Combined arms is a concept for air warfare and not just ground forces. Just as in ground warfare, a single plane cannot carry every different weapon and sensor, or perform every mission. Even a sophisticated "multi-role" aircraft can only perform one of those roles at a time and hope to do it well. A modern target may need to be hit by more than one kind of weapon: troops or softskins need area weapons like Rockeye. Hard targets need laserguided bombs. Really hard targets need BLU-109 penetrator bombs, and so on. If the target is defended by antiaircraft guns or SAMs, escorting aircraft will need to suppress them. Escorting fighters have to protect the heavily laden strikers from other fighters, and so on. These missions can be filled by different kinds of aircraft. The table below shows which aircraft might do the job for the US Air Force, Navy, the Royal Air Force, and possibly for the Russian Air Force. No other air arm has the number of different types of aircraft, and there is no indication that the Russians have developed the Strike Package concept They watched us in Desert Storm, however. A typical strike might consist of 8 or 10 F-111s attacking a supply dump. Since the dump will be heavily defended, 4 SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) aircraft, F-4G 'Wild Weasels, will slightly precede the strike. The enemy air defenses will also be attacked by two EF111 Ravens that will stand off and jam enemy radars. In addition to jamming air defense fire control radars, the Ravens will also blot out enemy search radars and jam communications. This will buy the strike time by preventing the enemy from knowing its exact location, and interfering with any fighter intercepts. Finally a flight of four F-15 Eagles will accompany the strike, close enough to come to its aid but far enough away to have some maneuvering room. Another, heavier strike might be nine or twelve B-52s attacking an area target like an industrial complex. Thse large, important aircraft would be attacking a vital target. In this case there might be as many as 8 F-4G Wild Weasels, with another 4 or 8 F-15E Strike Eagles ensuring that the air defense sites arc not just suppressed, but actually destroyed. Depending on the enemy's electronic order of battle, two EF-111s might be enough to screen the attack, or the force might be increased to four. This first pulse would be allowed to do its job before the bombers come in, a minute or two prior. Both the first group and the second would have fighter escorts four for the first and eight for the larger, slower bombers. The first group would stay on station for as long as possible, ideally until the B-52s have made their run and left. Hopefully, these examples illustrate how the package concept works. There are a few general rules that should be followed when assembling a package. First, attached aircraft: (Fighters, SEAD, and EIN) should always be assigned in pairs. Second, make sure that the ranges of the planes are compatible. For instance, don't use F-16s as fighter escort (perfectly all right for day clear-weather missions) for F-15Es or F-111s. They don't him the range. Also, don't attach aircraft unless they are necessary. Every plane assigned means another chance for detection and loss, even operational loss. It's also a plane that might be better employed elsewhere. The "standard" ratio of forces is 4/2/1/1 for strikers/fighters/SEAD/EW. Remembering the rules against using singles for attached aircraft, the actual plane count is 8/4/2/2. If only four strikers are going out, they must still be protected by the four fighters, two SEAD, and possibly two EW as well. A light air threat, such as later in Desert Storm, might justify reducing the escorts to a single pair, but it's risky. There is one case where using single aircraft will be appropriate. Stealth aircraft, the F-117 and B-2 Spirit, would always attack alone, although F-117s like to travel in pairs for flight safety if nothing else. F-117s might be used as an extended part of a strike package, maybe hitting a critical part of a target or destroying some vital link in the defenses several minutes before the rest of the package arrived. Other supporting aircraft are not a part of the package proper but are important to the success of the mission. Tanker aircraft, used both on the way in and the way out, are one component. A command and control aircraft, like an E-2, E-3, or E-8 would be very useful. They not only allow the commander to watch for enemy aircraft but allow him to monitor the progress of a raid spread out over a dozen miles at night or in bad weather. Missions and Aircraft Types Mission USAF Navy RAF Russia CAP F-15 F-14 or F/A-18 Tornado F3 Su-27 SEAD F-4G F/A-18, EA-6B Tornado GR.1 MiG-25 EW EF-111 EA-6B - Su-24 Strikers F-16 B-1 F-111 B-52 A-6E F/A-18 Tornado GR.1 Buccaneer Su-24 MiG-29 MiG-27 Su-22 Tu-22M Tu-160 Strike Package Follow-up Udbina, Croatia BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #1 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history and related articles are available at http://www.magweb.com