The Navy’s new air-to-air capability could set roadmap for repurposing old systems - July 16, 2024
- Jul 15, 2024
- 2 min read
July 16, 2024
In this op-ed, Mackenzie Eaglen and Cole Spiller of AEI lay out why the Pentagon shouldn't be so quick to retire old technologies in favor of newer ones.
"The Pentagon regularly sacrifices the fleets and inventories of the services on the altar of the high-tech future when the reality is that the military is a constant blend of old and new. Whether it be drone swarms, cutting-edge laser weapons or next-gen hypersonics, DoD planners have never seen an expensive technology of the future they didn’t want to pursue. And while the Pentagon absolutely needs to be on the cutting edge of military technology, this frequently results in the familiar refrain from Pentagon budget planners that to invest in the new, the military must divest from the old.
As a result, the department too often ends up in a rinse-and-repeat cycle of shedding outdated equipment to fund the innovations of tomorrow. The latest example is Air Force leaders’ desire to retire advanced F-22 stealth fighters in pursuit of the even more exquisite but far less certain, and distant, capability offered by the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. Also predictably, as the NGAD price jumped and timeline slipped yet again, some generals are in revolt, calling to keep the Raptors in hand versus NGADs in a (proverbial) bush.
The idea that something is old or vulnerable in war should not be enough to send it to the boneyard. Remember, every piece of technology often needs a “truck” to pair up with. In many cases, any old chassis, hull or airframe will do just fine.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the US Navy’s most recent tech game-changing capability, revealed without much fanfare at the Rim of the Pacific exercises: the AIM-174B missile, a modified version of the SM-6 missile for airborne launch, allowing it to target aerial, ballistic, and possibly surface threats at ranges of hundreds of miles, far outside the ranges of tens of miles offered by existing air-to-air munitions. And, the truck for this new tech is the fleet’s “legacy” F/A-18E/F, ensuring the 4th-generation fighter a key role on the future battlefield."
