Defense Focus: Iron Man lessons -- Part 3

WASHINGTON, May 23 (UPI) -- The first reaction of millions of American kids -- and American dads who are still kids at heart -- on seeing the super-hit movie "Iron Man" is that top gun ace fighter pilots of the U.S. Air Force must have almost the same weapons systems and cool speed and powers of genius arms designer Tony Stark and his amazing armor.

Obviously, U.S. combat aircraft and those of other nations can fly as fast, be as maneuverable and carry far more powerful weapons than even Iron Man in his amazing armor. Their electronics are just as cool, too.

But fighters and fighter-bombers of the U.S. Air Force and of advanced nations are different from Iron Man's armor in two fundamental respects: They are vastly bigger and they don't have armor -- or at least not remotely as much.

The sobering fact is that modern weapons designers around the world, in the air, at sea and even when it comes to the design of modern infantry transport vehicles, most notably the dire U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle, have consistently neglected the issue of armored protection for decades.

In the air, there is a very simple reason for this: Air Force generals in the United States and most other nations loathe putting heavy steel or modern alloy armor on combat aircraft to protect them and their crews because then the speed and range figures are not remotely as impressive.

Also, one of the most important roles of air power is as tactical close ground support to the operations of land forces. The Nazi Luftwaffe with its precision Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers demonstrated this in the blitzkrieg conquest of the European continent from September 1939 to September 1942, when the Nazi tide of conquest finally reached its eastern limit in the Soviet Caucasus region and at Stalingrad.

However, close ground support aircraft are extremely vulnerable to ground fire. The United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan suffered very heavy attrition in their close support combat helicopters, and deaths from helicopter crashes are the third-largest cause of U.S. deaths in the current conflict in Iraq. They are the leading cause of deaths in Afghanistan. It should be added that in Iraq and Afghanistan, those casualty figures include crashes not caused by hostile action.

The outstanding ground support aircraft of all time was the legendary Soviet Ilyushin Il-3 Sturmovik. More than 35,000 of them were built. Yet even the Sturmovik suffered thousands of losses from ground fire during its first years in action. Losses were greatly reduced once the underside of the aircraft's fuselage was armored in alternate versions. The tradeoff in speed turned out to be well worth it.

Armor is obviously by no means a panacea for everything. The British Avro Lancaster four-engine strategic heavy bomber had no armor protection at all and therefore could be used only in night bombing raids over Germany through World War II: Even then, its losses were very heavy.

The legendary U.S. Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was exceptionally heavily armored for any aircraft of its generation, but this didn't prevent very high losses from German fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft defenses during the daylight air battles over Europe.

However, for close ground tactical support, nothing beats a relatively slow, armored and heavily armed flying workhorse. The classic example of this in modern U.S. combat history has been the Fairchild-Republic A10 Thunderbolt, or Warthog. But the Air Force never had any love for the A10, and just looking at it explains why. The A10 is slow moving, ugly and ungainly. Flying it is like riding to war on a tough old carthorse rather than on a prancing Thoroughbred stallion.

Now, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is being designed to supersede the A10 in its tactical ground-support role. But, as we have noted in previous columns, the F-35 has not been designed for the dangerous, difficult and complex ground superiority mission. The armaments it will carry are conventional air-to-air weapons.

The F-35 will not carry the A10's formidable GAU-8 cannon. It cannot carry the armored protection of the A10 either and therefore will be much more vulnerable even to ground-directed small-arms fire. And most important of all, the F-35 is going to be just too fast to accurately target the ground forces and dug-in fortifications it will have to hit in its tactical support role.

The "Iron Man" movie inadvertently teaches this lesson, too; Iron Man is most lethal not when he is soaring through the skies at thousands of miles per hour, but when he has landed on the ground, he is looking for bad guys and he is in a bad mood.

Popular movies and comic book superheroes are not supposed to teach real lessons in procurement and combat tactics. But wherever it comes from, wisdom is still wisdom.

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Next: Iron Man's lessons at sea