I’ll tell you about the war between the Air Force and the Navy for the F-35Bs
What happens between the Air Force and the Navy on the F-35Bs. The analysis by Silvio Lora Lamia for SviluppoDifesa , the newspaper directed by Gianandrea Gaiani
It's funny, but it's also a little painful, to see how some former Air Force and Navy Chiefs of Staff fight over the issue of short take-off and vertical landing F-35Bs. And how instead the current leaders of the two armed forces exchange (only) formal certificates of esteem and understanding for their respective prerogatives.
The brawl, because we are at this, between the Blue and the "Blue" weapons for the delivery and use of the short take-off and vertical landing specimens of the Joint Strike Fighter , is actually hurting both.
DELIVERIES OF F-35B
Deliveries of -B take place with a dropper compared to the less complex and expensive conventional version -A, an effect of a planning that the delays of the pandemic are making even more penalizing for both armed forces.
THE SLOW DOWN OF ORDERS THE PLR CASE
As for the returns from participation in the program, the slowdown in orders imprinted three years ago and the very recent turnaround (now they must be accelerated; see the DPP 2020-2022) certainly do not do well for the industrial plans of our companies engaged in the supply of components to the prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
BETWEEN AERONAUTICS AND MARINA
The Air Force continues to have (and will have for at least another year) only one Stovl, used this summer for a demonstration sortie in Pantelleria; the Navy will have to wait until 2024 to put three, perhaps four F-35Bs on the Cavour aircraft carrier, obtaining an Initial Operational Capability (are so few planes enough?) that was originally scheduled for last year, and with more aircraft.
THE FOURTH F-35B IN CAMERI IS READY
The fourth F-35B, destined for the Navy, has been ready for delivery for months in Cameri (it will arrive in January); a fifth will follow at the end of next year, and it is already a round of betting on its recipient. The dripping continues, unprecedented in our country in the supply of such important military material.
THE TENSIONS
The aviators and sailors with wings have never understood each other, in Italy as elsewhere. If Padre Pio, receiving a pious delegation of touring pilots many years ago, spoke of "heavenly skies and terrestrial skies" as a whole, here the sky is divided in two. In this warhead we have told about the blows that the British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy exchanged when they put together the Joint Harrier Force. In the end, the blue aviators took the scepter, using those planes, conceived for amphibious use, from land runways.
THE STOVL
This is what the Italian Air Force has always thought to do with its 15 Stovls, which on our islet 58 nautical miles from Mazara del Vallo has set up a first general test of their expeditionary skills, it seemed to the usual ill-thinkers nothing more than a propaganda move.
SHIPMENTS
The historic hangar of Pierluigi Nervi and the two runways (the longest of 1,650 meters) also saw all the variegated paraphernalia that is needed for the overseas "expeditions" of the American attack aircraft arrive from the Peninsula. Equipment and support personnel who, the admirals bitingly observe, on their aircraft carrier engaged infinitely farther on the other hand are permanently there.
THE THESIS OF THE AERONAUTICS
Champion of an all-terrestrial expeditionary concept, the Air Force strongly argues that with the little money that our Governments allocate to Defense, the aerotactic lines must be primarily, if not exclusively, its prerogative: what do we do with an aircraft carrier and its planes if we can replace it? The Navy ca va sans dire, does not want to be substituted by anyone, and points out that for the fifth generation Stovl-type fighters the priority in deliveries has been assigned to it by the government.
THE BREAKDOWN OF 30 F-35Bs
The same Solomonic distribution of the 30 F-35Bs (15 at the AM and as many at the MM) in the end does not satisfy anyone: there are few for the two ships equipped to embark aircraft carriers (in addition to the Cavour there is also the LHA Trieste) and they are insufficient for the Arma Azzurra, which in (its) future Joint group would also like to be able to use the F-35s of the admirals. It also seems impractical to alternate the command of this flying group with an aviator and a sailor as someone has proposed.
INCOMPATIBILITIES
The incompatibility of character between the two armed forces regarding the use of fighter planes is ancient, and is only the tip of an iceberg weighed down by antithetical conceptions and even "pseudo-racist" attitudes, such as when one calls "illiterate aeronautical ”to a squad admiral that the AV-8B Harrier II managed them in war. When we say "joint spirit"….
WHAT THE NAVY SAYS
The Navy, recently through the words of its Chief of Staff, Giuseppe "Pino" Cavo Dragone, speaks – already acting in these terms for some time – of an "enlarged Mediterranean", of operations in wide-ranging scenarios such as the Persian Gulf triangle- Red Sea-Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Guinea and the western Pacific, as part of allied missions to contain Beijing's military pressure in the Indo-Pacific. Projection operations, explains the Navy CSM, which require advanced naval, aircraft, amphibious and missile assets (including for deep strikes).
CONCLUSIONS AND SCENARIOS
The Air Force does its job, the Navy the same. In the two cases, it is a question of defending the national skies (and also of other NATO countries) and projecting the necessary force to preserve the interests of the country and to continue to do what the military fleets have been doing for centuries, that is, in addition to defending their own nations, even take their "face" away. Ours is that of a medium-small power immersed in the sea, which to remain so cannot renounce being also a maritime power. Possibly average.
(Article published on analisidifesa.it)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/vi-racconto-la-guerra-tra-aeronautica-e-marina-per-gli-f-35b/ on Sun, 29 Nov 2020 08:15:01 +0000.