A misguided fighter-bomber

[2RHPZ]

A misguided fighter-bomber
01 June 2004

The U.S. Air Force charged out of the blocks in late
April with an effort to acquire a new “interim precision
strike platform.” Service officials said they were
accelerating their plans to procure this “regional
fighter-bomber” within 10 years, responding to an
“urgent need.”
This need, and its sudden urgency, are highly
questionable. It should be filed under the heading “nice
to have,” not urgent.
The Air Force’s action is ill-founded for a number of
reasons, not the least of which is the Defense
Department’s budget constraints.
First and foremost, the service should be prohibited
from buying more manned aircraft, except perhaps for a
future long-range bomber, after production of the F/A-22
and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) are completed.
Technology for unmanned combat aircraft vehicles (UCAV)
is well within reach, as proven April 18 when Boeing’s
X-45A UCAV, a joint Air Force and Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency program, successfully dropped
an inert GPS-guided bomb on a ground target (see Page
6).
Eleven days later, the Air Force issued its request for
information for the interim strike platform. The request
put an emphasis on proven technology rather than a
full-blown new development effort. To many military
experts, the new procurement plan smacks of a sly
attempt to buy a stretched version of the F/A-22, dubbed
the F/B-22, which would carry more bombs.
Only about a week before release of the request for
information, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper
told the Washington newsletter Inside the Pentagon that
the service was undecided whether to go forward with
such a program, saying, “We’re willing to say that there
is one part of the future of long-range strike that
looks like it might be conducive to this sort of
regional bomber ... But I’m not willing to go any
further about ‘committed to do it’ or anything like that
yet. We’re not.”
So much for the “urgent need” that emerged a week later.

There is more than one option for the regional
fighter-bomber, Jumper said, but he nonetheless appeared
to tout the F/B-22, as did his director of operational
capability requirements, Brig. Gen. Stephen Goldfein,
and Air Force acquisition chief Marvin Sambur in
separate media interviews.
The Air Force’s current and planned strike aircraft, in
concert with those of the Navy and Marine Corps, are
more than sufficient to handle ground-attack
requirements in any conceivable conflict scenario over
at least the next 15 years. Even nonstealthy F-16 and
F-15E strike fighters and B-52 and B-1 bombers will
remain effective thanks to new longer-range standoff
weapons, such as the 200-mile Joint Air-to-Surface
Standoff Missile now in full-rate production.
The Air Force’s inventory of combat aircraft, which
performed so well in Operation Iraqi Freedom, will be
augmented later this decade by new F/A-22 air
superiority fighters and early in the next decade by new
JSFs. Those two aircraft feature stealthy designs that
will enable them to penetrate enemy air defenses without
being detected, joining the Air Force’s 50 or so F-117
Stealth Fighters and its 21 B-2 bombers.
The JSF will carry at least eight 250-pound GPS-guided
Small Diameter Bombs internally and will carry many
additional bombs externally once air defenses are
suppressed in a conflict area. The Air Force already has
touted the inherent ground-attack capabilities of the
F/A-22, adding the “A” to its title. It was slated to
carry two 1,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions but
now will be able to carry more weapons thanks to the
Small Diameter Bomb.
The B-2 will carry an astonishing 80 Small Diameter
Bombs that it will be able to drop accurately on 80
separate targets, so the 21 existing bombers will be
able to handle any long-range attack mission for a long
time to come.
The Air Force says the planned initial operational
capability date for the interim strike platform is 2015.
UCAV development efforts, will be far along by that
time. Boeing is building an X-45C, a much larger
aircraft than the X-45A demonstrator, and its first
flight is scheduled in mid-2006.
The Air Force has done without a regional fighter-bomber
to date, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario that
couldn’t be handled with current and planned aircraft.
This is one urgent program that isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be.

[usa320]

I think they could fill this need by adding external hardpoints to a squadron of F/A-22's, thereby extending their AG capability to more than a handful of JDAMs.

[wyrm_142]

The F-22 will have two hardpoints per wing, with the ability to drop everything in the current USAF inventory .

[Sayeret]

The F-22 will have two hardpoints per wing, with the ability to drop everything in the current USAF inventory

I don't know about that but I know that the F-22 will be able to carry like eight SDBs inside of it so it can remain stealth while carrying out a mission.