Chapter 2: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Air Force Airplanes

The most important thing is to have a flexible approach. . . . The truth is no one knows exactly what air fighting will be like in the future. We can't say anything will stay as it is, but we also can't be certain the future will conform to particular theories, which so often, between the wars, have proved wrong.
- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF

What makes the Air Force different from the other branches of service is that we use technology to attack the enemy through environments that humans can't normally be in. Man can walk across land, man can swim in the sea, but he can't just flap his arms through the sky, or through space, or through cyberspace. Technology is critical to the Air Force mission, so that is our topic of the day. Besides, cadets should know stuff about airplanes and missiles and stuff. I am not going to tell you stats like their wingspan or their top speed, you can look those up. I am not going to list every airplane we use, we have lots of airplanes. I am going to tell you the ideas and concepts that make our airplanes so effective and show you how the mix of planes we have is what makes our Air Force so lethal.

FIGHTERS
Although we have several "multi-role" fighters, we only have two full time air-to-air killers out there: The F-15C Eagle, and the new hotness, the F-22 Raptor.

"In thrust, we trust" Boeing F-15C Eagle
The F-15 is really two massive engines, with a radar and some missiles strapped on. The F-15 was the first fighter in history to have more thrust than weight, allowing it to sustain the energy it needs to fight vertically even when it is turning horizontally. Just like the A-10 was built around its gun, the F-15 was built around its radar and it really shines as a radar interceptor as well as a dogfighter. The F-15 has a perfect kill ratio, no F-15, flown by any country, has ever been lost in air-to-air combat. In DESERT STORM alone, USAF and RSAF F-15s had a 26:0 kill ratio.

Air Dominance: Lockheed F-22A Raptor
The F-22 is coming online and it is truly impressive. It is built around the concept of being so stealthy and having such good sensors that it can sneak up on an enemy aircraft, detect him, decide what to do about him, and kill him before the enemy pilot is even aware the F-22 is there. This is known as "First look, first shot, first kill." The Raptor also has super-cruise which means that it can sustain supersonic flight without having to use afterburners, which means it can get to the fight, and show up with enough gas to actually win the fight and make it home.

ATTACK PLANES
You can shoot down every MiG the Soviets employ, but if you return to base and the lead Soviet tank commander is eating breakfast in your snack bar, Jack, you've lost the war. - A-10 logic

Go Ugly Early: A-10 Warthog
Yes, it looks mean, yes, it has a big gun. But what you probably don't know is that it is built around two ideas as much as it is built around the gun: survivability and loiter time. A long time ago, on a continent far away, we were staring down the barrel of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. The Soviets had about a billion tanks lined up on the border, and as far as we could tell they were going to mass them through a topographic feature called the Fulda Gap, and they would win, and we would lose, and you and I would all be speaking Russian right now. Our generals were obsessed with that scenario, and they tried all sorts of ideas to counter it… anti-tank rockets, mines, other tanks, and finally a couple of techie guys in the Pentagon (we believe with the help of Chuck Norris) said "why don't we build a whole bunch of totally sweet, tough planes, with big guns that can at least slow the Soviet Army and cut them off in the Fulda Gap?" And the A-10 was born. The problem is the Air Force, doctrinally, hates killing tanks. We see it as a waste of resources, we would rather use those planes to kill the enemy tank factory or the enemy tank commander. Also, being that close to the ground means all those tanks can shoot back at you, and we don't like getting shot at. So this plane had to be cheap, and it had to be designed so it could take a few hits, and it had to have enough gas to loiter over the enemy tanks to kill several of them.

Beagle! Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle
The F-15E might look like an F-15C on the outside, but it is a very different plane. It has about twice as much gas stored in conformal fuel tanks, and it has all sorts of sensors, like the LANTIRN (Low Altitude Navigation-Targeting InfraRed for Night) pod to help the Weapons Systems Officer (otherwise known as the GIB, Guy In Back) to find and kill targets at night. The F-15E is a very capable precision strike fighter.

Viper: Lockheed-Martin F-16C Fighting Falcon
The F-16 started as a small, light, cheap air defense fighter. Now it is a small, expensive, heavy, multi-role-but-mostly-ground-attack fighter. It was designed by John Boyd and Harry Hillaker to be the most agile fighter in the world. Don't let the term agile confuse you, it can turn a tight corner, but that isn't what makes it agile. It can transition from one maneuver to another faster than the enemy can react to it. Think of the F-15 as our muscle car, and think of the F-16 as our sporty little Porsche. It is mostly called multi-role because we use different types of F-16s for different jobs (not so much the same F-16 for every job, though it can do that to some degree) we use them as strike planes, we use them for close air support, we use them to destroy enemy air defenses, we use them as air defense fighters, we use them at airshows, we use them to escort rescue forces, we sell them to other countries, we use them as paper-weights when no one is looking, we use them for everything.

BOMBERS
We're going to bomb them back into the stone Age.
- General Curtis E. LeMay USAF, 1965

These things we do, that others may die: Boeing B-52H Stratofortress
The B-52 was designed, no kidding, by a couple of Boeing engineers carving shapes out of balsa wood. It was the plane that was going to win World War III, or at least end it in a tie. It is intended to carry lots of bombs, very far, and drop them. A simple mission, and it does that mission so well, that it has been doing it, non-stop since 1955. To give you a sense of scale, a single B-52 can carry roughly 20 nuclear bombs. Imagine one airplane taking out 20 cities or 20 military bases, alternatively, it can carry 51 cluster bombs.

Northrop B-2 Spirit
The B-2 gives us true global strike capability. It can fly to any point, no matter how far, no matter how strong the enemy air defenses are, and put a bomb on any target we want to hit. The B-2 is a message from America to the bad guys of the world: you are never safe. What many don't know is that it is now our primary nuclear bomber. The B-1 and B-52 now focus mostly on conventional bombing.

CARGO
No aircraft ever took and held ground. - US Marine Corps Manual

Size DOES matter: Lockheed C-5 Galaxy
The C-5 is our biggest transport. It is built to take big heavy things all over the world. Fighters are sexy, and bombers are deadly, but airpower alone will never win a war. If we can't get the Army where it needs to be so it can maneuver and mass, we aren't going to win. The C-5 is critical to our ability to win the logistic part of the war.

Four Fans of Freedom: Lockheed C-130 Hercules
The C-130 is about the size of the 737. It isn't the biggest, it isn't the fastest, it isn't the newest, it isn't even a jet [gasp]. But that small size and those props give it the ability to land on fields no other military airplane would even dream of. It also has the survivability and loiter time that make the A-10 so special. This is why basically all special ops fixed-wing planes are C-130 variants. It can take 64 heavily armed "ambassadors" anywhere in the world, it can drop them at night, it can land in a dirt field and drop off their gear, it can resupply them, and it can pick them up. The C-130 is our multi-role cargo plane: we use it as a transport, a tanker, a gunship, an electronic warfare platform, a hurricane hunter, an airborne command post, a rescue plane, a bomber, a fire fighter, a bug sprayer, and even a VIP transport. We have exported it to more than a hundred countries.

TANKERS

NKAWTG: Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker and McDonnell KC-10 Extender
Fighters are a double emergency: they are always on fire, and always low on gas. Even our longest range bombers need fuel to get from Missouri or Guam to their targets and back. Tankers give us global strike and global mobility, most know that. What many don't know is that these tankers also carry people and cargo, and that tanker squadrons are some of the busiest units in the Air Force.

AIRBORNE EARLY WARNING

Boeing E-3 Sentry (Airborne Warning and Control System) and
E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System

Fighting a war is all about observing and interpreting inputs, making good decisions about them, and acting on those decisions. A fighter needs a radar platform to guide it and link it to the rest of the air war. Our E-3 and E-8 provide the Observe-Orient-and Decide elements of our decision cycle.

The key theme you should take from this article is that the Air Force supports the guys on the ground with strikers and transports. Strikers need to be protected by fighters, both need fuel from tankers and control from radar platforms. Effective air power requires a massive system of systems supporting each other.

Coming up next: Space Systems: the ultimate high ground.

If we maintain our faith in God, love of freedom, and superior global air power, the future looks good. - General Curtis Lemay

Sources:
www.fas.org
http://www.af.mil/library/factsheets/
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/airpower.html