Пишут, что Пентагон не готов к новой Холодной войне. Я канешна не верю в тучи Т-50, которые затмят небо, но тем не менее.
For half a century, Cold War military strategy focused on containing Russia and winning in clashes between large conventional forces. On the ground, that strategy called for mass formations organized around tanks and heavy weaponry. In the skies it relied on dominance in Top Gun style style air-to-air fighting prowess, radar evading stealth technology, and powerful bombers that could drop massive munitions to destroy enemy armor and fortified installations.
Since the end of the Cold War, that strategy has been completely overhauled. Training and doctrine have focused on small unit tactics while new weapons and vehicles have been designed with squads in mind rather than divisions. Super-sophisticated dogfighters, like the $187 million-a-pop F-22, suddenly seemed too fancy to actually use. Instead, drones costing less than a tenth the price littered the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq.
But those drones are useless against any military with a half-decent system for shooting down enemy aircraft. And Russian has one of the best air defenses on the planet.
“Hopefully the situation with Russia and Ukraine will be a bucket of cold water on those who believe all we need to be able to do is counter-insurgency operations,” Deptula told The Daily Beast.
And now, there are signs that the U.S. Air Force’s long-held technological advantage may be eroding.
The new generation of Russian fighter plane, the T-50, isn’t yet fully operational but it “will be produced much sooner that Gates and his crowd predicted,” Deptula says. He adds that “once the T-50s are produced in sufficient numbers there won’t be anything in the NATO fleet that can deal with them except the F-22s and F-35s.”
David Axe, the long-time military tech writer notes that the T-50, which can fire long-range missiles while flying both high and fast, may be able to “exploit critical vulnerabilities in U.S. and allied forces and level the air power playing field for the first time in a generation.”
An independent Australian think tank, Air Power Australia, drew a more severe conclusion. “If the United States does not fundamentally change its planning for the future of tactical air power, the advantage held for decades will be soon lost and American air power will become an artifact of history.”
While Russian aircraft rely on speed and long flight times, the U.S. fleet is largely built for stealth so it can evade detection and anti-air weapons to engage targets at closer ranges. But the stealth capability, is now being challenged by advances in Russia’s radar detection platforms and anti-aircraft weapons.
“Today,” Deptula said, “the Russians have an extant significant advantage in their surface to air capabilities.” And that with the exception of the U.S.’s small number of highly advanced 5th generation aircraft, “the Russians can conduct area denial of any airspace within range of their defenses if they want to deny access to aircraft.”
Since 2001, the Pentagon has had good reasons for prioritizing spending for troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan over speculative needs for future wars, but a consequence has been that we now have what Deptula calls “a geriatric Air Force and Navy fleet.”
No one, not even Deptula, is suggesting that there’s about to be some all-out showdown between Moscow’s military and Washington. But it’s possible that in the future American forces and allies could wind up in skirmishes with proxies equipped and trained by Russia. The U.S. used to be able to count on an overwhelming technological advantage. Tomorrow, maybe not.