Many individuals consider that the US Air Pressure’s (USAF) biggest benefit is its stealth fighter jets, which might penetrate adversary airspace with out getting detected. Nevertheless, the USAF’s total stealth fleet could possibly be actually ineffective within the Indo-Pacific theatre with out its tanker fleet.
Stealth helps penetrate enemy airspace, however the USAF’s tanker fleet provides these fighter jets international attain.
In different phrases, the USAF’s international energy projection is incomplete with out its tanker fleet. Within the Pacific, the place Guam sits 1,920 miles from Shanghai, the criticality of the US’s tanker fleet can hardly be overstated.
China, nonetheless, has lengthy understood this power and vulnerability of the USAF and is engaged on strategies to neutralize its tankers.
China has reportedly developed hypersonic glide autos that may launch air-to-air weapons focusing on high-value targets resembling command-and-control plane and tankers hundreds of miles away. It might threaten plane resembling aerial refueling tankers, AWACS, and EW plane.
If this report is correct, this is able to make China the world’s solely nation to function hypersonic glide autos able to launching air-to-air missiles.
A hypersonic glide automobile deployed from a DF-17 missile might journey about 1,500 miles and will goal plane working from Guam.
Hypersonic glide autos (HGVs) are warheads that may maneuver within the environment en path to a goal, extending vary and making interception troublesome.
An IAF knowledgeable, who wished to not be quoted, instructed EurAsian Occasions, “China’s massive claims—whether or not issued straight or floated not directly through ‘individuals with information’—shouldn’t be handled as 100% reality. Progress in hypersonics and long-range missiles is actual; an unverified leap from a 2021 check projectile to an operational, Guam-range tanker-killer continues to be a declare, not a confirmed functionality.”
The USAF’s Tanker Fleet Benefit
For any Air Pressure, irrespective of how giant and modernized, international drive projection is feasible solely with a big fleet of aerial refueling tankers.
Aerial tankers are the unsung enablers of contemporary airpower: with out them, fighter jets, regardless of their technology, stealth options, sensor fusion, or firepower, are tethered to their very own bases, and their fight vary is restricted to a most of 700 nautical miles.
Whereas the USAF’s bombers and stealth fighter jets hog all of the limelight and fascinate aviation fanatics, it’s the aerial refueling tankers which might be the silent enablers of world drive projection. Tankers, not fighters, finally decide whether or not an air force can challenge energy past its borders.
Nevertheless, regardless of their criticality in aerial fight, the worldwide imbalance within the tanker fleet is mind-boggling.
International Aerial Refueling Tanker Fleet
The US Air Force has the most important aerial refueling tanker fleet, accounting for 75% of the worldwide “energetic” service tanker fleet. In response to International Firepower, the US has an energetic fleet of 610 aerial refueling tankers.
The USAF is mandated to keep up a minimal power of 502 tankers always.
The following nation with the second-largest tanker fleet is Saudi Arabia with a fleet of twenty-two tankers. It’s adopted by Russia (18) and China, with 9 aerial refueling tankers.
Tanker Fleet’s Criticality within the Pacific
Whereas the tanker fleet is crucial for international energy projection, its significance within the Pacific theatre is tough to overstate.
The unrefueled fight radius of the F-22 Raptor is 590 nautical miles and of the F-35C round 600 nautical miles.
Nevertheless, Guam is positioned some 1900 miles from China. Mainly, with out aerial refueling, the USAF’s stealth fighter jets are ineffective within the Pacific theatre.
Now, right here comes the paradox.
The US has invested billions of {dollars} in growing stealth know-how. As an illustration, the lifecycle value of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is over US$ 2 trillion.
Nevertheless, each one in all these stealth jets nonetheless has to rely on an unstealthy, non-maneuvering 200-foot aluminum tube flying in a predictable orbit.
These giant tankers are detected by long-range radars and datalink networks for hours.
Earlier, the operational tactic was to maintain these giant, non-stealthy tankers out of the vary of the adversary’s long-range air-to-air missiles.
Nevertheless, the operational vary of AAMs has been rising for a while.
China’s PL-15 has a claimed vary of 200–300 km, and the PL-17 might goal plane from over 400 km away. Russia’s R-37M has a spread of 300-400 km.
Earlier this week, the US Navy additionally revealed its ultra-long-range air-to-air missile AIM-424 Malice, which has a claimed vary of practically 463 km.
The Lockheed Martin AIM-260 missile, which is in manufacturing however not but in service, can be anticipated to have extraordinarily lengthy vary. MBDA Missile Methods Providers Meteor, broadly utilized in Europe, is ramjet-powered and may hit targets greater than 160 kilometers away.
Nevertheless, tankers might nonetheless theoretically keep past the vary of those ultra-long-range BVR AAMs.
However China’s new hypersonic glide automobile (HGV), which might launch air-to-air weapons, flips this script by permitting it to focus on plane flying hundreds of miles away.
By means of these weapons, China can shoot US tankers close to Guam. Hitting only one tanker can disrupt all the operation, as it could compel the USAF to shift tanker operations past the second island chain, decreasing the fight radius of the USAF’s stealth fighter jets.
Neither is focusing on the tanker fleet merely theoretical. As an illustration, in the course of the Iran Struggle, an Iranian-aligned Iraqi militia group claimed two separate SAM assaults on USAF KC-135s overflying Iraq.
Moreover, Iran focused USAF tankers on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia and broken a minimum of 5 parked KC-135s.
Iranian technique reveals that downgrading the operational capabilities of the USAF’s stealth fighter jets, such because the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II, is not a matter of detecting them on radar. One can basically push them out of their airspace by focusing on the USAF tanker fleet.
China’s HGV-launched AAMs do exactly that.
This doesn’t imply that the USAF’s tanker fleet has grow to be inoperable within the Pacific theatre.
Nevertheless, the USAF should devise new countermeasures to neutralize the menace posed by this new ultra-long-range Chinese language weapon.
These countermeasures might contain pairing an digital warfare jet with the tanker plane, or pairing it with loyal wingman drones that would protect the susceptible tanker plane.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of expertise in information media. He has labored with Press Belief of India, Occasions Now, Zee Information, Financial Occasions, and Microsoft Information. He holds a Grasp’s Diploma in Worldwide Media and Trendy Historical past from the College of Sheffield, UK.
- He will be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
