F-35 : quelle suprématie aérienne future de l'OTAN en cas de conflit de haute intensité ?
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F-35: What future NATO air supremacy in high-intensity conflict?
According to the Mars think-tank, "the F-35 has been a formidable war machine for subjugating European defence to American interests. It risks being tomorrow the tool of NATO's defeat in the face of its strategic competitors". The F-35 is above all a stealth fighter-bomber whose payload capacity (otherwise it is no longer stealthy) does not allow it to strike both far and hard; it is one or the other. The F-35A's range is no more than 1,000 km, and its range is limited to a few minutes at that distance. By the Mars Think Tank.
After the 'revolution in military affairs' (RAM) characterised by the digitalisation of the battlespace (NEB), collaborative combat is the future of high-intensity warfare. Paradoxically, advances in real-time and connected combat have not empowered combat units, but rather 'caporalised' them despite clear desires for subsidiarity. Henceforth, the tactical model of the infantry combat group was generalised to all environments, with a sergeant who analysed the situation and gave conduct orders to his corporals and grenadier-voltigeurs according to the mission received.
In "fluid" environments (endo and exo-atmospheric spaces, marine and submarine) where the "combat pawn" (ship, aircraft) has until now been characterised by its autonomy, collaborative combat has the consequence, via "networking", of making each "unitary pawn" dependent on the others, to the benefit of the circulation of information in real time and, thus, of a better control of the overall situation.
A complicated implementation
This is the ambition of the Scorpion system for land combat, based on vetronics, software-defined radio and data transfer, but the other environments are not left out, as illustrated by the demonstration of collaborative naval and air combat connected in the eastern Mediterranean during Operation Hamilton (with cruise missile firing). The principle is simple: information from all deployed sensors is analysed by the system's "brain", which instantly assigns the target to the best available effector (shooter).
Implementation is more complicated: sensors and effectors must be (hyper)connected in a network hardened to electronic warfare and the cyber-threat, a sort of "nervous system" controlled by a "brain" that must analyse and sort all the information that comes back to it in real time.
F-35, an architecture that prohibits any interoperability
The JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) programme launched by the United States in the 1990s was intended to provide NATO forces with air superiority through connected combat from a platform that was discrete in terms of both detection of opposing radars and their communication systems. This new weapon system is based on a fighter aircraft ultimately called the F-35. It is a stealth aircraft that is advertised as multi-role (fighter-bomber), but above all it is the "quarterback" of a "battle group" made up of all the sensors and effectors with which it can communicate directly (without passing through a ground station) in real time via extremely secure tactical data links (gateways to tactical data link 16, then link 22).
The F-35 system actually poses many problems. Firstly, it is intentionally built on a closed architecture that prohibits any interoperability with allied combat systems, which is absolutely contrary to NATO principles. As the F-35 system is interoperable only with itself, allied militaries must acquire the aircraft in order to be able to interact directly with it, unless they agree to degraded-mode interoperability based on relays. As the Minister of the Army jokingly reminded us on 18 March 2019, "the Alliance should be unconditional, otherwise it is not an alliance. NATO's solidarity clause is called article V, not article F35.
Technological setbacks
Secondly, the development of the JSF programme was conceived from the outset as a leonine cooperation in which the member countries of the 'club' were asked to contribute to its financing in exchange for a certain industrial return in proportion to their financial commitment. In other words, the programme drained the R&D budgets of several allies without any guarantee of the finished product, unlike the export of a weapon system that had already been developed and de-risked. The 14 foreign users of the F-35 thus fall into two categories: seven partners (Turkey was excluded for having acquired the Russian S400 air defence system) who contributed financially to the development of the programme in exchange for a certain industrial return, and now seven customers (along with Switzerland) through the FMS transfer process.
Finally, and this follows from this, the realisation of the F-35 looks like a long series of technological setbacks, to the point that the Pentagon, which has never spared its criticism of a programme that seemed incapable of meeting its deadlines and costs, is tempted to drastically reduce its orders in favour of older generation aircraft (the modernised F15), but whose real performance is likely to still guarantee the air superiority of American forces. And nothing can be said about the logistical information system that sends all the data back to the manufacturer, making each mission absolutely transparent for Lockheed Martin and indirectly for the US Department of Defense, except for the Israeli version, as the Tsahal requires an autonomous logistical system.
The programme is so problematic that the GAO (the US Court of Auditors) publishes several public reports each year noting the progress made and making recommendations to limit the financial disaster. The latest report highlights a $6 billion shortfall in the overall cost of the programme, which is staggering: a total life-cycle cost estimated at $1.7 trillion, including $400 billion for acquisition and $1.3 trillion for implementation and maintenance of the aircraft, a $150 billion slippage compared to the 2012 estimate. The actual cost per flight hour of the 400 F-35s in service with the US military in 2019 was over $38,000 in constant 2012 dollars. The target cost is set at $25,000 per flight hour in 2025. This is the aircraft that Armasuisse claims won the competition by being the cheapest in terms of operating costs!
Switzerland: the very surprising choice of the F-35
From an operational point of view, one can only wonder about the contribution of the F-35 to the Swiss army. As Israel regularly shows, the F-35 is above all a stealthy joint strike fighter whose payload capacity (otherwise it is no longer stealthy) does not allow it to strike both far and hard; it is one or the other. The F-35A's range does not exceed 1,000 km, and its range is limited to a few minutes at that distance. The F-35 is also too heavy to be very manoeuvrable in aerial combat and its stealthy skin makes it unsuitable for supersonic flight. This is a pity, because Switzerland needs an air defence aircraft, not a medium-range fighter-bomber.
Moreover, the F-35 programme has not yet reached the stage of series production (milestone C), as more than 800 defects remain to be corrected, some of them involving flight safety, while new problems are emerging, including those with the Pratt & Whitney F-135 engine, as those already detected are resolved. The Pentagon is now faced with a real capability impasse. Given the obvious impossibility of containing the costs of the F-35 programme, despite Lockheed Martin's promises until 2019, the three endowed "services" (Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps) are seriously considering reducing their fleets by replacing some of the planned F-35s either with modernised 4th generation aircraft or by accelerating the development of a 6th generation fighter.
The aim is to be able to count on a reliable and efficient fleet in the face of strategic rivals who, for their part, are improving the quantity and quality of their respective fleets of weapons aircraft. Even an ally as reliable as Japan is reviewing its plans after the loss (as yet unresolved) of an F-35 damaged on the high seas and in the face of the aircraft's poor tactical performance and air defence warning difficulties against Chinese provocations.
The F-35 is not up to NATO's needs
This will eventually result in a lack of outlets for Lockheed Martin, which explains the pressure put by the State Department (responsible for the FMS procedure) on export prospects, if only to compensate for the abandonment of the Turkish market. We hope that the Swiss authorities will be able to justify their choice in the event of a vote, a prospect that seems more and more likely. The Rafale may still have a future under Swiss colours.
Beyond the case of Switzerland, a neutral state as everyone knows, the question of NATO's future air supremacy in the event of a high-intensity conflict arises. In addition to the United States, eight member nations of the Alliance are or will be equipped with an aircraft whose performance is clearly not up to the task. The Alliance's entire security is thus in danger of being jeopardised by an uncontrolled programme that has siphoned off a significant portion of European R&D budgets. The F-35 has been a formidable "war machine" for submitting European defence to American interests. Tomorrow, it risks being the tool of NATO's defeat by its strategic competitors. The latter do not play recklessly with the military capabilities of their own forces and their allies.
Faced with this capability impasse, NATO will be led in the short term to encourage a return to modernised 4th generation aircraft (such as the Rafale F3R, pending the F4 standard, but also the F-15 EX, F-16 Viper, F-18 Super Hornet, with the Eurofighter's ability to evolve still to be proven) to guarantee its posture and fulfil its missions. This will perhaps clarify the future of the SCAF and Tempest programmes.