Defense Information And Electronics Report
August 27, 1999
Pg. 2

Experts: Retiring EF-111 To Give Jamming Mission To EA-6B Was A Mistake

The retirement of the Air Force's EF-111 Raven radar jamming aircraft was, in retrospect, a poorly-thought out decision made even more apparent by the strains put on the electronic warfare community during Operation Allied Force.

Experts said this week the Defense Department must now "clean up the mess" created by the Raven's retirement, which has left the Navy EA-6B Prowler as the only dedicated jamming platform for Air Force, Navy and Marine air combat missions.

The demise of the EF-111 was brought on by a planning and budget process that had "nobody at the table" to argue for jamming capability, according to retired Gen. Michael Dugan, former Air Force chief of staff. Dugan spoke Aug. 16 at a Washington, DC, forum sponsored by the Air Force Association.

"We made a serious misstep," when deciding to retire the EF-111, Dugan said, a decision process that he conceded occurred on his watch.

Others agreed with this perspective. The EF-111 retirement created a jamming deficiency over Kosovo, retired Royal Air Force Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason said. This limited capacity led to suppression of enemy air defense missions receiving a "disproportionate amount" of Air Force attack sorties, said Mason.

Jamming participants in Allied Force said recently there was no shortage of jamming capability over Yugoslavia because of the emphasis placed on that theater (Defense Information and Electronics Report, Aug. 13, p35). Jamming presence was pulled from other theaters, however, impacting the capability worldwide.

Without a jamming proponent, the role of multi-service jammer fell squarely on the EA-6B, which DOD has been scrambling to upgrade through radar enhancements, extensive wing maintenance, and other improvements as part of the ongoing Improved Capabilities-III program.

The upgrades are occurring while DOD is simultaneously moving to increase the size of the usable Prowler fleet.

There is too much emphasis placed upon particular platforms, like the EA-6B, and not enough upon broader capabilities, such as jamming, said Gen. John Jumper at the same forum. Jumper, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe, said the answer for the Air Force is not necessarily another dedicated jamming platform -- the service should focus on getting its aircraft in and out of hostile situations safely, and not be obsessed with what the successor to the Prowler is.

The Navy F/A-18E/F is viewed as the likely replacement to the Prowler in terms of a specific platform, although unmanned aerial vehicles or space assets are also possibilities to replace the jamming capability.

The decision to retire the EF-111 in 1998, although problematic, was not entirely without merit, according to Richard Aboulafia, military aircraft analyst for the Arlington, VA-based Teal group.

Even in the best of times, the Raven was "a terrifically expensive aircraft," and with the remainder of the F-111 fleet scheduled to retire anyway, the operations and maintenance costs for the remaining EF variants would have risen further.

Nevertheless, "it must have been a tremendous bean-counting culture to allow [the Air Force] to abandon their dedicated platform," he said. The emphasis upon stealth and the budget priority of the F-22 probably contributed to this situation.

The EA-6B Prowler did present DOD with a more diverse jamming capability, Aboulafia said. While the supersonic EF-111 was dedicated specifically to the Soviet radar threat, the subsonic EA-6B employs a more "generic" jamming capability better suited to a variety of missions.

-- Adam J. Hebert