has an endurance of more than eleven hours, and the aircraft has a receptacle for in-flight refueling which can stretch the endurance to twenty-two hours, a limit set by the supply of lube oil for the four JT3D/ TF33 engines. On these marathon aerial-surveillance missions, the endurance of both the flight crews and mission personnel is stretched to the limit. This has been pointed to as one of the weaknesses of the AWACS community. In the past, there have frequently been difficulties with flight personnel getting adequate rest between missions, as well as with the excessive number of 'on-the-road' days that have been a hallmark of the AWACS lifestyle for almost twenty years. Unfortunately, since AWACS aircraft are a favorite instrument of politicians trying to find out what's happening in a trouble spot, the lifestyle of the AWACS crews is unlikely to change much.
Most of the thirty-four E-3s in USAF service are assigned to three operational Airborne Air Control squadrons (the 963rd, 964th, and 965th), and one training squadron (the 966th) of the 552nd Air Control Wing based at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. One aircraft is assigned to continuing research and development work at the Boeing plant in Seattle, and a few are permanently stationed in Alaska, assigned to the Pacific Air Force (PACAF) commander. Detachments have been, and continue to be, deployed to trouble spots all over the world. These started with a movement by the Administration of President Jimmy Carter of a three-aircraft detachment of E-3s to Saudi Arabia to keep an eye on the Iran/Iraq War. It was called ELF-1, and what was planned as a deployment of several months eventually wound up lasting over eleven years. It seems to be the lot of the AWACS community to spend their lives on the road, keeping watch on the world's trouble spots.
Even though some of the E-3's systems are getting to be a bit dated right now, the E-3s of the AWACS fleet are the crown jewels of the USAF fleet, and represent the most valuable aircraft that an aerial commander can be assigned. Their presence on the aerial battlefield greatly improves the efficiency of any force that they support, thus explaining why USAF leaders call the AWACS fleet a 'force multiplier.' This may explain the tolerance for the high costs of developing, operating, and maintaining such a force. The technical problems of developing a reliable and effective airborne warning and control system are so great that only one other nation has ever really managed it — Russia, with its A-50 Mainstay AWACS, based on an IL-76 heavy transport airframe. Meanwhile, NATO, Saudi Arabia, and a few other very friendly nations have bought versions of the E-3.
As the E-3 fleet heads into its twentieth year of service, there are strong plans to upgrade the system so that it will be ready to continue its valuable service into the 21st century. The major points of the planned E-3 upgrade program include:
• GPS—It has taken a while, but the E-3 is finally going to get a GPS receiver to help improve both navigational accuracy of the AWACS aircraft itself, as well as the quality of the information it supplies.
• Radar System Improvement Program (RSIP)—The RSIP upgrade is a long-overdue series of improvements to the APY-1/2 radar systems that includes an improved radar computer, a more modern graphics processor for the radar operators' consoles, as well as upgrades to the radar system itself. All of these should allow the AWACS controllers to handle more targets with less clutter on the displays. In addition, the software rewrite that is included with RSIP will allow for things like 'windowing' (display-within-a-display) capabilities, as well as the ability to detect low-observable/first-generation stealth aircraft. While the technology behind this last capability is highly classified, it probably centers around the same kind of 'broad band' processing technology that is used on submarines. Westinghouse is the prime contractor on the RSIP upgrade, and will begin installation in the late 1990s.
As the E-3 completes its second decade of service, it is time for the Air Force to start thinking about a Sentry replacement. The problem, of course, is finding the money, as well as deciding what kind of aircraft the USAF wants to base it on. As with the other models of first-generation American jet transports, the 707 was designed to very conservative 1950s engineering standards; and after forty years of steadily advancing technology, it's too heavy, it's a fuel hog, and it's too hard to update with modern digital flight control systems. When Japan decided to join the AWACS club, the Japanese ordered the basic E-3 mission package on a modern airframe, the wide-body, twin-turbofan Boeing 767. With a two-person flight crew and better fuel economy, operational costs should be lower, but this is still going to be a very costly aircraft.
In the future (around 2010 to 2020), it should become possible to do away with the radar rotodome and rely on conformal phased-array and synthetic aperture antennas to integrate the AWACS air surveillance mission and the Joint-Stars ground-surveillance mission onto a single platform. This could well be a very high-flying stealthy aircraft, with most of the crew replaced by advanced computers. AWACS, with a top speed of only Mach.78 and a radar cross section somewhat greater than the broad side of an average office building, has been fortunate in its long operational career, since it has never faced an enemy with long-range, high-speed anti-radiation missiles. Right now, though, with the E-3 in the prime of its service life, such a solution is several decades away from fruition, and the Sentry is still the undisputed king on the aerial chessboard.
Ordnance: How Bombs Got 'Smart'
IF you read analyses of military aviation, especially in the mass media, you might get the impression that air forces are concerned with aircraft, not with weapons. The guy who flies a plane into the wild blue yonder is a steely-eyed, heroic officer and gentleman. The guy who tinkers with missile guidance systems at a workbench is an enlisted nerd. Aircraft are more glamorous than ordnance. But without ordnance to deliver on targets, the only thing airplanes can do is watch. And while we have seen that reconnaissance is a valued and important mission for aircraft, it is the delivery of ordnance on enemy targets that makes airpower a credible combat force.
The story of today's ordnance is the story of how bombs and bullets got 'smart.' Since the end of World War II, most of the developmental money for new conventional (i.e., not nuclear, chemical, or biological) weapons has gone into guided systems that have held the promise of 'one round, one hit.' Some systems, like the Sidewinder air-to-air missile and the Paveway laser-guided bombs, have almost fulfilled that promise. Others have not done so well. Nevertheless, after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the 10 % of the weapons dropped that were smart did something like 90 % of the damage to critical strategic targets, you can count on all types of weapons getting smarter. While the use of the unguided rocket or 'dumb' bomb may not yet be over, their days are clearly numbered.
Meanwhile, the variety of weapons that a modern combat aircraft can carry simply boggles the mind. Recently, another defense writer contacted me to ask about Air Force munitions programs. So confusing was the variety of the programs we discussed, that we decided this book would try to explain as many of the different things that U.S. Air Force aircraft can shoot at, launch at, or drop on our enemies as possible.
AIR-TO-AIR MISSILES
Though rapid-firing cannons are a vital part of the weapons mix that make fighters both dangerous and effective, bullets aren't smart. Once they leave the muzzle of a gun, they can only follow a ballistic path determined by the laws of physics, no matter what the target does. A
