Eurofighter takes a trip to the grocery store...

During the Second World War, the German military actually employed a number of incredibly high-tech devices which their local propaganda machine dubbed "Wonder Weapons" ("wunderwaffen"). These weapons included jet fighters (the Me-262), Man-Portable Air Defense Systems ("Pilot Fist"), and Inter-continental ballistic missiles (the dreaded V-2 rocket).

While these weapons were impressive, they were utter strategic failures. The supersonic V-2 rocket, for example, was negated by asymetric means. Most notably, the British Intelligence service had cracked the German codes, imprisoned most of the German spy ring, and transmitted false targeting information to the Third Reich, causing the missiles to overshoot Britain and land in the sea. It also helped that Allied attack fighters, vastly outnumbering the Me-262 jet fighters, were also able to destroy V-2s on the ground.

Many 5th Generation fighters these days are quite similar to the Wunderwaffen. Although they show great promise in dogfights against any potential rival aircraft, their use is limited in the types of conflicts which have come to dominate the early 21st Century. For example, the new F-22 has sat out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the time being--it's of little use against an insurgency which plants bombs on the sides of roads and easily blends back into the local population, and it can do little to prevent sectarian violence.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the F-22 is the best jet fighter in the sky today. Bar none. The only fighter that can come close to the F-22 is an aircraft called the Eurofighter Typhoon, a joint venture from Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain--most of whom (except Austria) are NATO allies.

I actually have high praise for the Eurofighter--it's performed remarkably well against the F-15 Eagle in dogfights, and the F-15 is famous for enjoying the greatest air-to-air performance record of any plane in history (115 kills with no losses).

But like the F-22, the Eurofighter also has little to bring to the table in the conflicts Europe might see in the near future. Certainly, it's not exactly the best thing for preventing further civil war and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.

So what's the best way to use these aircraft? Well, none other than the German Luftwaffe seems to have an idea.

Apparently, a German diplomat in Croatia ran out of a certain type of mustard that went with a particular brand of sausage. With a dinner party quickly approaching, the diplomat was determined not to commit a culinary faux pas. Rather, he called back to Germany, where a Eurofighter Typhoon was dispatched, carrying the exquisite mustard to the reception.

That's right, a fighter that costs about $100 million per copy just ran an errand at the grocery store for a diplomat. Wonders never cease.

The be-all-end-all defense budget

All milbloggers beware...Stephen T. Colbert has the defense budget covered.

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Okay, Zenpundit gets the award for the best title for this story

The big news today is Defense Secretary Robert Gates' proposed new budget for the US military. This has been eagerly anticipated throughout the milblogging community, even causing Abu Muqawama to give a minute-by-minute account of the proceedings on the floor of Congress. Zenpundit even went so far as to publish a post on the outcome, during which he awarded Secretary Robert Gates the award for the biggest cajones ever, due to the fact that he stood up to the military-industrial complex and axed a number of big-ticket items that have little place in 4^th Generation Warfare. While defense spending is actually increasing, money is being drastically cut in a number of areas, hopefully allowing for better housing options for Soldiers and educational opportunities. With Soldiers leaving the Army in record numbers (nearly 2/3 of all officers who graduated in 2002 are no longer in the military), all the high-tech equipment in the world won't make a difference unless it's managed by competent individuals.

Among the changes (available on DefenseLink)

• Yes, the F-22 Raptor is being halted, with a grand total of 187 planes in service. I've complained about the uselessness of the F-22 so many times, it even has its own tag on this blog. Suffice to say, it might have been wise of the Air Force to actually use the F-22 to do something in Iraq or Afghanistan, and somehow demonstrate that it's useful in a counter-insurgency environment. As it stands, its only use would have been as an Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance vehicle, sort of like a really expensive, manned UAV. But even then, one story noted that, with all of the jammers used to disable roadside bombs, the F-22's sophisticated electronic warfare package would be all but useless. So yeah, don't think about using the F-22 in a country where people might have garage door openers and cell phones. It's kind of sad that the Air Force's efforts to sell this plane to the public as the Decepticon Starscream, and through PreserveRaptorJobs.com were a failure, but yeah, they were. It's a great fighter airplane, and can dominate the skies, but largely irrelevant when you're nation-building.
  
• Gates reportedly wanted more helicopter pilots and maintainers in order to increase the amount of rotary-wing aviation assets worldwide. While I applaud this effort, I have to say that we actually do need new helicopters as well. Some Army units are still using 25-year old A-model Black Hawks in the mountains of Afghanistan, where their ability to maintain level flight is severely limited, due to the heat and altitude. Furthermore, although Army Transformation claimed to give infantry units a more robust aviation package, it merely re-organized the military and shuffled the helicopters around—it didn't actually provide more helicopters. In order to actually construct additional combat aviation brigades, we need to buy more helicopters. Otherwise, we'll have five or six pilots fighting over who gets to fly a helicopter. Five pilots scrounging for flight hours on the same airframe isn't a good substitute for two pilots who are sufficiently trained.
  
• Cuts to the new VH-71 Presidential helicopter. It's pretty bad when the proposed presidential helicopter a Eurocopter and costs $13 billion.
  
• Cuts to the new Future Combat System, a family of Army vehicles expected to cost some $150 billion. Ah, I recall the old days (back in February), when some project manager for the Future Combat System posted an article on Small Wars Journal in an attempt to "sell" the FCS to the counter-insurgency crowd. Never did I see a colonel someone so ridiculed by captains before in my life. Maybe it was the Army's propensity for idiotic names like "Non-Line-of-Sight Mortar"—hey, guess what…ALL mortars are "non-line-of-sight"! That's like calling something "an airplane with wings". Or perhaps it was the colonel's trumpeting of the awesome combat power of the M-5 Tactical Segway, which brought up images of horny loser virgins riding those two-wheeled electric monstrosities and getting stuck in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. But I think that, worst of all, was his vignette of a Soldier who eliminates an enemy sniper due to the fact that he pulled out a pocket-sized helicopter UAV, flew it into a conveniently-left-open door in a building, expertly navigated the helicopter UAV through the hallways without hitting anything, (ever fly a remote-controlled helicopter? How is this possible?), didn't get the helicopter shot up, and placed it into position behind the enemy snipers—without them even knowing it was there, or better yet, throwing a $2 blanket over the $1 million helicopter and negate its effectiveness. Seriously, that's about as plausible as a 100-mile wide battle station with a small thermal exhaust port that leads directly to the main reactor--just large enough that a pilot strong in the Force might be able to shoot a proton torpedo into it and blow it up. But the latter scenario was at least entertaining.
  

All in all, it looks like the COINtras are having their way with the new military budget. To a certain extent, of course.

Arms smugglers destroyed in Sudan?

A few news sources have been picking up a news story which seems to indicate that unidentified aircraft carried out an airstrike on arms smugglers traveling from Sudan to Egypt, with some officials pointing to aircraft from either the US or Israel as carrying out the attacks.

Then again, many of the reports--also picked up by Reuters--have been published by Arab and Egyptian media sources, some of whom also blame the US and Israel for carrying out air attacks with cruise missiles on the World Trade Center on September 11th, so take that with a grain of salt.

The details are so vague that anything could be true--it could have been a fighter-jet with precision bombs, an unmanned vehicle, or a helicopter gunship.

Who knows, maybe the US actually pulled the F-22 out of the showroom to participate in combat. Okay, maybe not...

But it's Starscream!

Hollywood and the military have had an interesting relationship.  Starting in about the 1980s, the military started to work closely with Hollywood, allowing movie makers access to aircraft, equipment and bases in order to produce big-budget pictures.  In turn, the military was able to reverse a trend in Hollywood to make decidedly anti-military movies.  It's difficult to say, but I would suspect that thousands of young males joined the military in the hopes of being Maverick and Goose.

The marriage between the two organizations has had some great benefits.  In 2002, the movie Black Hawk Down was a painstaking reconstruction of the troubled raid on the Bakara Market in Somalia.  Using real Rangers, and some of the actual aircraft that participated in the battle, the movie conveys in a very real sense the chaotic nature of modern warfare, and highlighted the heroism of the men of Task Force Ranger.

But like all things, there can be a bit of a dark side to this.  The military can use popular media to gain support for overpriced and overbudget projects.  Take the 2007 Transformers movie, for example, a movie made with massive support from the US Air Force.  The movie starts out with two CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flying over the desert.  The Osprey is an aircraft that has been plagued with budgetary and design problems, and many critics are skeptical that the aircraft will actually perform well as a true combat aircraft (and Time Magazine, too) Many have called for the aircraft to be cancelled.  Nevertheless, two of the three Ospreys in the Air Force inventory appeared in the movie.  The ability for a helicopter to transform into an airplane gives that subtle hint to the audience that maybe...wait...the Osprey is a FUCKING TRANSFORMER!  MAYBE FIVE OF THEM TRANSFORM TOGETHER TO MAKE DEVASTATOR!  

Later in the movie, we discover that one of the leaders of the Decepticons, Starscream, is actually an F-22 Raptor, another aircraft that has run into design issues.  At $140 million dollars, it is four times more expensive than the F-15, and has been in some phase of development for well over twenty to twenty-five years.  It has also not logged one single flight hour over Iraq or Afghanistan, and has been criticized by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  

Do the military and defense community need to advertise their products?  Apparently so.  "Save the F-22 Raptor" ads have been popping up all over the Internet, prompting a cute little response from Chris Kelly, which, while exaggerated, covers many of the complaints many people have about this aircraft.  

Focus:  Are 180 F-22s enough?