0218-DG-Defnews-Asian-Fighter
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ASIA FIGHTER REVIEW Asia Fighter Review Singapore shops for new platforms as part of Air Force transformation BY MIKE YEO ly completed taking delivery of 40 Boeing F-15SG [email protected] Strike Eagle multirole fighters, which serve alongside other aircraft and helicopters such as MELBOURNE, Australia — The Republic of Sin- Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 52/52+ Fighting gapore Air Force celebrates its 50th anniversary Falcons and Boeing AH-64D Apache helicopter this year as it continues its transformation into gunships. a modern fighting force, with the service due to The Air Force will also start taking delivery of take delivery of new platforms this year amid a the first of six Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker number of ongoing procurement programs. Transports, which will replace four ex-U.S. Air The Southeast Asian island nation — which Force KC-135 Stratotankers acquired in the late measures roughly one-third the size of the U.S. 1990s along with five Lockheed Martin KC-130B/H state of Rhode Island in terms of land area and Hercules tankers/transports, which have now is strategically located at the southern end of the gone back to serve as airlifters in Singapore’s Air Straits of Malacca, through which a significant Force alongside five C-130Hs. portion of the world’s maritime trade passes — The service is also expected to receive two is a security cooperation partner of the United Lockheed Martin S-70B Seahawk anti-submarine States and operates one of the most advanced helicopters this year, bringing its fleet to eight. militaries in the region. It is also recapitalizing its transport helicopter The Singaporean military is transforming itself fleet with the order of the Airbus Helicopters into an integrated, networked fighting force, and H225M Caracal medium-lift helicopter and the the Air Force is no exception. The service recent- Boeing CH-47F Chinook to replace earlier ver- Other ongoing procurement programs include sions of both helicopter types. Their delivery the acquisition of new maritime patrol aircraft is expected to begin around the 2019-2020 time to replace five Fokker 50 Maritime Enforcer Mk frame. 2 aircraft that have been in service since the late Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin is upgrading the 1990s, along with the replacement of the Air Republic of Singapore Air Force’s fleet of 60 F-16s Force’s 10 Hercules transports. The Boeing P-8 under a contract signed in 2014. They will be fitted Poseidon has been flagged as a possible contend- with the Northrop Grumman AN/APG-83 Scalable er for the former requirement, though sources Agile Beam Radar, which is an active electronical- close to the program tell Defense News the Air ly scanned array radar, and Link 16 data links. The Force prefers a less manpower-intensive solution, F-16s will be expected to serve until the 2030s. with business jet-based platforms such as Saab’s Due to a shortage of airspace for training, 12 Swordfish or Israel Aerospace Industries’ IAI EL/I- of Singapore’s F-16s are based at Luke Air Force 3360 also in the running. Base in Arizona for training in a mixed squadron Both offerings are based on the Global Ex- of personnel from the Singaporean and American press-series of business jets. Saab says the Sword- air forces. fish offers similar capability to the P-8 at a frac- A similar arrangement is in place for F-15SG tion of the operating cost. crew training at Mountain Home Air Force Base Singapore also operates four Fokker 50s in its in Idaho, while Singaporean Apache and Chinook baseline light transport/utility configuration along- crews train with their National Guard counter- side the Maritime Enforcer 2s, but it’s unknown if parts in Arizona and Texas, respectively. there are plans are in the offing to replace these. Upcoming procurements Despite undergoing an upgrade program to Singapore has a reputation as a discerning buyer bring its avionics to a modern, fleetwide common of military equipment. The country has evaluated cockpit configuration that will allow the fleet to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike operate in line with international aviation require- Fighter, with particular interest in the F-35B ments, Singapore’s fleet of C-130B/H Hercules short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing, or STOVL, airlifters will likely need to be replaced soon. variant although it has requested information on The oldest aircraft ― two ex-U.S. Air Force and a all three variants of the F-35, according to former number of former Jordanian C-130Bs ― were built F-35 Joint Program Office head Lt. Gen. Christo- in the late 1950s and early 1960s and have provid- pher Bogdan. ed sterling service since they were acquired by With its limited land area and the upcoming clo- Singapore’s Air Force in the 1970s. sure of one of its three fighter bases, the STOVL Both Airbus and Lockheed Martin have been variant would offer Singapore the ability to gen- marketing the A400M and C-130J respectively erate air power even in the event of a successful in Singapore, even though the Air Force there strike on its runways. However, Singapore’s de- has given no indication it plans to replace the fense minister, Ng Eng Hen, has said that despite venerable Hercules. However, with the C-130Bs being impressed with the F-35, the country is in approaching six decades of service, a search for no hurry to place an order given the Air force sees a replacement would surely take on an increasing no need for a new fighter until the latter half of urgency. DN the 2020s, at the earliest. Asia Fighter Review The F-35 could help create a defense architecture across the Asia-Pacific region roponents for the F-35 Joint collection, fusion and dissemination Strike Fighter have long insist- of actionable intelligence; and the Ped the aircraft would funda- employment of the most appropriate mentally transform air combat and unit of action across multiple do- ensure U.S. and allied dominance of mains. the air domain for decades to come. Ongoing combat exercises and The evidence is proving the truth of tests have demonstrated that the this prophesy. F-35’s combination of stealthiness, At last year’s Red Flag exercise, maneuverability, sophisticated elec- the F-35A racked up an impressive tronics, active and passive sensors, 15-to-1 kill ratio, targeting hostile battle management software, and air targets before they were even advanced data links will make it a aware of the Joint Strike Fighter’s Senior Vice President key enabler in all of these emerging presence. The JSF also was able to DANIEL GOURE concepts of future warfare. locate and attack advanced surface- The Lexington Institute According to pilots that have par- to-air threats with pinpoint accu- ticipated in numerous simulations racy, blowing holes in hostile air and experiments, the F-35’s abilities defenses through which non-stealthy aircraft can to penetrate further, see more clearly, assess advance. Equally important, the F-35 can act as a faster and directly distribute information to other forward-deployed intelligence, surveillance and aircraft is overturning the traditional top-down reconnaissance platform, employing its advanced approach to the management of air operations. As sensors to multiply the effectiveness of older air- one U.S. Air Force officer described the potential craft in air-to-air combat. for change this way: “If you rewrite rules of en- As the U.S. military acquires the F-35 in numbers gagement to reflect how fifth-generation aircraft and learns how to exploit its unique attributes, can sense, fuse, share and act on information, the services are discovering the aircraft’s poten- it enables us to delegate decision-making from tial to enable entirely new ways of organizing, much higher levels down to individual cockpits. integrating and employing their assets alongside That’s all because we’re seeing the same picture joint and coalition forces. Each service has differ- ent names for its concept for future operations: Multi-Domain Battle, Multi-Domain Command Equipped with extremely and Control, Distributed Lethality, Naval Integrat- high-speed missiles or a laser ed Fire Control-Counter Air and Maneuver War- fare in Every Dimension. weapon, a forward-deployed What these approaches have in common is a F-35 could provide a limited focus on the creation of resilient networks of sen- boost phase defense. sors, platforms and weapons systems; the rapid Defense News: Asia Fighter Review defensenews.com | 4 Asia Fighter Review and able to operate in places others cannot.” mobile sensor in support of theater air and missile What should be of particular interest to U.S. defense. allies in the Asia-Pacific region is the potential There is even the possibility that the F-35 could for all the F-35 variants to support air and mis- directly engage short- and medium-range ballistic sile defense operations. The U.S. Navy is work- missiles. Equipped with extremely high-speed ing hard to make the F-35 a central player in the missiles or a laser weapon, a forward-deployed architecture for its Naval Integrated Fire Con- F-35 could provide a limited boost phase defense. trol-Counter Air. In 2016, the service successfully The U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps demonstrated that the F-35B could serve as a plan to acquire more than 2,000 F-35s. In the forward-deployed sensor for the Aegis ballistic near future, all three variants will be present in missile defense system firing a Standard Missile-6 the Asia-Pacific region.