Defense Tech: Jamming with the B-52s


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Jamming with the B-52s

For months, observers have been predicting big cuts to traditional weapons programs as a result of the Defense Department's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), due in February. But on Oct. 26, Defense News quoted Ryan Henry, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, saying the QDR would instead focus on how to adapt traditional weapons to nontraditional warfare like that in Iraq. Henry cited the now-cliche example of B-52s dropping satellite-guided bombs over Afghanistan.

Henry's statement is interesting in light of recent reports from Air Force Times that the EB-52 modification program is on the QDR chopping block. The EB-52 program would modify 16 1962-vintage B-52Hs to carry podded electronic noise jammers to foil air defenses. The first EB-52 would be ready in 2014. Currently the jamming mission is handled by the Navy's 100 or so geriatric EA-6B Prowlers, which are due to be replaced by 90 EA-18Gs in a few years. The EB-52s would give the Air Force an airborne jamming capability it has lacked since retiring the EF-111 in 1998. While standoff jamming is definitely a mission for the kind of high-intensity warfare the Pentagon has been de-emphasizing of late, jammers like the EA-6B have proved adaptable to low-intensity warfare. This year, Prowlers began flying missions over Iraq to jam the signals that detonate IEDs.

There's more at stake in the EB-52 program than its relevance to both high-and low-intensity warfare. NATO generals regularly cite airborne jamming as one of Europe's major capability shortfalls. That means the West depends almost entirely on a small number of U.S. jamming aircraft to suppress air defenses in coalition air campaigns like those over Kosovo and Iraq. The EB-52 would do a lot to relieve the pressure on the sure-to-be-overworked EA-18G crews.

-- David Axe

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Posted by: Benton at July 31, 2006 07:29 AM

DID article here:

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/10/supersonic-sigint-will-f35-f22-also-play-ew-role/index.php

Posted by: Joe Katzman at November 8, 2005 07:21 PM

Given that B-52s and B-1s will remain mainstays fo the fleet, upgrading their ECM significantly is a good option to have. Especially if it can be done via pods and other movable additions. The number of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers operational at any one time is shockingly small.

For more background on the F-35 JSF and F/A-22 Raptor as jamming aircraft, meanwhile, check out this in-depth DID article. Most of the required capabilities are already there.

As for the idea of a stealth jamming aircraft, note that they aren't in active jam mode all the time, and that when they are it isn't always 100% obvious to defenders. Which means there's a real benefit to having aircraft that can fly in with a stealth package without announcing the whole flight just by their radar cross-section.

Modified F-35s and possibly F/A-22s would also give the Marines and Air Force their own integrated jamming aircraft, instead of having to rely exclusively on the US Navy for EA-6B Prowlers or (soon) EA-18 Growlers.

Posted by: Joe Katzman at November 8, 2005 07:21 PM

I'm impressed at the idiot-farm we have going here.

First off to the retards making comments about "not needing the F/A-22".

Have any of you considered just what the USAF may be up against in the future? Or do you just like to complain and moan?

Consider these aircraft: The EF-2000 Eurfighter, the Dassault Rafael, the Saab JAS-39, Shenyang J-13 and the Sukhoi Su-47.

All of these aircraft are considerably more capable than the F-15 or F-16.

Most of them will without doubt be sold to our enemies, especially the Rafael, J-13 and Su-47. Almost every aircraft we've fought in the last forty years has been made in the same factories as those.

The F/A-22 is more capable than those aircraft, and would give us the advantage we need to bring most of our pilots home alive.

Do you not realize that, by keeping our airmen and women in second-rate aircraft, you are putting them at risk? Do you care?

Am I saying there aren't issues with military procurement practices? Not at all, I can name a dozen projects that need to be axed right now, and the whole process needs to have the bureaucracy removed.

But if there is one project the USAF needs, it is the F/A-22, American soldiers have not had enemy bombs fall on their heads since World War Two, if we do not keep the edge, then that's a trend we will not keep.

On the other hand, I see a lot of ideas here I'd like to see put to use, especially the concept of manufacturing replacement parts and modifications in theater. Many units could be made much more self-sufficient that way.

But what do I know, I’m just a Military Industrial Complex/Halliburton/Zionist Conspiracy/Bushitler drone.

Posted by: MurdockTheCrazy at November 4, 2005 06:02 PM

Have you ever looked at what it would cost you to build your car out of parts bought from the local parts store? It would cost several times what your car cost new and already assembled. Resurrecting old, used up airframes makes about as much sense. Why not fix what's wrong with the military industrial complex instead of always trying to work around it?

We have needed a Mach 3 bomber ever since the B-70 was cancelled. There is no reason with all of today's advances in technology (3D CAD, finite elements, CFD, NC milling, microprocessor based avionics) it should cost $1 Billion per airplane to build one today. It's not cutting edge technology.

If people would start calling for an end to the waste, the waste would end. What's wrong with the system now is pretty plain to see. What we need is a willingness in Washington DC to fix it.

Posted by: Dfens at October 31, 2005 07:14 PM

Good Morning to all,

Here is a though and question that arose from the above conversation.

The U.S. Air Force is still embrolied in a scandal over an agreement with Boeing to lease new Boeing 767's as in- flight refulers.

The amount of money being considered is in the tens of $billions and one person has already checked into the Gray Bar Motel over this.

With all the "Barely Used Airliners" in storage around the world why is the U.S. Air Force looking to lease to buy new aircraft for there refulers or for that matter these B-52H Air Frames for ESS operations. The existence of the 51 year old B-52 (I know the B-52H's are only 40 years old on the average) says that many air frames are scrapped way before they need be.

All our AWAC'S and JSTAR'S are recycled Boeing 707's from the '60's so it seems the idea is workable. A few years ago an AWAC was even traced back to having been leased by Air India in the '70's.

The question is why can't more of this "Reserve Air Fleet" be aquired by the U.S.A.F. for aircraft used in none combat rolls?

I know the ultimate answer will be profits for stockholder in the "American Military Industrial Complex" and that will have to stand. But it does seem that there are cost saving measures out there that is good for the military and will free more scarce dollars for other projects.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
"Stewart's Platoon"

Posted by: Byron Skinner at October 31, 2005 01:36 PM

That's pretty ironic, using a stealth airplane to do jamming. Might just as well paint it orange with "HERE I AM" in 3 foot letters across the bottom. Maybe they could find room for a bull's-eye too. I'm sure there's no workload increase due to the jamming mission so a crew of 1 is plenty. That's why the EA-6B makes room for a crew of 4. Just another boondoggle, like the F-22B (2 seater). Maybe we can spend billions on it too, just to have the variant cancelled later when they roll all of it's budget into covering the cost overruns for the VTOL model.

Posted by: Dfens at October 30, 2005 01:54 PM

Shep UK,

In fact, the Marines are considering an electronic attack version of the F-35B to replace their small force of EA-6Bs. The single-seat F-35 is already designed to use its electronic-scanning-array radar to fry enemy electronics. And with its large number of antennae, all it might take to turn the thing into a mini-EA-6B is more electrical output and enough processing to handle the work currently undertaken by the EA-6B's crew of four.

Posted by: David Axe at October 30, 2005 09:53 AM

Hiya all, my first post here but im a long time lurker ofn this fantastic site, today i noticed this however and was bloody angry - 'NATO generals regularly cite airborne jamming as one of Europe's major capability shortfalls. That means the West depends almost entirely on a small number of U.S. jamming aircraft to suppress air defenses in coalition air campaigns like those over Kosovo and Iraq' cheap skate Euros should buy there own jamming gear instead of keep poncing off the US as they have been for 50 odd years now. can't believe i just read that, just typical Euro's i guess, sighs sadly. I don't except they cannot aford them they just have no will to buy them because they know America supply them. Why America even bothers with the Euro leeches i don't know, i mean there to damn crap to even sort out problems in thier own back yard (balkens conflict) without US assets and even then the French veto'd over 700 targets - utterly lame Euros! Anyway what about a JSF version of an electronic warfare system? 1 crew i guess would suck but there'd be room wheer the lift fan was/is wouldn't there for some gear?

Posted by: Shep UK at October 30, 2005 08:50 AM

You have good ideas, but it will never happen that way. It will never happen that way because the system rewards failure. The big money for the big programs means big power for those who direct them. How many DoD employees draw a check directly from the F-22 program? I'd guess thousands. Why do they need them? To keep the contractors from lying and theiving. Is it working? No. The DoD needs to quit paying for failure. They need to quit making it profitable for companies to drag out development.

The way it is now, the more problems a contractor can dream up during development, the more the schedule slides, and the more money they make. These companies should not make a dime of profit on development. They should only make money off of products that work well. Paying profit on development is paying someone to be stupid, and it's working.

Posted by: Dfens at October 29, 2005 11:32 PM

Good Morning David,

Interesting statement you made regarding the fabrication of spare parts for the "aging B-52's" the radical suggestion you are considering of course is a "21st. Century Blacksmith". It's a concept thats been kicking around the rusy zipper circuit for a while now.

Two references I about to make, I'm sure they are not new to you but may be of interest to folks following this stream of logic, they are "FAB" by Neil Gershenfeld and "1453" by Roger Crowley.

In FAB we have the techie argurment for Desktop Fabrication and a strong argurment is made in support of "micro manufacturing".

In "1453" we have the story of the Muslim siege of Constantinople in that year. The interesting thing and why this book is releviant to the argurment is that the Islamic forces under sultan Mehmet who conducted the seige didn't bring any cannon with them.

Instead they brought along a metal casting and chemical operations and manufactured cannons, cannon balls and gun powder at the battlesite. There large cannons designed, built and modified on the battle field were the F/A-22's of the fifteenth century.

This in a big way negates the dumb terrorists argurment. The Muslims have a hertiage to draw on that is not well understood in the "west".

They were ahead of the United States even before there was a United States. There secret, no military industrial arms manufacturing base to support.

They used localy available materials and recycled damaged cannon and fired cannon balls. This process saved hauling cannons, cannon balls and unstable gun powder over long distances. The advantages in seige combat, like today in Iraq should be obovious.

But to us who are to dumb to know any better the idea of using the local manufacturing base in Iraq to up armor HUMVEES and other non technical tasks instead of doing it in the states makes a lot of sense. An exmanitation of the process finds that common 5/8" or 16mm steel plate is being used and in fact is imported from Germany in the up armor process.

The cost of CNC machine tools is little more then pocket change for the U.S. Army/Marines and metal working has been done in the are since Neolithic times.

A small group of supervising machinists and welders working with local labor with mil. specs., plans, material and cutting lists off the internet or from CD's could produce up armored vehicles at a fraction of the time and of the cost.

Just maybe if this had been done since 2003 it would have saved some of the 615 lives lost to IED's.

A spinn off of course would be that the local work force would become trained in CNC fabrication and manufacturing and with the tools the U.S. could leave behind, the cost of returning would exceed there salvage value, you might have the Genesis of an industry for a "New Iraq".

Of course the flaw in our thinking here is that it would take the profits out of a process that takes a $65K vehicle and turns it into a $250K vehicle. That is to "Un American" to even be considered I guess David.

I guess it's time to end this post David, I've been hit twice while writing it by my friends who would rather not I post there argurments. Someone I guess doesn't like what I'm saying, so sad, to bad.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
"Stewart's Platoon"

Posted by: Byron Skinner at October 29, 2005 03:01 PM

How about converting a B-52 into a fire breathing, multiple Directed Energy Weapons platform? You could be immobilizing insurgents with giant tazer pods using high power lasers for ionization 'channels', heating them up with microwave pods, and carving them up with multiple laser modules.
: )

Posted by: cryptocom at October 29, 2005 11:20 AM

Who do you think wants to see F-22 cancelled the most? My guess is Lockmart. They've already sucked down all the BILLIONS in development money. If they build the airplane, there's the risk it might break. If it gets cancelled, they get to work on it's replacement. If you pay taxes in the USA, the jokes on you either way.

Posted by: Dfens at October 28, 2005 09:36 PM

But, but, what about the new $400,000,000 a copy supercruising F/A/*E*-22 ElectroRaptor? I mean, my god if we don't buy more supercruising singleseat wunderwaffe the army...err, navy...err, AMC...err, the terrorists will have won!!!

Posted by: JSAllison at October 28, 2005 04:45 PM

500 instead of 400 mph, who cares? It's not like the long out of production bird does Mach 2.

Posted by: Dfens at October 28, 2005 03:53 PM

AF Guy,

You're right about the Compass Call. What the Air Force has lacked, more accurately, is a relative high-speed jamming asset. While the B-52 is nowhere near as speedy as an EF-111, it leaves the EC-130 in its wake.

Posted by: David Axe at October 28, 2005 02:40 PM

Hello Byron,

It's true that the B-52 has held up well compared to other strategic bombers. And with the advent of laser parts modeling, whereby out-of-production parts are reproduced using laser scanners, the B-52 can be rebuilt ad infinitum. Reengining would pay dividends, however, as the Buff's old engines are its no. 1 maintenance expense.

Posted by: David Axe at October 28, 2005 02:38 PM

Good MOrning David,

What's old is still new, I guess. This program combined with the $216Millon contract to Boeing Witcha back in Oct. for Targeting and Communications upgrades to the B52H's, so they can be deployed with JDAM's insures this "Ol' Horse" will be in the air for a long time to come. Unofficial estimate till 2040.

A program on the History Channel awhile back had an Air Force Officer make the statement that when the last of the B-1's and B-2'sare devivered to Davis Mountain AFB their crew will fly back home on a B-52. That prediction is looking more likely all the time.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
"Stewart's Platoon"

Posted by: Byron Skinner at October 28, 2005 02:27 PM

"...give the Air Force an airborne jamming capability it has lacked since retiring the EF-111..."

What about the EC-130H COMPASS CALL that's been doing stand-off jamming for long before 1998?

Posted by: Af Guy at October 28, 2005 02:21 PM

Jamming with the B-52s

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