in recent years the Air Force has demonstrated the ability to exchange data “in flight” between manned 5th-gen aircraft such as an F-35, F-22 and its Valkyrie drone. In development for many years, the concept is to enable manned 5th and 6th-gen aircraft to operate groups of drones from the cockpit to test and penetrate enemy air defenses, blanket areas with surveillance or even launch strikes when directed by a human. Of course this enables manned aircraft to function at stand-off ranges in a command and control capacity while leveraging high-speed, secure air-to-air networking which reduces latency and helps expedite a targeting kill chain. A key idea, as explained by the CASI analysis, is speed … an ability to stay ahead of or inside an enemies decision cycle and close the surveillance, targeting and attack cycle faster and more accurately than an enemy can respond. This requires what the CASI essay describes as a “Joint Fires Network” leveraging long-range attack with “edge-computing” and “low-Earth orbit satellites.”
“While the U.S. Air Force needs to move forward with new weapons development, the character of war has evolved to place information at the center stage in air combat, electronic warfare, and network warfare. Consequently, advantages in information capacity, volume, and speed are poised to become the decisive factor in determining success or failure in future conflicts,”
The CASI analysis describes this as what it calls a “yet-to-be-proven” concept of Agile Combat Employment which attempts to “move assets and logistics at a pace that stays well inside China’s targeting timeline for long-range fires.”
