Page 10 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

It is an attempt to bring together with a unifying central focus for analysis a coherent interconnected vision
capturing both a shift in looking at legacy systems and a way ahead in modernization programs.

Modernization and mobilization must both exist in harmony.

There needs to be a mobilization planning and requirements focus at the Office of the Secretary of Defense
level focusing on consumption rates, battle damage repair attrition analysis and the real industrial base
response capability.
The evolving modernization and mobilization dilemma is to understand the dynamic and rapidly changing
combat engagement thinking in melding legacy systems integrated with sensor-shooter 5th gen software
upgradeable platforms.

The technological imperative to fully understand Pu (unfortunate paring of letters) in a much larger sense is
very time sensitive critical, with Hyper-Sonic Cruse Missiles (HSCM), Directed Energy (laser systems) and
possibility of USN “rail-guns” arriving soon.

The sum maybe greater than the parts if a new analytical paradigm of Pu is understood correctly.

After WWII, the jet engines started the same dynamic seen in the prop years –improved airframe system
performance by improving speed, range and maneuverability.
But two new dynamics were added both related to “payload.”

For a fighter in WWII, the “payload” was simple –what caliber and how many machine guns or cannons fit
the design to give the pilot enough “deadly bursts” to kill several of his opponents.

In the jet age, the complexities of adding airborne systems and improving the weapons carried, changed the
technology vectors of design considerations and introduced two more synergistic, but relatively independent
research and development paths.

Airborne radar and sensors were added to fighters and those systems helped the payload—guns and early
IR fire and forget missiles became more efficient with the AIM 9 sidewinder series.

But then, concurrently, independent performance was put into the payload by improving missiles and linking
long-range (BVR) missile shots to radar technology.

At first, radar guided missiles needed continuous guidance from the fighter but eventually even radar guided
missiles became BVR self-contained “fire and forget.”

So unlike WWII research and development, where research on airframes and engines was the mantra, in the
jet age there were two other huge design factors at work.
The first was always questing to improve the radar systems in the fighters and, secondly, as technology
allowed independent designs could improve the weapons carried.

Yet again, the art of aeronautical design had to work in partnership with the science of military R&D.

Along the way survivability shifted from armor, speed, and focusing on a good canopy into the era of
Electronic Warfare and now the incorporation of stealth characteristics through both design considerations,
composite materials and the wonders of chemistry for paint.

Second Line of Defense

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