I would say it's not a credible source at all. It's not too different from the military pages of news outlets like Sina. Although it doesn't have a notorious reputation as MC or Kanwa, but it's basically because the channel is more a scavenger of news/rumors rather than an original source.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I think we have a misunderstanding here.
The transition from EA-6B to EA-18G had nothing to do with lack of capability to shift from a 4-man plane to a 2-man plane. We have zero information whether Navy is satisfied with the Growler but we do know that they simply had no other choice. It was caused by the lack of budget for maintenance of a small number of legacy platforms. Intruders were retired by 1997 without replacement after the cancellation of A-12 program. The plan was to replace them with multirole aircraft - the Super Hornet. The Tomcats were also on the chopping block around the same time although they flew until 2006.
Growler is also old tech in terms of managing the systems. The demonstrator flew in 2001 and it was those tests that resulted in the Growler program. If the USN can manage its operations with a 2-man plane then so can China. Perhaps all you need to do is use 2 planes in place of 1 if the number of EW officers is relevant. Two planes instead of one provide greater versatility and resilience, including resilience to loss. Growlers are also faster which means that they can escape from threats at the same speed as the rest of the strike force- something Prowlers were unable to do.
The problem is whether American choices stemming from trying to balance operational requirements and costs are the right choices for China. Another problem is whether China actually knows how to best use its Growlers since Growler is an American plane for American operations with American tactics and American systems.
Let's remember that the USAF doesn't use Growlers apart from providing a single squadron worth of pilots flying Navy EA-18Gs. The Growlers are a Navy plane with primary mission being carrier-based EW capability. It all stems from being carrier-based not from being Super Hornet-based or being reduced to a single EW officer.
Growlers might be the kind of "improvement" that F-35 was - that is a non-improvement that only seems like a great thing because the PR campaign is in full swing.
We just don't know. What we do know is that China has all the capability to build a Growler-clone since at worst it will be a copy of Tornado ECR. So if they are not doing it it means that they don't see the reason to do so and my explanation is that they are simply trying to figure out what exactly the value of the Growler is. Only two countries use the Growler - the US and Australia - and their operations tend to be as secretive as possible.
China simply has to learn how their "Growlers" are supposed to work and whether they really need them at all. Perhaps the Navy will need them seeing as they have little other options and being able to move your strike force at the same speed as your EW assets makes all the difference. But the PLAAF operates in different operational and strategic conditions. Perhaps just like USAF they will stick with more bigger turboprops with stronger and more numerous systems and more numerous crews. USAF is not buying more Growlers but they just bought more EH-130s.
The simple solutions tend to be the best solutions. If we think of the J-15D as "Chinese Growler" why do we think that J-16D is needed at all? There's no EA-15G after all.
Jamming is just a lot of noise in the spectrum that makes it unusable unless you have signal power that is greater at said distance than the power of the jammer. That noise looks like a huge cloud of white on the sensor displays which means that if your sensors have to see past the jammer then you effectively block of everything behind the jammer.
Think of it as an information force field. Nothing can get past it. And that also includes missiles. Unless they have passive guidance which becomes useless the moment you turn off your jammers. I think it's fairly obvious how that can be used to your advantage in terms of forcing the opponent to make sub-optimal or outright wrong choices.
Consider that you don't even have to use it for attack. You can use it to screen pre-positioning of your forces when you deploy from the carrier - which takes time. During the preparation to Desert Storm the coalition would regularly mass large numbers of aircraft to put Iraqi air defenses on high alert. You force the enemy to get in a pattern of responses and then you break it.
Also in a peer-vs-peer scenario the Growlers leading an actual strike group would not turn on their jammers until they were within striking range. Then once the strike is done they cover the retreat. If they needed cover for the approach it wold be most likely provided by such pre-staging.
Major military operations never happen in vacuum. The last one that did was in Crimea in 2014 and it only worked because all of the troops that took part in the operation were already in position in the huge naval base of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
yes
Hey guys does anyone know the number of 3.5/4.5 Gen fighters in service in the PLAAF? Such as J-10C, J-16? I honestly don't know if any model in the J-11 series can be seen as a 3.5/4.5 gen. But what do I know I'm just a noob.
I have question regarding information sharing/fusion in air combat：
How do individual planes, ground radars，AWACS，dual-data link missiles etc share information with eachother？
Is it individual units send data to command center，then command center redistribute information to all units？Do units need send request first？Do units have peer-to-peer information sharing without the need to go through command center first？If one jet detects a target, do other jets immediately gets this information？How do jets display targets detected by teammates on it's own screen？
How do individual planes, ground radars，AWACS，dual-data link missiles etc share information with eachother？
Is it individual units send data to command center，then command center redistribute information to all units？Do units need send request first？Do units have peer-to-peer information sharing without the need to go through command center first？If one jet detects a target, do other jets immediately gets this information？How do jets display targets detected by teammates on it's own screen？
Those who tell don't know those who know won't tell
(I'm new here, and apologize if there is already a thread about this that I missed. Please redirect me if that is the case).
Why is there comparatively little discussion and focus on clouds of inexpensive military drones? I am an engineer by training, not military, and I'm sure that will show in this question, but let me explain myself:
It seems to me that the future of military combat is clouds of comparatively inexpensive drones. (In other words, vast swarms of inexpensive mobile systems that stay close enough to share information, but far enough apart to prevent individual attacks from disabling multiple units).
I say this for several reasons:
1. Separating capabilities into many small units makes it extremely difficult to impair a cloud to such a degree that it can not destroy whatever its target might be.
2. They are vastly cheaper for two reasons, each sufficient to reduce costs by close to an order of magnitude: First, existing military hardware (especially the kind with humans on board) focuses on survivability, which makes things _incredibly_ expensive. It is far cheaper to engineer and build something if failures can be tolerated. Second, clouds of drones would involve vast numbers of mass produced units. Such mass production dramatically reduces costs. Compare this to the manufacturing process for a Submarine or Carrier. Even when the US produces dozens of units and focuses on reducing costs (e.g. Virginia class subs) the savings are very modest compared to what can be achieved via mass production.
3. They can be deployed extremely flexibly. When I think about a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the PRC can saturate every known and fixed target on the island with missiles in such quantity that no imaginable missile defense system can save them. The same goes for any large and high value mobile targets. Airplanes need airfields. Human units use bases. But groups of inexpensive drones could be transported on comparatively small mobile units and moved or hidden almost anywhere. This makes them far more survivable even when not deployed.
I think this is a fundamental transformation of warfare that will likely obsolete many or most existing warfare systems. So my question is this: why is there comparatively little discussion about clouds of inexpensive military drones, especially compared to discussion about traditional military systems (capital intensive, manned by humans, and comparatively few in number)?
When I ponder this, I imagine that both the United States and China have already figured this out and are actively preparing for this transformation (in addition to continuing large [excessive, in my opinion] investments in more traditional military systems that will not be competitive when faced with clouds of drones), but for obvious reasons both sides are doing their utmost to hide these efforts. Of course, an alternative explanation is that clouds of inexpensive drones are an incredibly bad idea for reasons I do not comprehend.
I may looking/listening in the right places, or perhaps there is a flaw in my thinking. I'd appreciate feedback on this. Thanks!
N.B. I wouldn't claim that there will be absolutely no need for other military systems in the future. Occupying territory requires boots on the ground. Moving and supporting clouds of drones may derive significant advantage from capital intensive hardware (although there exist a wide variety of manned and unmanned options that can be used to achieve this, including Land based, Airborne, Sea Based, Submarine and Space based deployment systems).
But it seems to me that a US carrier strike group (well over $25B to start, plus more than $2B per year to operate) would have great difficulty surviving a $1B cloud of drones built in with 2021 technology (after 5-10 years of engineering effort, which I imagine is already well under way). There are an extraordinary variety of possible configurations; but I'm imagining a cloud of about 20,000 units; 1,000 of them with destructive capabilities [carrying a mix of cheap missiles and torpedoes with range of just a few km] costing $500K (fully loaded) each and the rest of them $25K units that are outwardly similar but unarmed and used improve survivability by taking hits and providing communication, jamming and sensory capabilities.)
I'm sure there are a number of significant ways in which my lack of actual military knowledge shows here. But I'm also rather confident that whatever those deficiencies are, there are ways that actual experts can and will engineer around them.
Why is there comparatively little discussion and focus on clouds of inexpensive military drones? I am an engineer by training, not military, and I'm sure that will show in this question, but let me explain myself:
It seems to me that the future of military combat is clouds of comparatively inexpensive drones. (In other words, vast swarms of inexpensive mobile systems that stay close enough to share information, but far enough apart to prevent individual attacks from disabling multiple units).
I say this for several reasons:
1. Separating capabilities into many small units makes it extremely difficult to impair a cloud to such a degree that it can not destroy whatever its target might be.
2. They are vastly cheaper for two reasons, each sufficient to reduce costs by close to an order of magnitude: First, existing military hardware (especially the kind with humans on board) focuses on survivability, which makes things _incredibly_ expensive. It is far cheaper to engineer and build something if failures can be tolerated. Second, clouds of drones would involve vast numbers of mass produced units. Such mass production dramatically reduces costs. Compare this to the manufacturing process for a Submarine or Carrier. Even when the US produces dozens of units and focuses on reducing costs (e.g. Virginia class subs) the savings are very modest compared to what can be achieved via mass production.
3. They can be deployed extremely flexibly. When I think about a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the PRC can saturate every known and fixed target on the island with missiles in such quantity that no imaginable missile defense system can save them. The same goes for any large and high value mobile targets. Airplanes need airfields. Human units use bases. But groups of inexpensive drones could be transported on comparatively small mobile units and moved or hidden almost anywhere. This makes them far more survivable even when not deployed.
I think this is a fundamental transformation of warfare that will likely obsolete many or most existing warfare systems. So my question is this: why is there comparatively little discussion about clouds of inexpensive military drones, especially compared to discussion about traditional military systems (capital intensive, manned by humans, and comparatively few in number)?
When I ponder this, I imagine that both the United States and China have already figured this out and are actively preparing for this transformation (in addition to continuing large [excessive, in my opinion] investments in more traditional military systems that will not be competitive when faced with clouds of drones), but for obvious reasons both sides are doing their utmost to hide these efforts. Of course, an alternative explanation is that clouds of inexpensive drones are an incredibly bad idea for reasons I do not comprehend.
I may looking/listening in the right places, or perhaps there is a flaw in my thinking. I'd appreciate feedback on this. Thanks!
N.B. I wouldn't claim that there will be absolutely no need for other military systems in the future. Occupying territory requires boots on the ground. Moving and supporting clouds of drones may derive significant advantage from capital intensive hardware (although there exist a wide variety of manned and unmanned options that can be used to achieve this, including Land based, Airborne, Sea Based, Submarine and Space based deployment systems).
But it seems to me that a US carrier strike group (well over $25B to start, plus more than $2B per year to operate) would have great difficulty surviving a $1B cloud of drones built in with 2021 technology (after 5-10 years of engineering effort, which I imagine is already well under way). There are an extraordinary variety of possible configurations; but I'm imagining a cloud of about 20,000 units; 1,000 of them with destructive capabilities [carrying a mix of cheap missiles and torpedoes with range of just a few km] costing $500K (fully loaded) each and the rest of them $25K units that are outwardly similar but unarmed and used improve survivability by taking hits and providing communication, jamming and sensory capabilities.)
I'm sure there are a number of significant ways in which my lack of actual military knowledge shows here. But I'm also rather confident that whatever those deficiencies are, there are ways that actual experts can and will engineer around them.
There's not much discussion because we don't see any evidence publicly
But there have been some discussions on massed drones in the past below
sinodefenceforum.com/t/future-pla-combat-aircraft-composition.5582
sinodefenceforum.com/t/future-plan-naval-and-carrier-operations.8587
sinodefenceforum.com/t/pla-bomber-strike-doctrine-force-composition-discussion-non-h-20.8731
---
Plus if you're talking about masses of $0.5M drones, remember that even JASSMs are $1.3M
Then you need to add $3M for the anti-ship seeker to turn it into an LRASM
Personally, Valkyries at $3M look like a better option, as they have longer range and you can expect many of them to make it back
Last edited:
Thanks!
When you mass produce something, you dramatically lower the cost; and when you allow high failure rates, it also dramatically lowers the cost. I would expect existing military hardware without these advantages to be quite substantially more expensive than mass produced drones that can accommodate a high rate of failure. I imagine the difference being more than an order of magnitude, but that is by analogy to applications I am actually familiar with, and therefore potentially wrong.