Page images
PDF
EPUB

O The third dimension of the review examines how to group efficiently the applications of new technology for management. When a new technological tool becomes available (e.g., forward-looking infrared sensors, lasers, etc.), there is a tendency to apply it to many different problems and to independently develop different versions of the device for each application. Our technology review comprehensively examines the R&D program and identifies those efforts that should be grouped and jointly managed or coordinated so that unwarranted depulication is prevented. Important judgments are required as to the amount of parallel and technologically competitive development--that is, deliberate redundancy--that should be supported. Especially in the formative stages of new developments, it is very valuable to proceed with development work along several parallel lines. This approach promotes healthy technical competition, provides ways to resolve technical differences by test and demonstration, provides cost competitive alternatives and leads to better full-scale development decisions.

In the following paragraphs I will describe in broad terms --illustrating with examples when appropriate--the tactical warfare RDT&E programs which emerge from the three-dimensional review just outlined. In subsequent sections the full program of tactical system R&D is furnished in detail in sections broken down by military mission

area.

2. Tactical Warfare Programs in Broad Perspective

a.

Land Warfare

Since the military mission area is the dominant and most comprehensive way of looking at the program, I will use it in presenting the program in this statement. The environment for which we design our systems is Central Europe. While it is the most demanding, it is also the most vital so we use the Central European scenario and the threat associated with that scenario. One caveat, although we are concerned primarily with performance of combat systems in a European environment, the Defense Department must structure and equip forces to operate in any area where national interests may carry them, whether in the temperate, Arctic or tropical zones. And this approach has a strong bearing on equipment capabilities and costs.

For the foreseeable future, we see the tank as the dominant land warfare combat system. We see our forces being opposed by great numbers of tanks, reinforced by SAGGER equipped antitank vehicles (BRDM) and supported by infantry mounted in armored carriers (BMP). Further, since the Soviets were able to observe the strengths and weaknesses of such weapons systems in the Middle East, we must expect that vigorous efforts are underway to correct any deficiencies and to benefit from the lessons learned in that theater.

b. Air arfare

The air threat continues to pose a NATO/PACT numerical force imbalance of 1800:3900, less than 1:2, and a posture of sheltered aircraft still vastly superior to our own. We continue to view PACT air forces as heavily dependent on ground-based command and control and recognize in their emphasis on electronic countermeasures a strong appreciation of the value of efficient command and control. An interesting contrast between east and west tactical philosphy in this area is eastern emphasis on land-based defensive systems and our emphasis on airborne jamming capabilities to accompany strike aircraft and to shield them with airborne standoff systems.

The air defenses for our ground forces and for air bases and high-value targets continue to be an area of concern and therefore of R&D program emphasis. This portion of our posture, of course, includes both our ability to fight in the air and to defend ground assets with missiles and guns. The Soviets' recent efforts to improve ground attack aircraft and to provide themselves with new ground attack

49-101 O 75 - 32

missiles lend extra impetus to this always critical area. The culmination of a number of quite separate program thrusts is bringing us to a point of major new achievements in our air defense capability over the next several years. Introduction of the F-14 and F-15 into our air forces has provided a base of high performance, high threat responsive combat aircraft, more self-reliant than most combat aircraft that we need in the force in significant numbers.

Since these are also expensive aircraft, we can't procure them in adquate numbers to cope with the NATO/PACT imbalance. Therefore, we are vigorously pursuing highly effective though lower cost complementary aircraft in the Advanced Combat Fighter program to allow numerical expansion of our fighter forces.

In combination with the expanded fighter force the AWACS, with its robust airborne command and control capability, will have superb close combat capability and will provide an enormously flexible air combat team. Rapidly deployable, suitable to widely varying levels of conflict, effective enough for a hot, intense engagement--this combination is more survivable in sustained conflict. The AWACS will provide our forces in Europe or in other potentially hostile areas with important, unique mission capabilities; e.g., pre-hostility warning by furnishing track information on enemy aircraft, surveillance of broad areas in support of defensive air battles by passing track and vectoring information to friendly aircraft, and by vectoring of aircraft on offensive air strikes into enemy territory.

Complementing these forces, the ground deployment of Improved HAWK--which is emerging from all of the analyses of the Middle East conflict as a highly effective air defense system--is the major air defense improvement in European NATO. The need for a more proliferable and highly mobile all-weather air defense SAM has led to the initiation of the SHORAD program using the European-developed ROLAND as its basis. The ROLAND system will fill a serious void in our field army air defense capability. The ability of the system to counter low flying attack aircraft at night and in conditions of severely degraded visibility and to move with the fighting forces, carrying protective cover as it goes, is of enormous value to land forces.

These systems, with the addition of a HIMAD (High and Medium Altitude Air Defense) capability on the high end and a mobile air defense gun and the man portable mission (STINGER) on the low end form a formidable air defense array--without redundancy of capability, enormously difficult to countermeasure in part or in whole and able to deal in its various combinations with virtually the full gamut of air defense threat below the level of the Tactical Ballistic Missile.

c. Ocean Warfare

Naval missions and their associated R&D needs are viewed in a truly global context. Here we are driven by our continually increased dependency on the rest of the world for resources including both materials and energy and the concomitant increases in the importance of the seaways to our national welfare. At the same time we observe a broadly based, high energetic prog: am of Soviet expansion of its surface and undersea fleets. For these reasons and because our naval forces have dwindled in numbers due to aging and the high costs of new construction, it is of crucial importance that we modernize and improve the effectiveness of our current forces and the new ships and submarines we can build. Our efforts in naval mission research and development serve these needs. The thrusts carried on within the naval missions of fleet air defense, fleet offense, ASW and ocean surveillance are as follows:

The picture for fleet air defense outside of the deploy

ment of the F-14A is not quite so positive as for the land warfare case. Before developing this subject, I want to pause for a moment to discuss the F-14A. In all of the rehetoric concerning production cost and financing problems and our concerns about how many F-14As the Navy and Marine Corps can afford, we have lost sight of the fact that the F-14/AWG9/PHOENIX system development has been a significant achievement the overall system meets the objectives established for it. Its capabilities are far beyond those of our adversaries and it constitutes a powerful counter to the growing air threat (e.g., the Backfire bomber) to our fleets.

-

The AEGIS program, our major effort in surface-based fleet air defense, while making progress in its at-sea testing on the USS NORTON SOUND, has not moved rapidly toward application on a combatant ship. The difficulties here are of a management rather than a technical nature and will be discussed fully later on. he important point is that we are falling behind in our fleet's ability to deal with the air threat because we have not previously found a way to get AEGIS into the fleet.

We have also continued to fall behind in improving the selfdefense of our surface forces against anti-ship missiles because of delays in the PHALANX Close-In Weapon System and lack of an adequate focus on this persistent problem.

In sharp contrast to these worrisome areas the Navy has made a major step forward in strengthening its offensive punch at sea. With HARPOON moving into production and into the fleet on aircraft, in ships and in submarines, each of these types of fighting vehicles will become substantially more effective in engaging surface vehicles. Additionally, the DD963 will be entering the fleet in the near future followed by the FFG-7 initiated last year as the Patrol Frigate. The PHM prototype has already started its testing. With careful attention to solving production cost problems, the PHM can make a major contribution of its own both in the U.S. Navy and with NATO forces in the waters of the North Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean.

d. Anti-Submarine Warfare

While these additions to our naval capabilities are of critical importance, they must be able to operate in the presence of an ever more formidable submarine threat. Since the major efforts of DIFAR, P-3C and the S-3A, we have continued our efforts in antisubmarine warfare at a more subdued pace. A number of independent analyses, fleet experience and the continuing vigorous Soviet submarine construction program (12-14 in 1974) have reminded us to direct greater attention to this difficult area of warfare. The great importance of undersea surveillance to effective ASW has been reemphasized and we are pursuing an aggressive program of improvements to SOSUS and the development of new mobile/deployable surveillance system options. For the ASW force itself, emphasis is being placed on sonobuoys and associated information processing, improved lightweight torpedoes (the MK-46 and its possible successor), towed array sonars integrated with the hull-mounted system and the adaptation of the Army's UTTAS helicopter for the Navy's ASW helicopter mission (LAMPS). e. Air Mobility

for the future.

Air mobility is fundamental to our strategy and posture

It is characterized by our ability to quickly move forces

and equipment from CONUS to a theater of operations and within a theater. Our major strategic and tactical airlift capabilities, the C-130, C-141 and C-5A are products of past efforts in this area. The Berlin airlift and the quick response resupply of Israel are highly visible examples of its value.

In addition to the Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS), which is being developed to replace the versatile HUEY with an even more versatile machine featuring major improvements in reliability and maintainability, this area supports the Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) Program. The AMST will provide options for future replacement of the C-130 with a highly productive, low cost aircraft for operation from unimproved fields.

Major steps in the technology of heavy lift helicopters are also under development. The Navy-Marine Corps CH53E is currently in prototype test. The Army Heavy Lift Helicopter (HLH) advanced development prototype program is testing the limits of our heavy lift technology and a single prototype will be assembled and tested during FY 1976.

f. Defense Suppression

A final mission meriting particular emphasis is Defense Suppression, the means to operate combat aircraft over dense, hostile air defenses effectively and with low losses. This mission includes the destruction of air defense batteries (lethal suppression) and the jamming and deception of air defense radars (non-lethal suppression). Both types of defense suppression are parts of a highly sophisticated interaction of measure and countermeasure between ourselves and our adversaries. No measure is without a conceivably effective defeating response so it is of essential importance that we learn enemy system vulnerabilities and exploit them without his knowledge, thus depriving him of the opportunity to redesign and modify his sytems to remove the vulnerability we are exploiting. This process requires a broad technical base of alternative techniques that can be applied quickly and designs having their own versatility to allow response to changes in enemy system design. Major programs in the lethal category include the High Velocity Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), improved over SHRIKE in versatility of seeker design and standard ARM in terms of flight and cost, the Modual Weapons Family with a number of alternative terminal guidance mechanisms and the Precision Location and Strike System (PLSS) for the accurate location of enemy emitters and guidance of ordnance. In the non-lethal category we are improving the F-4 Wild Weasel jamming system and initiating work on a jamming capability for the F-111A (EF-111A) to provide standoff and escort jamming of strike forces. The EF-111A uses the jamming equipments developed for the Navy EA-6B integrated in the F-111A airframe.

From this broad overview of our Tactical Warfare Programs, let us now move to detailed discussions of the elements in each mission area.

3. Major Program Review

a. The Major Programs

It is clear that our emphasis rests heavily on correcting deficiencies in air superiority. The need for $490.7 million stems primarily from our need for quantities of affordable aircraft. We propose a fire support program of $306.8 million (to develop a variety of anti-armor and other troop support firepower elements), fleet air defense $293.9 million (principally to counter the enemy's air and sub-launched cruise missiles), field Army air defense $274.4 million (to counter the

DISTRIBUTION OF FUNDING FOR 14 LARGER

TACTICAL SYSTEMS RDT&E

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »