rational defense

In 1987, Tom Stefanick published Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Naval Strategy. In it, he attempted to question a tenet of American naval strategy during the Cold War: the targeting of Soviet ballistic missile submarines and, more importantly, the implications of that doctrinal choice. During the Cold War especially, the tools of naval strategy — everything from sonar capabilities to the shape of a submarine’s propeller (known as the screw) — were deeply classified. Nevertheless, through research and analysis, certain parameters of a problem can be defined and intelligent questions can be asked. Based on those parameters, Stefanick was bold enough to ask whether, in the outbreak of war between the United States/NATO and the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact, would the loss of some of the Soviet strategic fleet (especially a precipitous loss) actually serve to further escalate the situation and thus increase the likelihood of a full-blown nuclear exchange, in part because Soviet second-strike capability had been degraded.

There are, of course, a mountain of suppositions in any World War III scenario during the Cold War. There was — and is — no way to answer that question for certain. Weighting heavily on the other hand are very compelling military imperatives that argue for the targeting of ballistic missile submarines — one of the most survivable platforms for a country’s nuclear arsenal. The comparative advantage of American submarine technology allowed the U.S. Navy to target Soviet boomers while American missile boats were comparatively safe from Soviet attack submarines. But it was a fair question for Stefanick to ask, even if his work at the Federation of American Scientists and the Institute for Defense Disarmament Studies may have brought certain ideological presuppositions to the table — and even if defining the parameters of his question was daunting and produced a book that is more than half appendices (appendices that make for particularly good open-source resources, it so happens). Indeed, my copy of his book was first owned and read by someone in the office of the U.S. Commander of Naval Forces, Japan.

It is this very sort of debate that RD considers essential and upon which it has been founded.

When it comes to debate about the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) these days, discussions tend to quickly descend into heated debates about performance parameters that are mostly classified.

Air Power Australia (APA) has attempted to provide the same sort of reasoned parameters for this debate that Stefanick did for his. Through its extensive website and broad analysis, APA has given some much-needed definition to the recent debate in Australia over whether the JSF program in which Canberra has long been a partner is really the right choice for Australia’s strategic needs. While it has established a reputation of hostility towards the F-35 (one grounded in its own analysis), it has attempted to take what information is publicly available and used it to model and make estimates about operational capabilities and performance envelopes in order to compare them to the missions that the new aircraft will be expected to perform (in this case, one of the major concerns for Australia has been the proliferation of late-model Su-30MK “Flanker” series fighter jets to not only China, but Malaysia and Indonesia).

Indeed, in what originated with a comment to a post about one of APA’s recent analyses on Ares, Bill Sweetman composed a rather exceptional post today that highlighted the deep need for debate. He pointed out that the “JSF business plan, if fulfilled, results in a virtual fighter monopoly in the West and its allies.” This gets to the root of the problem. Lockheed Martin stands to make over a trillion dollars on U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps orders alone — not to mention what promise to be extensive overseas sales. The program itself will essentially lock foreign buyers into a long-term service and support arrangement with Lockheed Martin. Very real and deeply entrenched interests have a great deal at stake. So does the American taxpayer. Compounding this, Sweetman points out, is that there has been no track record of success since the F-117 Nighthawk (he points out the prohibitive cost overruns of the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber and concerns about maintenance, sustainability and life cycle costs with the F-22 Raptor.)

RD does not argue that every performance parameter and capability of a weapon system be unclassified. That is neither necessary nor prudent. But given the delays and problems with realizing the JSF program so far and legitimate and widespread questions and concerns from expert cicrles about the viability, applicability and necessity of the production-version of the aircraft, Sweetman parts with exactly the right sentiment:

If your track record is Ishtar and Howard the Duck, and you tell me that you’ve got something that beats Gone With The Wind and Star Wars, you are going to have to prove it with more than a PowerPoint, or “trust me, but it’s secret.”