Here's u.s air force's new long-range
missile maintains stealth advantage over
chinese missiles. The range of current air force weapons
compels pilots of stealth aircraft to
get too close to their targets, risking
that they'll be seen and shot down. Air
combat command boss general Mark D Kelly
said september 22nd, the service must have longer ranged
fifth generation weapons to go with its
fifth gen combat aircraft.
We take
a lot of bang out of our low observable
force because we push them into ranges
where everyone even stealth aircraft is
observable, kelly told reporters during a
press roundtable at AFA's air space and
cyber conference. That means we're not going to get a good
return on our investment in 5th gen or
better fighters. 5th generation weapons allow us more
range whether it's new air to air or air
to ground, he said.
The air force considers its F-22, F-35
and B-2 bombers to be fifth generation
systems. iIm happy if it moves fast, he said
because any time we pull the trigger we
have to assume the target's going to
move between the time, the weapon, leaves
the rail and the time it shows up at the
target
and hypersonics and closer range shorten
that time of flight.
But it's not exclusively hypersonics, we
just have to make sure we can reach out
and touch folks at a range that is equal
to or exceeds their ability to reach out
and touch us. The longest range dogfight weapon in USAF's inventory is the aim 120 advanced
medium-range air-to-air missile which Kelly noted goes back more than 25 years.
The aim 120 we have today is
significantly improved in all fairness
he admitted but we've squeezed most all
we can out of that capability. The people's republic of china army air
forces already field an amram like
weapon. The place 15 with much longer
range than amram negating much of USAF's
so-called first look, first shot
advantage.
That prompted the air force to pursue
the aim 260 joint advanced tactical
missile, a new dogfight weapon. The Aim 260 gets us there in terms of
range, Kelly said
the air force needs to take an
enterprise-wide solution to its weapons, not doing supposes the greatest risk to
the fighter force.
Kelly explained that when we field any
kind of capability it has to be an
enterprise-wide solution
and so if you field a 5th gen asset, a
fighter, bomber, ISR etc and you don't
have 5th gen sustainment and you don't
have 5th gen airborne moving target
capability and you don't have 5th gen
weapons with it that rate limits the
capability of that weapon system.
The Aim 260 isn't the end solution to
air dominance though. Kelly said
we can't take our eyes off the follow on
capability he insisted
our adversaries do not sequentially
develop and design weapons. While china
is developing a near-term weapon
work is already well underway on
multiple lines of potential successors, Kelly said. We can't sequentially, heel to toe, start
working on solving problem a and not
even eyeball problem B we've got to keep
looking forward, he said.
