Future Air Force Needs for Survivability (2006) / Chapter Skim
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2 Operational Environment
2 Operational Environment
Pages 19-31
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From page 19... ...
2 Operational Environment As the United States Air Force considers the capabilities it will need to successfully complete the tasks it will be assigned in the years ahead, a critical review of potential scenarios and their projected threat environments must be accomplished. In selecting appropriate scenarios, the national defense Strategy, published in March 2005,1 and the Quadrennial defense Review Report (QDR)
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From page 20... ...
The QDR states: "Shaping the choices of major and emerging powers requires a balanced approach, one that seeks cooperation, but also creates prudent hedges."6 With that in mind, critical national capabilities7 required are "persistent surveillance, including systems that can penetrate and loiter in denied or contested areas" as well as "prompt and high volume global strike to deter aggression or coercion, and if deterrence fails, to provide a broader range of conventional response options." In preventing the acquisition or use of WMDs, "the United States must be prepared to: deter attacks; locate, tag, and track WMD materials; act in cases where a state that possesses WMD loses control of its weapons, especially nuclear devices; detect WMD across all domains.
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From page 21... ...
In order to fulfill that overarching capability, the Air Force needs the capability to achieve global situation awareness, to make decisions rapidly, and to deliver weapons rapidly, with precision guidance. Further, those systems contributing to the overarching capability that are intended to be reusable must also have survivability and those systems not intended to be reusable must have survivability until they have achieved their intended missions.
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Track/fire control -- Extract targets -- Develop fire-control solution -- Launch missile 3. Missile fly-out and guidance -- Air vehicle kinematics -- Midcourse guidance -- Target acquisition -- Terminal homing 4.
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. From mission planning through mission execution, gaining and maintaining situation awareness will provide the weapons system operator an advantage in battlespace understanding that contributes to lethality as well as survivability.
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Thus, choosing the right balance among speed, signature reduction, situation awareness, countermeasures, and tactics enables the United States to present its adversaries with the largest number of challenges in the shortest period of time. In developing the right balance of speed, signature reduction, situation awareness, countermeasures, and tactics, a careful analysis of the potential adversary's integrated air defense system is essential, along with the
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From page 25... ...
Missile Defense Agency and the Air Force are developing the airborne laser, which is a fully integrated detection, tracking, firecontrol, and speed-of-light interception system, the development of future survivable air vehicles should assess whether such lasers might appear as a future threat and include appropriate countermeasures. The committee reviewed an adversary's kill chain for employing various types of SAMs and concluded that there is continuing potential for signature reduction to degrade the range at which adversaries can detect, track, fire, and guide missiles to penetrating weapon systems.
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From page 26... ...
In addressing the statement of task in the context of QDR results, the committee reviewed the right balance of speed, signature reduction, countermeasures, situation awareness, and tactics for the Space and C4ISR, Global Strike, and Global Persistent Attack CONOPS.
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From page 27... ...
Whether it be in finding cells of global or regional terrorists, WMD production and/or storage facilities, or high-value targets on the move in either permissive or denied airspace, establishing persistent surveillance over any area of interest is necessary if the United States is to be able to develop global situation awareness in order to conduct rapid decision making, rapid delivery so that it can achieve precise effects on a global basis, at will and with impunity. The Space and C4ISR CONOPS seeks to achieve three high-level effects: full-spectrum battlespace awareness, information superiority, and space superiority.
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NOTE: S&R, surveillance and 2-1 reconnaissance; PNT, position, navigation, and timing; BMC2, battle management command and control; GIG, Global Information Grid; FSBA, full-spectrum battlespace awareness; CAOC, Combined Air and Space Operations Center; DCGS, distributed common ground system.
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From page 29... ...
As a result, employing an optimum combination of these characteristics, the attacking aircraft that can be developed before 2018 have much greater scope for operating without concern about being engaged by enemy air defenses. Strike aircraft may be required to remain in the battlespace for some time to attack multiple targets.
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From page 30... ...
From its review of the Global Persistent Attack mission and the technologies that can be inserted in the next-generation long-range strike aircraft, the committee believes that multiple attacking forces can have the capability to engage a variety of enemy targets and will have the ability to persist and loiter in the battlespace for extended periods and to attack moving or time-sensitive targets. distance and attacking with high-speed missiles, or by standing off at a distance and repeatedly dashing into the battlespace to attack.
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From page 31... ...
In summary, the Air Force has considered some of the most demanding tasks to which it has been assigned, most recently reinforced by the QDR, and has chosen the CONOPS-based approach. After a review of the USAF's seven CONOPS, this committee believes that the Space and C4ISR, Global Strike, and Global Persistent Attack CONOPS require weapons systems designed with careful balance of the attributes of signature reduction, speed, countermeasures, situation awareness, and tactics.
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