Dr Ross Mahoney responds to Robbin Laird’s post referring to the F-35 as a 1st Gen flying combat system. Using a platform to define air power concepts is not a new phenomenon, and while we need to encourage innovative thinking about air power we must be willing and able to critique the rise of new buzzwords and the ideas underpin them.
In a previous post, The F-35 and the Transformation of Power Projection Forces, Robbin Laird suggested that rather than describing the F-35 Lightning II as a 5th Generation aircraft, we must think of it as ‘a first generation information and decision making superiority “flying combat system”.’ (Emphasis in original)
Arguably, this is an important shift in how we think about the capabilities of this new platform and the implications this has regarding how we think about air power. However, this labelling of platforms and capabilities raises several interesting observations and what follows are some personal opinions on the issue of ‘labels.’

I have heard similar phrases before namely Giulio Douhet’s ‘battleplane’ concept [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons]
Second, a broader issue with Laird’s description is that of buzzwords or phrases. Buzzwords tend to be created to support someone’s vision of the future, and they are unhelpful if not grounded in some form of intellectual rigour. Indeed, buzzwords and phrases are certainly not something limited to air forces but pervade the military more broadly. For example, in the last few days, it has been reported that the US Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations has decided to shelve the use of Anti-Access/Area-Denial as a ‘stand-alone acronym’ primarily because it ‘can mean all things to all people or anything to anyone.’[2] This is an important point, and the same can be said of effects-based operations, which was fashionable in the late 1990s and early 2000s.[3] Both of these strategies are ideas that have history, and we should be careful about trying to re-invent the wheel. As I recently heard from one colleague, if you want a new idea, read an old book. As such, is the description being applied to the F-35 helpful when thinking about the application of air power? It is indeed being linked to the idea of 5th generation strategy, but we must continually ask the question within the question and seek to understand what is underpinning such statements. For example, is the platform important or the ideas about their use? Also, should we be careful about linking platforms to strategy?
Nevertheless, while I would advocate the need to critique statements, such as Laird’s, there is certainly always a case to build new language and ideas to explain future challenges. This is particularly important for air power because, since the end of the Cold War, it has become, arguably, the West’s preferred way of war.[4] Nevertheless, as Tony Mason reflected, ‘while our technology is lifting us into the 21st century, our formative concepts remain rooted in a bygone age.'[5] This comment remains as relevant today as it did in 1998. While today’s core air power roles can be identified in the activities of the First World War, it is perhaps an axiom that as with any field of human endeavour, the language and ideas about the use of military aviation should and must evolve as time goes by and situations change.

‘While our technology is lifting us into the 21st century, our formative concepts remain rooted in a bygone age.’ [A Number 1 Squadron RAAF F/A-18F Super Hornet in formation with an F2B, the type flown by the Squadron during the First World War. Image credit: David White of www.canvaswings.com]
Just to conclude, this is clearly a thought piece and does not propose any solutions to the challenges of today; however, we should be very careful about the labels we apply to platforms, capabilities and concepts. Terminology, as the discussion section of Laird’s piece, illustrated, matters and has a tendency to carry cultural baggage. In developing effective thinking about the application of air power as part of the solution to strategic challenges, air forces need to think about their place in the pantheon of options open to policy makers. I would argue that in an age of austerity and uncertainty, this requires air forces an investment in the organisation’s human element to generate the capacity to think effectively about the conceptual component.
This post originally appeared on From Balloons to Drones on 9 October 2016.
Dr Ross Mahoney is the resident Aviation Historian at the RAF Museum, UK. A specialist on air power, he is currently writing on social and cultural history of the inter-war RAF. He is also researching the culture, ethos and ethics of the RAAF and command and staff training in the RAF. He is the editor of ‘From Balloons to Drones.’ The views presented here do not represent those of my employer, the Royal Air Force Museum, or the Royal Air Force or the Ministry of Defence.
[1] Thomas Hippler, Bombing the People: Giulio Douhet and the Foundation of Air-Power Strategy, 1884-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 147.
[2] Sam LaGrone, ‘CNO Richardson: Navy Shelving A2/AD Acronym,’ USNI News, 3 October 2016. Also, see: B.J. Armstrong, ‘The Shadow of Air-Sea Battle and the Sinking of A2AD,’ War on the Rocks, 5 October 2016.
[3] For a useful discussion of effects-based warfare that takes account of historical and contemporary views as well as a multi-domain approach, see: Christopher Finn (ed.) Effects Based Warfare (London: The Stationary Office, 2002).
[4] For useful views on future air power thinking, see: John Andreas Olsen (ed.), Airpower Reborn: The Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015).
[5] Air Vice-Marshal Professor Tony Mason, ‘The Future of Air Power,’ RAF Air Power Review, 1(1) (1998), p. 42.
The key point I take from Robbin Laird’s post “The F-35 and the Transformation of Air Power” is that the F-35 is different. It’s not an F-15, or an F-16, or an Su-35, or anything else, even an F-22. That difference lies in the F-35’s unique combination of data-capture, sensor-fusion, and information-sharing systems. No other strike/fighter has anything remotely like that capability.
And that’s why we need to think differently about the F-35.
Yes, the Lightning II will still be used for air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, to achieve precisely the same kinds of effects that we want from today’s strike/fighters. The issue is, though, can the F-35 perform those roles better; that is, differently? Do its unique information-dominance capabilities offer the potential to conduct missions in a manner that increases our chance of success, decreases the possibility of losses or unintended consequences, or reduces costs?
More to the point, can it fly a mission profile or seek to generate effects of a kind we haven’t yet thought of?
F-35 test pilot Major Morten Hanche’s post on this blog makes it clear that we’re on a very steep learning curve with the F-35. It’s encouraging that this process has begun.
A quick observation on Douhet’s “battleplane”. I think the term’s had some unfair press over the years. There was nothing wrong with envisaging a combat aircraft that could defend itself as well as strike targets. The challenge has been to design and build a machine that could be the best in both of those missions, with role-specialised types invariably having an edge. Still, there’s been some very decent multi-role combat aircraft, such as the Mosquito, the F-4 and the F/A-18. It’s also noteworthy that during World War II almost every single air defence “fighter” was at some stage adapted for the ground-attack role. No-one called them “battleplanes”.
We don’t need to think of the F-35 as a battleplane, but we do need to think it’s different.
Alan,
I agree that we need to think of the F-35 as something different despite the fact that its capabilities are, as yet, not combat proven. I am by nature a cynic and hope that many of the reports about the project are proven wrong, though I do think the RAF is buying the wrong variant; however, that is a different discussion.The problem of understanding future capabilities is one of predicting and thinking about the future. We can only but suggest about the challenges and what underpins them and ultimately, we could be wrong. This is where, perhaps, the Douhet analogy is useful. There was, as you say, nothing wrong with envisaging a solution to a future conceptual challenge but we must be mindful of not becoming zealots and over-emphasing the changes that new capabilities bring. While we must think about the effects changes in capabilities have on the air domain first and foremost, they should then be drawn in to the wider discussions of strategy and national security.
Ross: You’re right, we do need to move carefully when determining what a new weapon system might or might not give us, and I acknowledge that sometimes there’s been a predilection to overstate the case.
But I also think that the change the F-35 represents from its predecessors is likely to be extreme, and that defence forces that haven’t operated this kind of system previously may need new, or at least different, ways of thinking.
That process unquestionably must encompass the wider discussion of strategy and national security. Critical considerations we (the West) seem to have overlooked for many years are: what can we do, what can’t we do, and what are our military comparative advantages?