Does Australia have a bomber gap?

In the 1950s US Government officials and sober strategic analysts argued that the United States suffered from a “bomber gap” whereby the Soviet Union supposedly possessed a superior force of strategic bombers.

In Australia we are told today that we face a similar “bomber gap” in that we may soon lose our main “strategic strike deterrent”, the F-111, without a suitable replacement until the arrival of the Joint Strike Fighter. The bomber gap controversy is worth reflecting upon because it places focus on the role of strategic deterrence in Australian national security policy.

The first bomber gap was known to be a fraud. In fact at the time we now know that then Strategic Air Command chief, General Curtis LeMay, even sought to use intelligence flights over the Soviet Union, in order to provoke a preventive nuclear war in a sort of mad Dr Strangelove scenario, without the knowledge of his superiors in Washington. He could do this because he knew that the bomber gap was real: it was the Soviets that had a bomber gap. You are reading this because Moscow did not take the bait. They had a bomber gap after all.

Could our bomber gap be equally mythical?

The F-111 has had a controversial history in Australia right from the moment that the Menzies Government procured the aircraft from Washington. The deal was conveniently hatched up during the run up to the 1963 election and the concerns about Sukarno’s policy of “Konfrontasi” were more a cover than anything else.

The F-111 was presented as a bomber that was able to strike targets in Indonesia. But really, Menzies sought to use “national security” in order to reverse the results of the knife-edge 1961 “credit squeeze” election. The more things change the more things stay the same it seems.

The F-111 is due for retirement. The Government, as part of its huge shopping cart purchase of high technology offensive weaponry, would like to replace it with the Joint Strike Fighter. It was envisaged that the F-111 would remain Australia’s main “strategic strike deterrent” up until the arrival of the JSF, but Canberra has concerns about the continued structural integrity of the aircraft and seeks an interim replacement. It has chosen the F/A18 Super Hornet which has left airpower advocates in Australia unhappy. They would like to see the F-111 (if not also the JSF) replaced with the F-22 Raptor. 

It is argued that the Super Hornet is way inferior to the F-22 and cannot match the new generation Russian fighters appearing in the South-East Asian region, hence we are suffering from a “bomber gap”. Their real agenda is to ditch the JSF in favour of the F-22 and keep the F-111 in the meantime.

The Government argues that when loaded with external bombs for strategic missions the F-22 loses many of its cutting edge advantages and is too expensive, and probably won’t be sold to us by Washington anyway. The debate therefore proceeds, illegitimately, along very narrow grounds.

In any assessment of a “strategic strike deterrent” force we are concerned with analysing the ability to deliver a certain class of weapons against a certain class of targets in order to deter a certain type of action.

The debate on the bomber gap in Australia is so poor that rarely are these fundamental parameters assessed. Most of the focus goes on just the capabilities of the aircraft.

In all three cases (JSF, Super Hornet, F-22), bomb wise, the main explosive punch will come from 1,000 pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that are dumb bombs turned smart bombs using Global Position System satellites for target accuracy.

But by contrast the JSF and the Super Hornet can deliver the 2,000 pound GBU-24/B laser guided bomb, which has a hard target penetration capability, hence giving them more bombing capability than the F-22 but the burden even in these aircraft will fall on the 1,000 pound JDAM. The old F-111 has the virtue of being able to carry the 5,000 pound GBU-28 (here is a graphic slide show of the GBU-28), the main conventional bunker buster in the US arsenal, so really on this measure the F-111 trumps them all.

It should be stressed, lest all this talk of the explosive power of conventional bombs impresses us unduly, that this conceals the fact that the whole concept of “strategic strike deterrence” comes from nuclear deterrence theory. It would be completely illegitimate to throw around terms like this as if they automatically apply in a conventional context for nuclear weapons are unique in their effects. But let us follow the lead of the airpower advocates and try anyway.

With nuclear deterrence the main class of targets are urban-industrial concentrations, nuclear facilities and forces, and hardened command and control bunkers for decapitation. This is a quaint phrase referring to knocking out the command centres or command “brains” of an enemy. If you have this ability then one’s potential opponent, assuming rationality, would be deterred from engaging in war because they realise that they could not have command co-ordination over their forces, especially in a political system that places stress on centralised leadership.

JDAMs would be able to knock out individual urban-industrial targets and hardened above ground command and control facilities but would not be able to knock out certain classes of hardened command and control bunkers; a task for which the GBU-28 has limited capabilities depending upon the depth of burial (up to a max of 100ft of soil and 22ft of reinforced concrete) and the construction (cut and cover types) of the bunker.

Despite all this a small force of deliverable JDAMs (in effect no F-111 means no GBU-28) and even less GBU-24s would not be able to achieve decapitation. Despite possessing absolute air superiority NATO forces during Operation Allied Force were never able to destroy the Yugoslav Army’s integrated air defence command, a key objective. That is, they did not even decapitate the air defence command let alone national command authorities.

So, no matter what “bomber” we have we would not be able to decapitate anybody in the region. This would be the most potent deterrent we could theoretically have. By the same token again and again the ability to hit urban-industrial targets with conventional bombs has rarely ever achieved deterrence and has never proved decisive in war. Air power can be decisive not in the context of strategic bombing but rather when used for close air support in land battles.

In fact, the whole focus of matching aircraft type with aircraft type in assessing deliverability of weapons is also wrongheaded even on its own terms. In the age of network-centric warfare the side possessing superior battlefield situational awareness achieves military superiority. In Australia’s case the possession of the Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar and the Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control System will give Canberra this superior situational awareness and hence regional air superiority. This applies even in the case of the much lampooned F/A 18 Super Hornet and F-111.

There is no “bomber gap”.

But what would an Australian bomber force actually deter? An outright invasion of Australia is laughable. The combat radius of these aircraft, even with aerial refuelling, makes them limited to bombing sorties in our immediate region, but not northeast Asia at any rate.

Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia or Alfredo Reinado cannot even remotely invade Australia.

There are two other relatively more likely contingencies that would be of concern. The use of a limited raiding strategy against us in the remote resource rich north or the emergence of state sponsored terrorist infrastructure on the Taliban Afghan model.

In the first case the use of strategic air power would be counter-productive. It would limit Australia’s ability to muster international support in the appropriate international organisations and would limit diplomatic options to terminate the crisis on terms favourable to us.

Airpower would be of most use in such contingencies as a means to provide decisive firepower in support of light highly mobile land forces. This would be an instance of deterrence by denial rather than deterrence by punishment, a key distinction.

In the second case of state supported terrorism our bombing capability would be seen as reflecting a doctrine of pre-emptive if not preventive war. The problem with this is that it smacks of Bill Clinton’s standoff Tomahawk Cruise Missile strike strategy when dealing with al-Qaida. These strikes did not deter or prevent 9-11 and in fact, may have actually precipitated the 9-11 plot. The same would apply in similar regional scenarios. The alternative, of regime change, is not in Australia’s military capabilities. Besides, regime change in Afghanistan has not prevented the emergence of al-Qaida training camps in the Pakistan border region. Terrorism is a political not military problem.

The best strategy for Australia here is to keep a low profile and thereby prevent us from becoming a target in the first place. The purchase of a whole raft of military hardware in order to become inter-operable with the United States military in the Middle East is really part of the problem, not the solution.

Which ever way you look at it not only do we not have a “bomber gap” but also the whole idea of a limited “strategic strike deterrent” reflects poor strategic thinking. For a country like Australia alternative concepts of security such as common and co-operative security backed up with deterrence by denial would always be much better than alliances and deterrence by punishment.

In fact if we combine “strategic strike deterrence” with uranium enrichment then the regional strategic consequences of decisions taken now could really home come to bite us hard in the future.