PAK-FA-NPO-Saturn-1S

Artists impression of a tactical missile launch by a PAK-FA, by NPO Saturn.

An early but detailed evaluation of the PAK-FA, the Russian answer to the JSF Joint Strike Fighter, leaves Australia with an urgent dilemma.

Does Australia raise the failings of the JSF program with the US immediately, or does it continue to support it as the intended instrument of continued regional air superiority until America calls an end to the bullshit and exposes our defence planning as being dangerously compromised and incompetent?

The analysis, by defence think tank Airpower Australia’s co-founders, Dr Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon, concludes that:

From a technological strategy perspective,  the PAK-FA renders all legacy US fighter aircraft, and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, strategically irrelevant and non-viable after the PAK-FA achieves IOC in 2015.

Detailed strategic analysis indicates that the only viable strategic survival strategy now remaining for the United States is to terminate the Joint Strike Fighter program immediately,  redirect freed funding to further develop the F-22 Raptor, and employ variants of the F-22 aircraft as the primary fighter aircraft for all United States and Allied TACAIR needs.

If the United States does not fundamentally change its planning for the future of tactical air power, the advantage held for decades will be soon lost and American air power will become an artefact of history.

Followers of Airpower Australia’s long-running critical commentary of the JSF F-35 program will find that it no longer evaluates America’s F-22 Raptor in its present form as a definitive longer-term answer to the Russian threat.

The available evidence demonstrates at this time that a mature production PAK-FA design has the potential to compete with the F-22A Raptor in VLO (stealth)  performance from key aspects, and will outperform the F-22A Raptor aerodynamically and kinematically.

Instead, it argues that only with a timely program of expansion and upgrades can the Raptors hold mature PAK-FAs at bay, and with significant losses on both sides.

The analysis also looks at evidence that the PAK-FA design anticipates major changes in weapons technology, and exhibits some design compromises that reflect different Russian views about the future of aerial warfare compared to US evaluations.

While the basic shaping observed on this first prototype of the PAK-FA will deny it the  critical all-aspect stealth performance of the F-22 in beyond visual range  air combat and deep penetration, its extreme manoeuvrability/controllability design features, which result in extreme agility, give it the potential to become the most lethal and survivable fighter ever built for air combat engagements.

The reality of an estimated three PAK-FAs in flight testing now, and a further three static frames in use for systems developments, coincides uncomfortably with a damning US audit review, the firing of the head of the project, and the cancelling of about $700 million in “progressive” payments in this year to lead contractor Lockheed Martin.

In a position report on the PAK-FA and the US decision to limit production of the Raptor and deny its sale to allies, RAAF Wing Commander (retired) Chris Mills says the killing of that program was a ploy to ensure that the F-35 JSF would become a forced monopoly in the production and sale of US air combat aircraft.

But he points out that this could fail massively if Israel, which already makes avionics for the Sukhoi range of military aircraft, and Japan, were to join India in buying the PAK-FA to ensure their future survival and combat superiority in battle zones in which the JSF would not prevail.

The clock should be ticking in Defence and with its Minister, John Faulkner. Will Australia lead, or continue to be led by the nose into a project that is beginning to stink badly?