The scorecard was like a blowout before long the “Vipers” began to appear all everywhere at once. Red Flag is there to put the tactics to the test and unveil the failure modes, not to give bragging rights. Still in that spirit, the Red Flag 2017, widely reported, takeaway that an F-35 Lightning II with a claimed 20:1 destruction-ratio could be flown in under twenty-four hours, a feat corroborated by numerous hours of air combat, is both a confirmation of the priorities of a fifth-generation aircraft design and a caution against the ease with which an air battle can be driven off course.
The benefits of the F-35 in a massive exercise exist in its structure. The low-observe design and sensor package are geared to reduce the decision cycle of the enemy, and extend its own: locate targets sooner, classify them more quickly and shoot farther with beyond visual range (BVR) without being caught. The jet in that mode acts as a forward sensor node no less than a shooter, providing a networked picture to other aircraft and the command-and-control. The advantages of the F-35 pile atop each other when the engagement remains distributed and BVR-centric, stealth minimizes the detection window, fused sensors minimize ambiguity and datalinks minimize the gap between detection and “shoot.”
The pressure point revealed at Red Flag 2017 did not concern the capability of the F-35 to fight, but what occurs when the opposition does not wish to play the game the F-35 was manufactured to play. Multi-axis attacks and saturation geometry or classic “swarm” behavior when used on manned fighters were aggressor-pushed F-16s to make shot opportunities more challenging and defensive reactions harder to achieve. The theory is easy to understand: just introduce enough concurrent issues that a sufficiently informed platform burns off its limited resources, time, maneuver room and missiles, quicker than it would prefer to.
The fact that missile math is important is that the stealthy arrangement of the F-35 is dependent on in-house haulage. In the typical air to air loadout, the jet can commence the battle with four internally-carried AIM-120-class missiles. After those have been lost, the aircraft either loses the armaments or consents to a vastly altered risk profile. Weapons can be added in external stores, but this alters the stealth equation – just the business that much of modern airpower planning consists in.
The F-16 has nothing to do in this lesson except nostalgia; it is geometry and familiarity. The plane is an excellent multirole fighter that has been constructed more than 4,600 units and the cockpit and flight-control layout were designed based on high-agilty maneuvers. When aggressor hands it, it means making a networked long-range fight a high-speed knife fight, where stealth does not add much and where a position, arrival time, and pilot execution are the determinants of the final result.
This is also the reason why the story of the “fourth-gen obsolete” was never congruent to force-structure reality. The U.S. Air Force has been categorical that “Fourth generation will be around us until the 2030s” and it is investing in radar, survivability and structural life-extension to ensure that those jets remain relevant. That combination puts the operational environment in such a state where fifth-gen aircraft can no longer count on an unlimited support, indefinite weapons depth, or range control.
The most practical message conveyed by Red Flag is that saturation techniques are not a sham; they represent a design limitation. Stealth, fusion, and BVR, weapons are still very potent assets and a limited magazine and a forced merge can take even a superior platform and turn it into a very death rattlesnake. It is precisely that type of discomfort that the planners are purchasing in the exercises that matter most.
