Unmanned Fighter Aircraft: A Reader Responds to Robert Farley

Robert Farley sent out this tweet today:

I think Donald Douglas is trying to make me cry ... http://bit.ly/RXl5h

The link goes to my recent essay, "Unmanned Fighter Aircraft (And the Left)." That piece takes down Farley's childishness at his post, "F-35: The Last Manned Fighter Aircraft?"

I have received an e-mail from a reader just in time to add to the debate. I'm publishing it anonymously by permission (and note that I have nowhere this kind of operational expertise, just in case folks might think I'm pulling a Sullivan):

Hi Donald,

There's no doubt that we can do more than ever with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and that we should, when possible, continue in that direction. They are cheaper and can get the job done with considerably less risk to our personnel. (I say this having spent over 300 hours above hostile territory in an unarmed surveillance jet. We were once chased by an Iraqi MiG-25, which reached Mach 3 in its attempt to get within weapon range of us before our F-15s could get within range of it.)

The RMA crowd, however, unable as it is to distinguish between science fiction and the cold hard facts of warfare, is only acting true to form when they say we can do everything we need to do using UAVs. The fact is we can't, and we probably never will be able to.

The data infrastructure required to control UAVs and to benefit from the information gathered by their sensors is exactly the sort of center of gravity that will be targeted in the information warfare discussed by Eliot Cohen. He's exactly right when he says that this will be an opening salvo in what will rapidly become a conventional war against a nation with a less-technologically advanced military. There is a reason that China is so heavily invested in anti satellite technology, after all. A nation that can put a million men under arms will realize an advantage very quickly if they can reduce the struggle to a matter of who can field the greatest number of men with weapons in their hands.

And this is what war always comes down to, despite what the RMA folks would like us to believe. Our remote sensing abilities, our celebrated (justly so) capacity for finding, tracking, and destroying targets from afar, our ability to guide a 2,000 pound bomb through a tiny window - all these abilities may revolutionize battles, and the kinds of quick-strike engagements that have characterized warfare in this young century, but in a long-term war, those capabilities will most likely be degraded or neutralized early on. The very things that gave us such an advantage will become a liability if we allow the siren call of the RMA to convince us that war is anything more or less than men with weapons in their hands doing their damndest to kill each other.

The Air Force does some of its best work when it keeps the skies clear of enemy aircraft, so our ground troops can do what they need to do. This is why we need the F-22. The Joint Strike Fighter may do a better job of ground support (I say "may" because I don't know one way or the other.) but we definitely need an air superiority fighter to keep the skies clear of the enemy fighters and bombers that would attack our troops on the ground. Many of my brothers and sisters in blue uniforms will think me a heretic for saying it, but air power is not an end in and of itself. It is most effective when it is used jointly to complement the efforts of the other services, all of which comes down to supporting the man with the rifle. Yes, air power can reap huge strategic effects, and may even, as Col John Warden, the architect of the air campaign in the first Gulf War said, cause "strategic paralysis" all of which is very much in keeping with RMA lines of thinking. What we can't do from the air though, is capture and hold territory; nor can we interact directly with people in a way that turns a foe into a conquored people, into an ally. All of that will always come down to ground forces doing what they have done ever since the long bow represented the greatest revolution in military affairs.

As for the twerp who picked a picture of a toy to represent one of the most fearsome killing machines ever invented, I continue to live seven thousand miles away from my wife and children to safeguard his naivete. May he, and all my countrymen, forever be able to be so ignorant, if they choose. It is my hope, however, that enough fine young Americans will continue to chose otherwise that we will be able to defend those who wish to remain ignorant.

For more on this from the "twerp," see "What are We Saving this Capability For?":

With due respect, I don't really get this ...

Farley is responding to The Progressive Realist, "Pilots vs. Drones."

See Also, Neptunus Lex, "Stuck in the Past," who says we need more F-22s:

Tremendous maneuver advantages accrue to those that can sweep the air above a battlefield, and the F-22 does so better than any other design. One hundred and eighty seven is, however, too few to do so persistently in an away game.

Related: Thomas L. Day, "Debate on F-22s Nearing Climax."