Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/111458
N NExT-GEN FIGHTER Q Are those systems, though, designed for long-term upgrades? From a Canadian context, the CF is looking for aircraft that will operate into the 2060s and possibly beyond. The original pillars of the Super Hornet for the navy were more range, more endurance, more weapons carriage capability, more survivability and more growth. Growth has been designed in since day one. When Canada first bought the CF-18, it was the coolest thing in the world. We had fly by wire, computers and everything else, right until the first smart bomb was invented and, all of sudden, we didn't have the wiring, the plumbing or the computing power to put a smart weapon on a CF-18. Those lessons were learned early on. With computing power doubling every 18 months or so, right from the beginning all systems have a road map or growth plan for how they will integrate upgrades. The Super Hornet today is not the same one I flew when I started development testing about 10 years ago – it is all new and the systems are state of the art. Q Tie that growth plan into the introduction of unmanned fighters, because they might be operational faster than some expect. How do they fit within the Super Hornet construct, if you will? It goes to a bigger construct of what are we doing with manned fighters and future missions. You can probably ask five different people and get five different answers, but my feeling is that UAVs will have a solid place on the long, boring missions where you need persistence to put a camera over enemy territory and for highthreat, risky missions where you need to put a bomb on ground that is heavily protected. When you then start to talk about the need for stealth, there is now a grocery list of small-to-large stealthy UAVs that have all kinds of specialities that can be used, especially since there is no need to risk a manned fighter to do that job. Conversely, one would consider manned airplanes for the missions we've discussed, supporting troops on the ground where you have rapid change in the mission, situations where you need eyes-on like close air support, which by definition means friendlies within visual range of where you are dropping these bombs. Q Stealth could be a capability that is created and then countered, and then advanced further and countered again, and so on. Is it being oversold in the context of next-gen fighters? Most fire control radars today and in the past, because of size, operate in the X-band, so the stealth that we are talking about is X-band stealth. It's not impossible for radars to see a stealth airplane, but it's exceptionally difficult for X-band radars to see one. But everybody who wants to shoot down an airplane knows that there is a lot of money to be made by having a weapon system that can see them, and they need only operate in a different radar band. Those systems are coming fast and furious. The navy was aware of this and took a very pragmatic approach. They said, we want as much stealth as you can put into this airplane right up until you start manipulating the design because of stealth. If you are going to do that, we want to be part of the conversation. They were not going to sacrifice some must-have capabilities for the sake of stealth. There is an impact on flying quality, range, endur20 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com ance, configuration – the whole shape is different. The Super Hornet is far stealthier then people give it credit for. What is the purpose of stealth to begin with? It's not an offensive tool, it's a survivability tool. And survivability was one of the five tenets the Super Hornet was designed on. There are many ways to make an airplane more survivable, and stealth is just one in a whole shopping list. The Super Hornet has a towed decoy system and jammers, and redundancies like twin engines and multiple electrical systems and hydraulic systems which add tremendous survivability. A single-engine design can be made very stealthy, but it is also very vulnerable to the slightest damage and when radar systems operating far from X-band detect that plane, the sacrifices in the design to obtain that stealth will become a serious Achilles heel. Q If I'm a young fighter pilot in the RCAF, what would I immediately notice about the Super Hornet? To begin with, what they would notice is familiarity. The transition from a Hornet to a Super Hornet is super easy. The way the airplane is laid out, the way you start it and fly it – the man-machine interface part is almost exactly the same. I was on the program before there was a flight manual. I read some tech orders, started it up and went flying, having never been instructed. The transition for anybody qualified in the Hornet is minimal. What they would experience when they got in the airplane is kind of shocking. The information coming through the displays and the sensors and the radar are unbelievable. They would also be able to fly much farther ranges because the airplane has more fuel and is more efficient. I threw some charts together once for Canada: I recall that we couldn't fly from Cold Lake to Inuvik, for example, without stopping in Whitehorse. If you're flying from Cold Lake to Bagotville and there's a winter storm in Thunder Bay, you're not going unless you have a tanker. Conversely, the Super Hornet can fly from base to base without any need to stop for fuel. It has great range and endurance. Another capability is the ability to be a tanker and give gas to other fighters. The Super Hornet can carry a refueling pod that goes on the centreline tank. I cannot overstate the importance of having that capability today. So many times when I flew the CF-18 and we were called to do a mission, the first thing we would ask was, is a tanker available? And tankers in Canada come down to priority at a much higher level in the military. If a squadron commander in Cold Lake, for example, wants to deploy four Super Hornets to Inuvik in a snow storm and he is very concerned about range and endurance for obvious reasons, he can put the fuel pod on a fifth aircraft, which can fill everybody at a certain point and then return to Cold Lake, and everybody carries on with the mission. That is a hugely undersold capability of the airplane – the ability to act as an in-house tanker for your own squadron. The other thing they'd find is that the airplane, though larger and heavier, lands slower. On approach speeds we are about 5-10 knots slower than the CF-18. On the heritage Hornet, once you get loaded up with weapons you start to feel it, the handling changes. In the Super Hornet, it feels the same whether it is loaded or not. One reason why I fly air shows fully loaded with weapons is to prove that there is a big difference in capability above the basic CF-18. R F st a g p D