Generational change

These include all-aspect stealth (while retaining fourth generation performance), Low Probability of Intercept Radios and Radars (LPIR), and integrated avionic systems that provide an unprecedented level of situational awareness and support to decision making by the pilot. Overall, the avionics systems in the fifth generation F-22 and F-35 are nothing less than revolutionary.

First generation fighters were typified by the F-86 and MiG‑15 day fighters of the Korean War, which relied on the Mk 1 eyeball and possibly a ranging radar for guns.

Second generation fighters included the Century series (F-101, F-102, F-106, etc), which emphasised speed at the expense of manoeuvrability and relied on air intercept radars and (relatively) longrange air-to-air missiles. The war in Vietnam demonstrated the fallacy of this approach, so third generation designs (F-4, early F-16) reintroduced manoeuvrability and guns.

Fourth generation aircraft like the F-15, F-16 and F-18 provided great advances in manoeuvrability, but continued the traditional approach of using onboard systems that were under the individual control of the pilot.

A fundamental break with that approach is one of the revolutionary features of the fifth generation F-35, on which the five major combat systems automatically interact to present the pilot with an optimum solution. In other words, the pilot does not have to determine which system is providing the best information in any given set of circumstances.

Consequently, one of the issues the RAAF will face with the F-35 will be cultural. There will need to be a change of mind-set towards tactics and tasking. Military organisations are by nature conservative and resistant to change. For example, when RAAF ex Mirage pilots planned their first Hornet deployment to Malaysia, cultural conditioning saw them ask for communications and navigation/SAR support. It was pointed out that the Hornet had two engines, HF radio, and an inertial navigation system, and suggested that perhaps they should just get on with it! Integration of the RAAF’s Wedgetail AEW&C systems into tactical scenarios will also challenge cultural norms. As the ‘eyes’ of a fourth generation force, AEW&C aircraft are a high value asset and could be subjected to enemy one way operations to take them out. Fifth generation fighters, however, would not need to rely primarily on data derived from AEW&C.

Used in a honeycomb formation, each fighter becomes a command node and each pilot a potential battle commander.

The loss of individual aircraft would not significantly degrade the enhanced situational awareness of the whole.

Some critics of fifth generation fighters have asserted that the RAAF would be better off with a fourth generation aircraft fitted with various levels of fifth generation avionics, leading to the term ‘4. 5 generation’. But this reveals an ignorance of contemporary air combat. As one qualified military pilot has wryly observed, the pilot of a 4. 5 generation opposed to a genuine fifth generation fighter would simply know who’d shot him down! It is the nature of warfare that there is no such thing as a ‘silver bullet’, and any system will require development over its lifetime. Thus, F-35s delivered in 2030 will have superior systems to those delivered in 2020.

Russia and China have recently fielded prototypes of fighters with external stealth characteristics. While it is relatively easy to assess those characteristics through observation, it is much more difficult to assess the synchronisation of all systems to generate integrated situational awareness within a stealth airframe. The level of technological advances in allaspect stealth, LPIR, and fusion of on and off-board systems in those aircraft is unknown.

Nevertheless, we must assume that over the next decade Russia and China will make advances with such systems.

Recent open source material has raised the possibility of the development of sixth generation fighters, for fielding around 2035. Characteristics include speeds above Mach 3, multispectral stealth, ubiquitous situational awareness, advanced target recognition, long range, and persistence. The question arises: Is technology driving development, or is our imagination driving technology? The fact that sixth generation fighters are under consideration could indicate that the fifth generation will not be the last manned fighter. If so, development of the necessary balance between manned and unmanned systems will be an important discussion with significant implications for future air combat.