VOICES : For the Defense

Moammar Kadafi is alive today because lasers and high-tech target sensors on four of the nine U.S. Air Force FB-111s sent to attack his compound in April, 1986, broke down--causing the planes to withdraw without releasing their “smart” bombs. And of the five planes that did deliver, none scored a direct hit.

Considering that the raid was made after long preparation and against a Third World target, this might have given Pentagon officials pause. Instead, the Air Force will invest billions of dollars in the technology--and assume it can demolish Soviet forces offering more resistance.

The initiative, referred to as “deep strike,” involves adapting Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighters into electronics-laden tactical bombers similar to FB-111s. The resulting $45-million F-15E “Strike Eagles” and $20-million A-16s (no nickname yet) would stage ground attacks behind enemy lines. This specialty is vital to the Air Force in its battle against a menacing foe--the U.S. Army.

In military lingo, what we attempted to do to Kadafi was “interdict” him. “Interdiction” means destruction of a precisely chosen target deep in enemy territory. This terminology is the focal point of an inveterate Pentagon turf squabble.

Since the Air Force’s creation in 1947, it has maintained that interdiction of targets, such as supply depots, is the best way to assist troops. The Army counters that “close air support”--attacks at the battle front--is more important. Pentagon debates on this are endless. Damage to rear-area targets can cost dearly: If, for example, interdiction aircraft hit a shipment of spare tank parts, in a week the opponent’s tanks may wheeze to a halt. On the other hand, close-air attacks save U.S. lives right away and may determine today’s battle, not next week’s.

Were funds unlimited, a military tactician would want plenty of deep-strike power. But even in the Reagan era defense funds are limited. Interdiction aircraft cost much more than close-support aircraft, and provide speculative gains, so cost-effectiveness is dubious. At $5-million each, the F-15E and A-16 target sensors alone cost nearly as much as an A-10 close-support airplane.

In turn, because the Air Force shows little interest in providing close support for troops, the Army must invest in attack helicopters--both costlier than comparable airplanes ($10 million for the Apache anti-tank helicopter, versus about $7 million for most A-10s) and more vulnerable. The Army is now contemplating an Apache successor, LHX, perhaps a classic “worst weapon money can buy”--more tailored to contorted committee requirements than the battlefield.

Go-ahead decisions for the A-16, LHX and the $5 million sensor (called Lantirn) are due soon; they number among the most important procurement questions of 1987. Some background on the interservice wrestling will point toward alternatives that could save money and improve effectiveness.

Air power advocates of the 1930s and early 1940s focused on winning approval for long-range planes that could strike inside enemy territory--interdiction. It had two strong attractions. First, the potential of shortening a war by crippling the enemy’s industrial base. Second, allowing Army air-power advocates to escape the clutches of the land-oriented generals.

The chief reason interdiction has never produced the stunning results expected is that almost all bombs miss. A bomb missing a factory (or a madman’s tent) by 100 feet may cause no militarily significant harm; unless even a good-sized bomb comes within about 15 feet of a tank, the tank will not be destroyed. When the Air Force came into being, the service ordered its tactical goals as: 1) air superiority, 2) interdiction, 3) support of the Army. From 1947 to the mid-1970s, as the Air Force built many planes for the first two roles, it did not design a single close-support aircraft.

Meanwhile a sort of truce signed by top military officials when the Air Force was created, known as the Key West agreement, effectively barred the Army from operating “fixed wing” combat aircraft. So it invested in “rotary wing” aircraft (helicopters). Even if these were frighteningly vulnerable, at least when an Army field commander called for help, they would come. The Air Force might be preoccupied.

Once it chose interdiction as a priority, the Air Force began a quest for precision delivery systems to solve the missed-target problem. The first of them appeared in the 1960s on the FB-111: A system called terrain-following radar, known to skeptics as terrain-merging radar.

Terrain-following radars scan the ground ahead, generating an image that pilots use to avoid hills and obstacles as they fly low behind enemy lines, avoiding detection until the target is in sight. In tests, this is the cat’s meow. But tests are often over the Southwest desert, where hills and obstacles are few, and without opposing fire, meaning pilots are not distracted.

The Air Force also worked on smart weapons that would be guided to direct hits. One weapon touted during the 1970s, the Maverick missile, turned out to be a legendary dud. These weapons, designed to destroy tanks and fortifications, have television cameras in their noses. A screen in the cockpit allows pilots to see what the missile sees. But to concentrate on guiding a Maverick the pilot must fly his plane straight and level, forsaking evasive maneuvers. In demonstrations for congressional delegations this is no problem; in combat it is suicide.

Against Kadafi, the Air Force used a kind of smart bomb with laser seekers. Because laser light does not occur in nature, its reflection is easy for sensors to track. FB-111s are two-man aircraft; when approaching Kadafi’s compound, the pilot flew the plane while a weapons officer looked for the target through a night-sight called a Flir (“forward-looking infrared”). These sensors do make dark areas visible--but only what is directly in front. Using a Flir is like skeet shooting at night with a flashlight taped to the gun barrel.

The mediocre score against Kadafi becomes more disturbing after taking into account that his compound’s exact location was fixed in advance by intelligence. Aircraft were able to load the compound’s Mercator grid coordinates into their inertia navigation sets, and inertial guidance is about as good as it gets. This edge is rarely available under combat conditions.

The Army’s Apache helicopter also works on the laser designation principle, except the helicopter may hover while the weapons officer guides the missile. Hover. That is, remain stationary. Recent war games showed that when Apaches hovered even main guns of tanks, normally useless as anti-aircraft weapons, shot them down.

There was one break in the Air Force’s obsession with interdiction. When Melvin R. Laird was defense secretary during the first half of the Nixon Administration, he threatened to award the Air Force’s close-support “role”--and budget line--to the Army. The Air Force jumped: It developed the A-10, a relatively simple and low-cost anti-tank aircraft.

The A-10 and most close-support aircraft of other nations are cheap mainly because they are subsonic. Planes flying near the ground cannot go more than about 400 miles per hour.

The A-10’s weapon, a rapid cannon that fires armor-piercing shells, is also cheap; about $200 per burst, compared to about $362,000 for a laser bomb. Though not high-tech, the cannon has one real advantage over smart bombs--it need not be precisely aimed, because it sprays a broad area.

But just because the Air Force built the A-10 didn’t mean the flyboys liked it. Being subsonic and sluggish-looking (no swept wings!), close-support aircraft do not fit the service’s wild-blue-yonder image. Being inexpensive, the A-10 meant trouble for other Air Force models at budget time.

Worst, A-10 operation would not be practical without coordinated Army-Air Force planning and “JAATS,” Joint Aerial Attack Training, in which Air Force pilots and Army helicopter drivers trained as though equal . Yuck! Because battle topography changes, close-support aircraft need help from forward air controllers (FACs). The Air Force doesn’t object when its own FACs are on the scene. But when infantry FACs do the controlling, Army corporals and sergeants radio commands to Air Force pilots who are captains and majors. Double yuck!

Thus from the moment A-10s arrived in the inventory, the Air Force tried to cut it. Whenever asked at congressional hearings for places their budget might be trimmed, blue generals would suggest the A-10. Asked why, they would explain that the A-10 wasn’t “all weather”--the cannon must be visually aimed.

“All weather” ground attack systems are a chimera engineers have dreamed of for decades. The idea that weapons must be smart enough to function in the dark during a downpour ignores a fact: Even the best planes can’t operate well when weather is bad.

The Air Force saw its escape from close-support work when the latest super-sensor, Lantirn, was proposed.

Lantirn could be to the 1990s what the Divad gun was to the 1980s--the system all ultimately wish they had never heard of. What protects Lantirn is that, like Divad, it’s so complicated nobody can tell if it’s working.

A good rule of thumb for evaluating projects is asking whether they represent sensible investments assuming glitches are ironed out. Divad never passed the “is it sensible?” test. Lantirn--an expensive system to guide expensive aircraft to targets of secondary significance--doesn’t either.

But Lantirn was irresistible to Air Force leaders. Their beloved F-15 was reaching the end of its acquisition run. Creating a strike version of the F-15 might keep it in production with its state-of-the-art credentials renewed. Better still, the Strike Eagle would be so expensive it would give the Air Force an excuse to reserve them for interdiction.

Then about a year ago, when funding for new close-support aircraft began to fail, Air Force planners came up with the related idea of adapting F-16s for this role.

But the A-16 will not be common at battlefields. Fighter planes, where acceleration and maneuverability are premiums, have thin metallic skins to keep weight low. Up in the sky, this makes sense. Close to the ground, however, thin skins are nonsense.

Near the battle lines, aircraft may be fired at by dozens of cannons, machine guns and rifles, in addition to missiles. Some hits are inevitable. So the A-10 has a thick skin to deflect bullets and small cannon rounds, armor shields surrounding the pilot and other combat survival features.

An attack plane based on the F-16, however, could be torn up by machine-gun fire. Strike Eagles also have thin skin; the Air Force doesn’t even pretend that these $45-million investments will be gambled against $1-million tanks.

If it wins congressional approval for A-16s and more Strike Eagles, the Air Force will have achieved a bureaucratic coup: preserving funds for its close-support “role,” but using them for other purposes. The Army has a perverse incentive to play along: Air Force refusal to provide effective battlefield support is the Army’s best argument for funding the Apache and LHX.

What are the alternatives?

First, the silly restrictions against Army operation of airplanes should be lifted. The Air Force may not care about battle support but the Army does: Letting Army planners address this by whatever means works best, instead of restricting them to helicopters, is the essence of the “is it sensible?” approach. The Air Force could concentrate on air-superiority and strategic operations--which it’s good at.

Second, the approximately 700 existing A-10s should be turned over to the Army. Defense equipment belongs to the public, not to individual services.

Third, a rugged new close-support airplane, similar to the A-10 but smaller and more agile, should be built. Such a plane would be more effective and less vulnerable in anti-tank warfare than the Army’s LHX; it would cost less, too.

These are the kind of military reforms which involve not budget or expense account audits but subconscious bad habits. Every human enterprise, even charitable and patriotic endeavors, has a component of bureaucratic foolishness. The malarkey over close air support, which has reached the stage of a detriment to national security, is a prime example.