In early November, the Air Force put out a solicitation to industry for ideas on the next-generation aircraft to replace the F-22 around 2030. Specifically designed to counter the growing “anti-access/area-denial environment that will exist in the 2030-2050 timeframe,” its primary mission would be “counter-air” – destroying or neutralizing the enemy’s ability to control the sky.

A true multimission aircraft, it would provide missile defense, air interdiction, and close air support and counter anti-access systems, such as passive detection, integrated self-protection, directed energy weapons, cyber attack, and other electronic warfare and sophisticated air defenses. Other desired assets would include greater reach, persistence, survivability, situational awareness, weapons effects, and “human/system integration.”

In early November, the Air Force put out a solicitation to industry for ideas on the next-generation aircraft to replace the F-22 around 2030. Specifically designed to counter the growing “anti-access/area-denial environment that will exist in the 2030-2050 timeframe,” its primary mission would be “counter-air” – destroying or neutralizing the enemy’s ability to control the sky.

The need for such further advances is almost entirely in response to changes and developments by the Chinese military, as it works on its own fifth-generation stealth aircraft, but also ways to counter current U.S. air superiority.

“The PLA is also expected to continue development of anti-access – what China would refer to as ‘counter-intervention’ capabilities,” Ulman concluded. “Long-range aerodynamic systems, longer-range conventional ballistic missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles are all under development. As time progresses, the ISR, the C4, and the procedures will be developed and refined – giving the PLA the ability to hold at risk all classes of targets in the western Pacific and South China Sea.”

While both Russia and China claim to be on the verge of fielding fifth-generation fighters – which, by definition, would incorporate stealth – both have placed their short-term emphasis on anti-access strategies, which include – but are not limited to – counter-stealth systems.

Russia, for example, is said to be installing new, longer-band radars on their newest-generation Sukhoi fighters. Both they and China also are experimenting with bistatic radars and signals analysis – that is, finding the “hole” a stealth aircraft might create while flying through the vast array of radio waves bounding around the Earth.

Despite years of effort in designing counter-stealth systems and weapons, both nations face one seemingly insurmountable obstacle: Everything they develop is purely theoretical.

Since DARPA began developing stealth technology in the 1960s, the only true stealth aircraft in existence have belonged to the U.S. Air Force – which means no other nation has been able to test any countermeasures against the technology they seek to counter.

“Long-range and bistatic solutions have been around for a decade or more, but their effectiveness is still classified. As a result, you can’t believe what you hear from those trying to sell touted solutions or convince the U.S. they have something,” according to Teal Group senior analyst David Rockwell. “Undoubtedly there are ways of testing without having real aircraft, but there’s no way to really tell how well those tests reflect real-world operations.”

Even if Russia or China is able to field even an F-117-level stealth aircraft by 2020, the United States will have accumulated nearly 40 years of stealth operational experience, which almost certainly will include designing and testing counter-stealth technologies and counter-countermeasures – and doing so against at least four generations of different operational approaches to stealth.

However, the United States is imposing the same level of secrecy on counter-stealth it has imposed on stealth itself, including denying the existence of such a capability for nearly a decade after the F-117 first took flight.

“People who know aren’t talking – and people who are talking really don’t know,” Rockwell said.

Since about the middle of World War II, the United States has dominated every airspace in which it has conducted combat missions. Even the most advanced Russian aircraft and anti-aircraft systems have fallen rapidly when operated by third parties, such as Iraq.

“I think if we ever fight an actual near-peer competitor, there will be some trade-offs, with the technological ability there to defeat stealth to some degree. Certainly it is not radar invisible, but one of the big questions is who you are trying to deceive? That’s a lot easier with the countries we’ve been fighting recently, where stealth really isn’t necessary,” Rockwell noted.

“I don’t know what countries out there are near-term competitors whom we really are likely to fight in the next 20 years. China comes up, but they are not now truly near-peer. Nations that feel threatened by stealth, whether they can build their own or not, probably are working hard to defeat stealth. Can China do that? I imagine they can decrease the capability of an F-22, but can they do that to the extent that would be a real problem? I don’t know.”

With no other nation likely to challenge the United States in combat expected to have a viable stealth fleet nor countermeasure capabilities proven against actual stealth aircraft for at least 10 and probably 20 or more years, American F-22s and B-2s, along with U.S. and allied F-35s, would seem to ensure a continued air combat edge.

However, the real threat to U.S. air superiority is twofold: Long-range strike capability against U.S. carrier fleets and land bases beyond the range of USAF or USN aircraft – stealth or otherwise – and a potential lack of sufficient stealth aircraft or basing options to handle a prolonged near-peer engagement.

Many of the 2,900 legacy non-stealth aircraft in the U.S. combat fleet will remain in service for another decade or two, but only the current fleet of 20 B-2s and 187 F-22s have sufficient true stealth capability to survive a modern Integrated Air Defense System (IADS).

While the planned buy of some 2,400 F-35s through 2035 are nominally stealthy, design changes during the program’s system development and demonstration (SDD) phase are said to have significantly reduced its stealth “shaping.” As a result, the production model provides true stealth chiefly against head-on detection, while the F-22’s design provides a significantly reduced radar signature from all angles.

“The Joint Strike Fighter has a complex lower fuselage shape as well as a wing and fuselage lower join shape, unlike any other aircraft designed with stealth in mind,” according to an analysis by Air Power Australia, a defense think tank. “The result of this design choice is that the beam/side aspect radar cross section will be closer in magnitude to a conventional fighter flown clean than a ‘classical’ stealth aircraft.”

But Chinese strategy appears geared toward an anti-access plan that ignores U.S. aircraft capabilities and instead goes after the smallest American Navy since World War I – and still shrinking – and a decreasing number and size of airbases outside U.S. territory. In short, anti-access in Chinese doctrine extends well beyond China’s borders and shores to deny the enemy an opportunity to launch an attack.

In the January 2011 issue of Joint Force Quarterly, published by National Defense University Press for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USAF Lt. Col. Michael P. Flaherty, a deputy director for Intelligence at the National Joint Operations and Intelligence Center, analyzed “The Chinese Air Force Contribution to Antiaccess.”

“These include advanced and extended range air defense, air-to-air and precision-strike … command and control [C2] and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance [ISR] … as well as force projection enablers, such as aerial refueling, airlift and logistic capabilities,” he wrote. “Full development and informationization of these capabilities, coupled with dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum, could enable the PLAAF, in conjunction with other arms of the PLA, to hold carrier strike groups at risk, deny or disrupt regional airfields, bases and logistic nodes and deny airspace over or near Chinese territory or forces.

“Evolving PLAAF precision-strike capabilities add another layer of anti-access competencies to deter, disrupt or deny regional bases, as well as naval surface and carrier operations. These include upgraded aircraft that can employ modern precision ordnance, including anti-radiation missiles, air-launched land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles and a variety of television, laser and GPS/GLONASS-guided precision munitions. These last include ‘bunker buster’ munitions that can be employed in long-range access-denial attacks on hardened targets, such as aircraft shelters and command and control bunkers at regional bases beyond China’s periphery – for instance, Kadena Air Base [Okinawa].”

For now, China’s still nascent aviation industry has only a limited ability to provide the components and enabling technologies required to support and sustain such long-range strikes. That is where the Chinese concept of informationization – digital common network linkage of information, sensors, weapons, and automated C2 systems – comes into play, extending Chinese situational awareness while denying those same capabilities to opponents. It also has driven PLAAF efforts to control the electromagnetic spectrum.

“By 2006, the Department of Defense assessed that ‘China’s investments in advanced electronic warfare programs had given the PLAAF technological parity with or superiority over most potential adversaries,’” Flaherty wrote. “Seizure of electromagnetic dominance via ‘integrated network electronic warfare’ is envisioned in the initial phases of any future campaigns. This approach is conceived by PLA theorists as electronic, computer network and kinetic strikes to ‘disrupt and deny network information systems that support enemy warfighting and power projection capabilities’; in other words, access denial.

“The PLAAF has made significant progress in integrating its anti-access capabilities in doctrine. PLAAF operational planning increasingly reflects doctrinal principles that integrate current weapons systems while anticipating the best ways to employ developing offensive-defensive capabilities in air campaigns. Three of these principles are clearly relevant to employing these capabilities in support of access-denial strategies: (1) Seize the initiative through offensive operations; (2) Concentrate force at the decisive points; and (3) Tight defense.”

While China has not yet fully coordinated these efforts into the level of multilayer anti-access desired, significant progress is being made at all levels – especially planning for the destruction of enemy aerial force projection capabilities (airborne warning and control system, aerial refueling tankers, airlift and combat aircraft) before they can be employed.

“These air strikes would closely follow Second Artillery missile strikes or PLAN [navy] strikes and would occur in conjunction with electronic warfare [jamming] and computer network attacks and potentially attacks from and against space-based infrastructure. The Science of Campaigns (2006) describes a potential scenario where the PLAAF takes the lead in attacking enemy air bases and aircraft carriers,” Flaherty noted.

“Missiles, ‘antiradiation UAVs’ and electronic jamming attacks are employed against air bases and early warning radars, followed by air strikes on command and control centers, runways, parked aircraft and fuel depots. Continuous missile and air strikes are then concentrated in time and space to ‘annihilate enemy air capabilities’ and achieve air dominance.”

While this approach to anti-access essentially would negate U.S. stealth capabilities in a conflict with China, Flaherty notes it would be even more damaging to U.S. force projection worldwide should China share them with regimes hostile to the United States.

“While these capabilities cannot yet defeat current U.S. capabilities, they are still significant. They represent incremental progress in narrowing the gap to eventually deny, disrupt, delay or neutralize U.S. forces, bases and sustainment infrastructure already in the region and prevent follow-on forces from entering the region,” he concluded. “They could eventually extend China’s active defense options to regional entry points.

“Ultimately these PLAAF capabilities serve as elements of a modest but relentlessly improving deterrent to U.S. intervention in the region by increasing the cost of such intervention to unacceptable levels. As these capabilities and doctrine mature, U.S. forces and bases in the region will be increasingly vulnerable to Chinese access-denial capabilities, requiring further efforts to enhance survivability, redundancy and standoff capabilities in order to maintain the ability to project and sustain power in the Pacific.”

This article first appeared in The Year in Defense: Review Edition, Winter 2011.