Quality vs. Quantity. Do overwhelming numbers defeat superior technology?
At the start of WWII, many U.S. consumer factories were converted to the War effort. Raw materials for goods (e.g., rubber for tires) were transferred to War machine. At its manufacturing height, the U.S. was turning out the equivalent of one plane per hour and one ship per day. We could replenish war machines almost as fast as they were lost in combat. The U.S. replenished Israeli losses in the 6-day war whereas Russia could not the same for Egypt.
I archived a lengthy essay on this topic by defenseissues.net at http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Weapons_01.doc (or .pdf). The author’s conclusion was that Quantity beats Quality every day in the real world (while not so in paper and computer simulations). He also took into account the lengthy maintenance required before a high-tech plane can return to combat.
It makes one wonder why not commit a large number of low-tech (e.g., F-5) fighters to a mission whose combined cost would be less than that of a single high-maintenance aircraft. Now I see the reasons for drones that can be controlled by an attacking fighter. Make ’em cheap enough so that they can afford to be lost. Then you can overwhelm any anti-air defense. So much for the area-denial scenarios. You could even use them as kamikazes if they get damaged in battle. (I’m not addressing here how they can be controlled in a high ECM jamming environment.)
In the Falkland’s war, Argentina sunk one British ship because their number of attacking planes overwhelmed the ship’s defenses. I had read elsewhere that any ship is not impervious to air attack. It has only so many missiles that it can use to defend itself. Now granted, it would be very expensive to attack such a ship. You might have to launch 101 missiles to attack its 100 SAMs. And that’s assuming each SAM scores a kill which is VERY far from the truth.
(Note how a “kill” is defined. It is not the Hollywood version where a target is blown up. If a missile can prevent an aircraft from achieving its mission [e.g., inflict serious damage] and the plane has to return to its base, that’s counted as a “kill”. One time a missile lost its lock on a target plane and locked on instead to a weapon that was released from the attacking plane. It destroyed that weapon. That was also counted [erroneously in my opinion] as a “kill”.)
In http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Missile_01.doc (or .pdf), the same defenseissues.net author maintains that the Pk (kill probability) of any radar-guided anti-aircraft missile is woefully small and the IR-guided missiles are not much better. It has to do with the missile flying at high terminal velocities. Even their 25- or 50-g turn rates didn’t help these missiles score a kill the vast majority of the time WHEN the pilot knew where they were and employed evasive maneuvers.
I see now where they are adding thrust vectoring to some of these SAMs and AAMs to improve their performance. I think that a variable throttle missile (like in a liquid-fueled one) would be better. It could rapidly catch the plane and then slow down to match the plane’s evasive maneuvers. Someone would win a Nobel prize if he/she could discover how to make a solid-fueled engine be variably thrusted.
Along the same lines, a antiair missile’s warhead has explosives wrapped around a metal rod. When it detonates, the rod decomposes to hundreds of high-velocity fragments (flak). Problem is that it more-or-less goes in a spherical pattern, thus wasting a good percentage of the shrapnel. Could they invent a “directional” radar proximity fuze to confine the blast in a conical direction?
The same defenseissues.net author also posted another essay (http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Missile_02.doc (or .pdf) on how pilots are trained to avoid missiles. In computer simulations, SAMs and AAMs always high kill probabilities. But in actual combat, the Pks were very low. The key is knowing where the attacking missile is so that you can “time the overshoot” (assuming youhad the training). So much for the “no-escape zone” myth. If all this is true (and it apparently is), won’t BVR and WVR revert back to the days of dogfighting with guns since AAMs and SAMs are so unreliable when facing a well-trained pilot?
The conclusion by the defenseissues.net author was that in every recent major conflict, Quantity (including rapid replenishment) ALWAYS beat Quality (high-tech). Or in other words, manufacturing capacity beat limited high-tech numbers. (You might want to check out https://defenseissues.net/category/weapons/ . Also, I archived some other military-related essays at http://www.stealthskater.com/Military.htm .)
In the 1970s, the AV-8B Harrier used VIFF (vectoring in forward flight) to jump rather than slide into new flight paths which prevented sophisticated homing missiles and their guidance radars from locking onto them. “In combat simulations using VIFF techniques, the AV-8B outfought the Navy’s F-14 Tomcat in 6 out of 16 encounters, fought it to a draw in another 7, and lost only 3” (Arsenal of Democracy II, 1981, by Tom Gervasi). I’m assuming that those computer processors weren’t fast enough to track such an instantaneous “jump”. If that is correct, can today’s faster processors overcome such tactics?
Again from Gervasi’s excellent book: “… The most sophisticated stealth technique, of course, is that of destructive interference which reflects part of the radar wave from the aircraft’s surface coating and part from the material beneath it in such a way that the 2 sets of reflected waves will be out-of-phase. When this happens, the 2 sets of waves cancel each other out and no signal returns at all. The problem has been that a given coating applied to a surface material could only combine with it to defeat one specific band of radar frequencies (like the SR-71 Blackbird). While these materials might be prepared to conform to the bands most frequently used by air defense radars we may be planning to penetrate, a sophisticated air-defense system employs a variety of radar frequencies. Furthermore it is standard procedure to change a radar’s frequency while it is in use (frequency agile radar).
This problem has been overcome by developing plastic and resin coating materials laced with electrical which heat them and cause them to expand. Controlled by a computer that is part of the aircraft’s ECM power management system, the filaments automatically heat and expand the coatings to a predetermined setting which ensures that the radar waves used at any given time to detect the aircraft and whose frequency has already been analyzed by the aircraft’s radar receiver will be out-of-phase. … …”
Can modern stealth overcome monopulse (frequency agile) radar? One would think that it would take longer for the filaments to physically expand/contract than it would for the targeting radar to change its frequency. Wouldn’t traveling at high speeds cause air friction to expand the stealth skin? I’m hoping the engineers took that into consideration when designing the algorithms that control the expansion etc. I understand how the filaments could be heated to expand. But how do you cool them to contract? Expansion/contraction has to take time. Time enough for at least an AAM to lock on.
But I’m giving the talented engineers the benefit of the doubt here. Obviously it must work for so much money to have been spent in production. Maybe the stealth materials automatically revert to a default non-stealth state when they aren’t heated. Hence automatic ” cooling”.
I’m also not fond of the idea of having to use towed decoys. One would think that enemy radar operators would just have to aim a thousand-feet-or-so ahead of the return signal. (But it can’t be that simple.)
Off-topic, I’ve always been confused as to how our high-tech devices are “copied” by foreign nations. I’m sure that the Military and defense companies are smart enough not to store anything on their computers that can be hacked off the Internet. Surely they wouldn’t even be connected to the Internet in the first place. I assume any optical drives or USB connections could only be accessed by security personnel and not by individual engineers to safeguard against copying onto a DVD or flash drive. I would imagine that these machines are also enclosed in Faraday cages to prevent electronic eavesdropping. So how can any blueprints and plans be stolen???
If this isn’t the case, perhaps it’s time to go back to WWII days where we made some amazing ships and planes the “old-fashioned way” without any computers. Heck, NASA hasn’t come close (until very recently) to approaching the heavy lift capability of the Saturn-V after 50 years. (Although granted in those days, the IBM 360 mainframes were used so designs weren’t completely computer-free. I fondly remember my days as a Fortran and PL/1 programmer using punched cards. Those were the happiest days of my programming career.)
By: hopsalot - 18th December 2016 at 02:21
I guess my point is I don’t agree with the generalization of “the Germans were more advanced, they were just outproduced/fumbled too much with too advanced stuff”.
I agree as well. There were a couple areas where the Germans were undeniably ahead, the Me-262 and V-1/2 in particular, but that didn’t correspond to any general technological superiority.
The US/UK were well ahead of Germany in things like strategic bombers, radar, proximity fuses, and of course the atomic bomb.
By: swerve - 18th December 2016 at 00:10
Orly, Gloster Meteor, P-80 did not exist?
Meteor existed, but was inferior in many respects. The Me 262 had horribly unreliable engines & armament designed for killing bombers & lousy at hitting fighters – but lighter, higher m/v guns could easily have been fitted, & the worst problems with the engines (not the only ones, I know) were due to shortages of metals for alloying. If there’d been enough for the production engines to have the same grades of steel as the prototypes, the engines would have lasted much longer. And there was an alternative (albeit lower thrust & more expensive) alternative engine.
By: obligatory - 18th December 2016 at 00:03
I guess my point is I don’t agree with the generalization of “the Germans were more advanced, they were just outproduced/fumbled too much with too advanced stuff”.
yes, agree, but no matter if they maxed out their production capacity sooner,
its a non-starter to fight USA & Soviet Union at the same time, on a two front war.
guessing the allies could pit a bare minimum of 10:1 of everything in attrition,
-and just keep refilling all day long indefinitely
By: swerve - 17th December 2016 at 23:58
Every air force has hundreds or thousands of retired planes which can be reused immediately.
Nope. Retired combat aircraft are often scrapped. Ask the RAF how many retired Tornadoes it has which could be put back into service. The Harriers were all disposed of. And this is normal.
Even where aircraft aren’t scrapped, they usually can’t be used immediately. If you’re lucky, they’ve been stored in good conditions & need only a thorough overhaul – plus, perhaps, integration of new weapons which have replaced the ones they used to use. If you’re unlucky, they’re like the ex Soviet aircraft that pictures of used to appear, lined up at the edge of abandoned airfields, rotting, & probably not even fit for spares recovery.
By: TomcatViP - 17th December 2016 at 23:16
Well said (both post).
By: TR1 - 17th December 2016 at 23:07
Gloucester Meteor.
The tiger thing is a bit of a myth. There were very few Tiger v Sherman engagements (famous villers-bocage aside). Most Tigers were lost to air attack and breakdown, most shermans to anti-tank guns and pazerfaust on western front.
The difference is all the more stark when you look @ how much the Germans had to use rail to get their armor….anywhere even slightly long distance.
Meanwhile Soviet/American infantry had light and medium tanks for fire support in vast quantities all over the front.
They were on the cusp of introducing some very advanced medium/proto-MBT type designs as the war was ending as well (Pershing, T-44, etc). Much better ideas than German overweight monsters, and more technically advanced I would argue.
By: TR1 - 17th December 2016 at 22:56
nah…..Me-262 out-performed anything allies could dream of, let alone produce,
but what good did that do when bombers bombed anything that looked like a factory or airfield,
while P-51 were buzzing everything else. they couldnt even take off without getting shot at, neither could any pilot under training, the yanks had the resources to keep the sky littered with air power.
likewise with tanks, 1 tiger was destroyed in exchange for 5 shermans destroyed,
but the germans couldnt replace 1 tiger even, all the while yanks would churn out another 200 shermans next weekif anything, they spent far too much resources on research and wunderwaffen rather than mass produce what they had,
not that anything would have made a difference, -they were just outnumbered and out-produced in every possible way,
and had already taught their opponents the tricks
Orly, Gloster Meteor, P-80 did not exist? Sure Me-262 flew earlier, but flying earlier does nothing if your engines are terrible unreliable for years to come. The Jumo 004 had issues that no Hitler meddling/hands-off approach would have fixed.
Double the issue with the pilot training approach the Nazis took and the Me-262s impact was going to be limited either way.
But the issue I was more implying was their inability to make good replacements for early war material. The Allies introduced many examples of more advanced aircraft mid-late through the war. The Germans, due to a combination fo technical issues, lack of awareness, political infighting, and etc, really struggled to counter this. What was the most produced fighter in the “Emergency Fighter Program”? The BF-109, which flew almost a decade earlier! The FW-190 was pretty much the only aircraft that was not fundamentally pre-war, that Germany was able to mass produce in time. The replacements of the Bf-110, the Ju-88, the He-111, the list goes on and on….all stumbled and they had to reintroduce/maintain production of legacy designs well into the war even as the Allies technically surpassed them. The Wunderwuffen gets all the praise, but they flopped with the Grief, the Me-210/410, the Ju-288, He-219, the list goes on and on.
The Tiger is a bit different story, but I don’t see it as a prime example of “quality vs quantity”. Making a tank twice the weight, many times the logistical footprint, the man-hours and resources to produce, is not really technical superiority in my mind, just awful decision making. The USSR was far ahead with heavy tanks, they paused on their production on purpose, same with the United States and their heavy tank programs of 1942/43. There was a bit of a shock when they encountered so many heavy Germans (Panther included) post Normandy, but at the end of the day the choice was the right one.
Germans tended to over-engineer their vehicle as well.
I guess my point is I don’t agree with the generalization of “the Germans were more advanced, they were just outproduced/fumbled too much with too advanced stuff”.
By: TomcatViP - 17th December 2016 at 22:00
Qua – Li – Ty. Say it once again.
Yes, the Me262 was the most advanced fighter design of WWII. But it was neither reliable neither sustainable and did in the end achieve little. Period.
Ppl often Brag about the perched swarms of 51 forgetting that each of their pilots had to fly from England, cover a larger portion of airspace, were on their own (no radar coverage mostly) and time on station was short, resulting in the end of a near parity during engagement with often isolated section countering massed German units during the initial engagement.
And yes the conditions of worker and work environment are arguments regarding quality. You’ll never achieve something valuable with under-nourished, beaten or plagued by typhus worker* working in dusty, humid salt mines! BMW or Jumo turbojet had 8 hours max life time. DB605 20hours (wich was deemed largely enough given the under 10 hr lifetime of the airframe (accident and enemy fire)). The list is long.
Like I have said earlier, in the present example with the Me262 Vs the 51, the 51 was the quality one force. The Me262 was simply a more advanced design with promising intends. It was not sustainable neither durable. Think (again) of a 1970 USAF fielded with (Y)F-12 instead of F4 in Vietnam 😉
*As you discard so easily the enslaved argument
By: obligatory - 17th December 2016 at 21:38
*The thing was partially manufactured by slaves in horrendous condition FOR GOD SAKE!
is that an argument ?
Me-262 was significantly faster than any propeller driven fighter, even the lightweight P-51.
The only counter was to swarm airfields so it couldnt take off, and the yanks did just that.
an even bigger reason they didnt prevent bomb raids was that germany couldnt manufacture enough of them,
and by decree also emphasized offensive weaponry & research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4EASQJ0vJk
ed: and in case you didnt know, while P-51 had indeed qualitative features, like aerodynamics,
is was one of the cheaper US fighters, designed for mass production
By: TomcatViP - 17th December 2016 at 19:39
in case you missed it, the germans had far more advanced designs in late WWII, but, with the reduced numbers they could put in the air, they simply couldn’t handle the quantity of allied fighters that roamed their sky…
You are so appealed by jumping on everything I say that you didn’t even realize the profound stupidity of your words (and I say that because I trust more your aero knowledge than your intentions). P51 was all about quality. Me262 was a flying death trap. A marvelous peace of engineering but with zero quality*. Think about a today Ferrari build by a cooperation b/w 1970 Renault and Fiat!
*The thing was partially manufactured by slaves in horrendous condition FOR GOD SAKE!
By: Hotshot - 17th December 2016 at 15:27
Previously the idea was to call back veteran pilots both retired, working in civilian airlines or destined to other duties.
Now i didn’tknow if they are stillpossible to do it.
Former F-16A were for as an example sold to foreign countries and I didn’t know how much of stored MiGs are actually still in flying condition.
Production gap is probaly too great to cover it with stored planes and reserve pilots.
If you’re talking about the USAF, quite a few of As have been sold. I don’t know how many still remain.
Btw if the USAF upgrades 300 F-16s with AESAs, that would free up 300 APG-68s to possibly upgrade the remaining As, giving them substantial capabilities in a2a and a2g. For the F-15, it the F-15Es are upgraded with APG-82s, that would free up about 200 APG-70s for the old F-15As airframes.
By: Marcellogo - 17th December 2016 at 15:19
Well if the war goes all out new pilots would be rushed into combat ASAP, don’t expect them to be very well trained on both sides.
Previously the idea was to call back veteran pilots both retired, working in civilian airlines or destined to other duties.
Now i didn’tknow if they are stillpossible to do it.
Former F-16A were for as an example sold to foreign countries and I didn’t know how much of stored MiGs are actually still in flying condition.
Production gap is probaly too great to cover it with stored planes and reserve pilots.
By: Hotshot - 17th December 2016 at 14:54
Emh, not.
Ejection seat saves life but they often provoke vertebral compression fractures, it is not invalidating but need therapy.
Sometimes the pilot can be injured that’s right.
In any case, quality is not just a material thing: it enompasses also training, leadership,and operative doctrine.
During WWII the real advantage of Germans was about their cadre quality at all levels of the gerarchical scale and it lasted until the last days of conflict while the exceptional level of Japanese navy pilots was obtained thru a very long training and it backfired spectacularly after the Midway disaster as they were never able to recoverate the losses.
Well if the war goes all out new pilots would be rushed into combat ASAP, don’t expect them to be very well trained on both sides.
By: Hotshot - 17th December 2016 at 14:49
swarms will be made up of UAV, not old fighters, unless the old fighters are turned into UAV
5th gen planes make 4th gen planes more effective. It might be possible to convert them into UAVs though, not sure how easy to do it would be.
By: FBW - 17th December 2016 at 13:20
Emh, not.
Ejection seat saves life but they often provoke vertebral compression fractures, it is not invalidating but need therapy.
A problem exacerbated by HMS/HMD. Even though they weigh a few pounds more, that translates to a lot of pressure on the neck in an ejection.
By: Marcellogo - 17th December 2016 at 13:09
Every air force has hundreds or thousands of retired planes which can be reused immediately. They need at least a datalink to be able to communicate with the stealth planes, that would increase their effectiveness and survivability.
It may also make sense to keep some old dual seater planes in service in training squadrons to keep the pilots capable of flying them. The pilots could have like 50h of flight time on them per year plus simulator training. The ground crews could also get some training for basic maintenance. The plane would probably be shot down within 10-20 sorties, so there’s no need to be able to performed advanced maintenance.
Most pilots survive when their aircraft are shot down so they could be reused on another plane quickly. And if a pilot ejects, his JHMCS is likely not to be damaged. So if the retired planes are upgraded in advanced to use the AIM-9X, they could become potent in air to air, especially if the enemy is beginning to run out of BVR missiles. Modern decoys could also increase the survivability of the old planes.
So upgrade all the old retired F-15, F-16, F-18s that are still in flying condition with modern datalink, modern decoys and AIM-9X, and set up about 2 training squadrons with dual seaters for each type.
Emh, not.
Ejection seat saves life but they often provoke vertebral compression fractures, it is not invalidating but need therapy.
In any case, quality is not just a material thing: it enompasses also training, leadership,and operative doctrine.
During WWII the real advantage of Germans was about their cadre quality at all levels of the gerarchical scale and it lasted until the last days of conflict while the exceptional level of Japanese navy pilots was obtained thru a very long training and it backfired spectacularly after the Midway disaster as they were never able to recoverate the losses.
By: FBW - 17th December 2016 at 13:02
nah…..Me-262 out-performed anything allies could dream of, let alone produce,
but what good did that do when bombers bombed anything that looked like a factory or airfield,
while P-51 were buzzing everything else. they couldnt even take off without getting shot at, neither could any pilot under training, the yanks had the resources to keep the sky littered with air power.
likewise with tanks, 1 tiger was destroyed in exchange for 5 shermans destroyed,
but the germans couldnt replace 1 tiger even, all the while yanks would churn out another 200 shermans next week
s
Gloucester Meteor.
The tiger thing is a bit of a myth. There were very few Tiger v Sherman engagements (famous villers-bocage aside). Most Tigers were lost to air attack and breakdown, most shermans to anti-tank guns and pazerfaust on western front.
By: obligatory - 17th December 2016 at 10:57
swarms will be made up of UAV, not old fighters, unless the old fighters are turned into UAV
By: Hotshot - 17th December 2016 at 10:19
That depends on how they’re protected when they’re stored. If they don’t intend to reactivate them for sure they don’t don’t take much care of them.
This one is probably an F-16A, they use special coating on them. Note that they removed the engine. The engines are probably stored somewhere to avoid corrosion.
Anyways, what would you propose to increase the numbers, what could be built easily in large numbers to saturate the enemy? That sounds hard to do!
By: TooCool_12f - 17th December 2016 at 09:48
Every air force has hundreds or thousands of retired planes which can be reused immediately. They need at least a datalink to be able to communicate with the stealth planes, that would increase their effectiveness and survivability.
er, USAF set aside, you won’t find many air forces that have hundreds of retired airframes that may be reused on short notice.. maybe the chinese (don’t know how they handle older designs), and maybe another few airforces using large numbers, say India, and maybe russia… and that’s about it… all others retire aircraft in small numbers at the time and pretty much all of them don’t have nice dry deserts at their disposal to store airframes without them being covered with rust in no time…
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December 16, 2016 at 4:08 pm
