NorthCom/NORAD Seeks Multirole Aircraft
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By John M. Doyle
The U.S. Air Force general in charge of U.S. Northern Command (NorthCom) says he needs multi-role aircraft to perform his varied missions, meaning the newest U.S. fighter is not necessarily the answer.
Those missions include maritime surveillance and air patrol and interdiction, Gen. Victor Renuart told Aviation Week after a speech last week on Capitol Hill. “Part of this air sovereignty mission is identification and non-kinetic enforcement. It’s diverting airplanes away. It’s identifying unknowns in our system. That doesn’t always require an F-22,” he said.
“I continue to advocate with Congress, and with the Air Force in particular, that you need to maintain a baseline capability of air defense-capable fighters that have an ability, also, to detect threats in the maritime,” Renuart said, “so it’s air-to-air and air-to-surface sensor capability that I need.”
Renuart, who further heads U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, says he has sufficient fighters “right now” to fly air sovereignty and defense missions. But “there is a fighter gap developing” there as older Boeing F-15s and Lockheed Martin F-16s -- flown mostly by the Air National Guard – age and retire. Renuart and National Guard leaders have been sounding related concerns all year (Aerospace DAILY, March 28).
The number of fighters available for the air sovereignty alert (ASA) mission is expected to sink below 2,000 aircraft because 250 fighters are slated for retirement in the Fiscal 2010 budget (DAILY, June 2). The Guard operates 16 of the 18 ASA sites. Eleven units on alert status fly F-16s and of those, eight are expected to reach the end of their service life between 2015 and 2017.
The congressional Government Accountability Office reported in January that if Guard aircraft are not replaced by 2020, 11 of the ASA sites theoretically could be without tactical aircraft.
But in his Hill speech hosted by the National Defense University Foundation, Renuart noted that he is not specifically seeking ASA fighters. “I’m careful not to ask for dedicated fighters that can only do my mission, because if you say they only do air defense, then they become less relevant for the many other missions we have.”
He said the real sticking point will come “from here to 2013 as we begin to see higher-rate production of the F-35 coming along -- and that will require just careful management.”
Those concerns are shared by National Guard officials and some in Congress. Language added to the Fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill passed by the House Armed Service s Committee last week would require the Pentagon to study and submit a report on an interim buy of upgraded F-15s, F-16s and F-18 to close the so-called “fighter gap” predicted by many observers between 2015 and 2025.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Frank Lo Biondo (R-N.J.), calls for the Pentagon to study whether Congress should authorize a multiyear procurement contract for so-called 4.5 generation fighter aircraft – those equipped with advanced weapons, avionics and active electronically scanned array radar (AESA).
Photo: Lockheed Martin
