In fighter procurement, there’s a concept known as the high-low mix: buy a small number of expensive fighters and a large number of less expensive fighter. The theory goes that it’s bad to be outnumbered and bad to be out-gadgeted, so mix the two together and mitigate the disadvantages of both¹.

There’s a similar paradigm in naval procurement, although the reasoning is different. Big, expensive surface combatants—your carriers, your Kirovs, your Burkes—are well and dandy, and indeed, are usually more capable than the equivalent tonnage of smaller things. They have an enormous and obvious drawback, though: physically, they can only be in one place at a time. Luchtburg has its ‘high’ platforms in its aircraft carriers², and it also has its ‘super-low’ local naval force³. What has been missing, up to this article, is a solid, dependable, light- to middleweight warship: an Oliver Hazard Perry for the modern age.

I’ve rather given up the game in the title, because, for a nation in the Americas, there is only one choice that makes any sense for worldwide sea lane influence: the FREMM, a French-Italian collaboration. Specifically, I’m talking about the Italian anti-submarine version. Over the French version, it has 900 tons, extra range and speed, room for a second helicopter, extra VLS tubes⁴, anti-submarine cruise missiles, a towed array, and a better radar. As I see it, a frigate⁵ has three major roles.

First, and most traditional, is the anti-submarine role. The Italian ASW FREMM is an extremely capable ship in this regard. Perhaps its most critical edge over other, similar options is the ability to carry two medium-lift helicopters. With their mobility, sensors, and immunity to counterattack, helicopters are extraordinarily important ASW assets, to the point where I dismiss out of hand any ASW ship without room for a brace of helos. Also important is a good towed sonar, and FREMM doesn’t disappoint. It has an advanced towed array from Thales, which has such exciting features as a separated transmitter and receiver array for working around layers, and low-frequency operational modes for longer active detection ranges.

Second, a ship operating by itself must be able to defend itself against air and cruise missile threats. The Italian version uses the Selex EMPAR radar, one of the class-toppers in the realm of passive electronically-scanned arrays for naval vessels, and the Luchtbourgish version carries thirty-two tubes⁶. As with all FREMMs, it supports Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles. As an added bonus, the latter has a dedicated anti-ballistic variant in testing, and already has minor anti-ballistic capability. Luchtburg’s FREMMs will come with standalone SEARAM launchers mounted on the foredeck and the hangar roof.

Third, a frigate must be able to attack other things on the surface, be they other seagoing vessels or land targets. The VLS, with its sixteen SYLVER A70 cells, can support cruise missiles, and the FREMM has eight cruise missile launchers amidships (the Italian version can launch anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine missiles, and land-attack missiles from the midships launchers). Further, for smaller targets, our FREMM variant mounts a pair of OTO-Melara rapid-firing 76mm guns. OTO-Melara produces a bunch of interesting ammunition for its rapid-firing guns, including an anti-ship round with IR terminal guidance, and a GPS/INS-guided land-attack munition.

1. I think. I’m not actually an expert.
2. And probably Arleigh Burkes or indigenous large missile destroyers, but I haven’t decided yet.
3. I’ll tell you later.
4. As equipped, it only has sixteen, but the Italians reserved room for another sixteen.
5. I’ll be using the European term for the FREMM, although calling a 6900-ton ship a frigate is patently absurd.
6. I would like more, but I don’t think it’s plausible to pack them in.

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…and their impact on its procurement policies.

Security and support for overseas trade
Luchtburg is a regional power, but a world economy. Its armed forces must be able to secure sea lanes worldwide, and more broadly, have the capability to position air and ground forces around the world on short notice, whether to provide security assistance for its less-stable trade partners, or to participate in coalition actions where such participation is merited. Luchtbourgish procurement therefore focuses on air and ground platforms with good strategic mobility, and on naval units with strong multirole and independent operation capabilities.

Counterweight to Brazil and other large South American powers
As a small, Central American nation, Luchtburg remains leery of Brazil and its peers (as well as the US, but Luchtburg can less readily be a counterweight to US influence in Central America). Luchtburg therefore considers it important to possess conventional ground and air forces roughly on par with Brazil’s, in both size and technology. This objective, in combination with Luchtburg’s other objectives, places strict constraints on ground forces procurement, a topic to come later. (It also recommends Gripen even more heavily, given that it’s cheap enough to buy a lot of, and definitely on par with Brazil’s Gripens.)

Keep its own house in order
Central and South America mean ‘drug trade’. Luchtburg is, with its mountainous and heavily-jungled interior, a major center for illegal drug production and shipment, and requires platforms capable of combating the cartels. Vehicles must be sufficiently lightweight and agile to perform well in the jungle, and helicopter-borne light infantry and long-loitering, low and slow close air support are also necessities. Also handy are HMMWV-alikes, 4×4 armored trucks with room for infantry in back for patrolling remote jungle roads between tiny villages perched atop mountain cliffs.

Finally, a few notes on Luchtbourgish armed forces organization. After acquiring navalized Gripens and aircraft carriers, the general staff decided that an independent air force was superfluous: the Luchtbourgish Naval Air Service operates Sea Gripens from land bases and carriers to fulfill land-based air defense sortie requirements, while the Luchtbourgish Army operates close air support aircraft as necessary. This neatly solves the ‘fighter mafia’ issue, where CAS, despite its obvious importance, particularly in asymmetric conflicts like the ones Luchtburg is likely to find itself involved in, is played down by an air force which sees it as unglamorous. The Naval Air Service is free to pursue aircraft and weapon systems which support its role as the 10,000-feet-and-up air force, while the Army has the budget and the political clout to keep dedicated air-to-ground platforms in service.

Luchtburg’s particular situation does have some thought behind it. Like any real place, its circumstances force it to look at some platforms which aren’t top-of-the-line, but do fit its requirements better. Gripen was one such platform. When I get to choosing ground vehicles, there will be some others. Up next, though, the hunt for a hunter for Red October. By which I mean a frigate, not submarines.

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Luchtburg, a reasonably wealthy country with limited strategic interests in its immediate vicinity¹, requires a robust array of aerial equipment. The lynchpin of any air force is its fighter type, and Luchtburg has a few specific constraints.

First, as a Central American power with trade interests primarily in Europe and Asia, it operates aircraft carriers². As such, any fighter it purchases must either be a naval fighter already, or be available in a navalized variant.

Second, it must be inexpensive to procure and operate. Luchtburg is reasonably wealthy, but is also in the midst of a 20-year, $200 billion-ish procurement plan, and savings on the operating costs of acquired hardware can be put into personnel or further hardware purchases.

Third, it must be a swing-role aircraft, capable of carrying out tasks which fit multiple roles in the space of a single mission.

Fourth, in terms of weapons carried, it must not be tied inextricably to a single bloc³. Luchtburg does not want to be like Iran in any way at all, but especially does not want to be like Iran by having fighters which require American arms after falling out of favor with America.

Fifth, it must be capable of buddy refueling. Carriers in Luchtburg’s inventory aren’t universally large enough to operate light tankers, and so fighters must be able to top off fighters.

Other capabilities and characteristics Luchtburg would like include proven combat performance, short and unimproved airfield performance, and fancy network and datalink capability, but these are points in favor more than their absences are disqualifying factors. Supercruise and supermaneuverability are nice to have, too.

There are five good candidates: Flankers and navalized Flanker variants from Russia, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet out of the good old US of A, the F-35A and C, also of the USA, France’s prized Rafale⁴, and the Gripen NG/E/F of Sweden.

The easiest candidate to discard is, I’m afraid, the F-35. The reasons are myriad: it’s extremely expensive, it’s unproven in combat, and its armaments load is very American. Further, there are tradeoffs Luchtburg doesn’t like. The naval variant doesn’t feature an internal gun, although it does feature larger wings and correspondingly improved low-speed performance, and the type’s focus on stealth yields compromises in weapons load which Luchtburg finds unacceptable. As far as the procurement mavens know, it’s neither supercruise-capable nor supermaneuverable.

After discarding the F-35, the going gets harder. Next up on the chopping block is the entry from Sukhoi. Navalized Su-35s hit a lot of the capabilities Luchtburg wants, but also feature a lot of the downsides. Russian aircraft are notoriously expensive to operate, hard on fuel and hard on parts, as well. Russian avionics, though much improved from those dark days of the Cold War, still lag somewhat behind their Western counterparts, especially in aerial radars. Although Flankers mount Russian weapons almost exclusively, Russia is willing to sell arms to just about anybody, so that factors less into the decision.

Next to be crossed off the list is the Super Hornet. Here, it starts to get very hard. The biggest point against the Super Hornet is its absolute dependence on American support. Luchtburg hopes its policy goals never preclude its purchase of AMRAAMs, but it’s impossible to say that will certainly be the case. In every other category, the Super Hornet is average or above average, but in the absence of a native air to air arms industry, Luchtburg can’t go with the F/A-18E.

If Luchtburg were to go with a two-fighter procurement plan, the Rafale would be its heavy fighter. Agile, proven, carrier-capable, and able to haul quite a lot off of even Charles de Gaulle-sized decks, it can also mount weapons from both Europe and America, and has cockpit and pilot workload features Luchtburg also finds intriguing. Unfortunately, Dassault has no experience successfully exporting the Rafale, and the unit cost, in the $100 million range, is too high for Luchtburg to call it the one fighter for every occasion.

That leaves us with the victor, the JAS-39E/F Gripen. Now purchased by Brazil, the next-generation Gripen is one launch customer away from a naval variant, and Luchtburg is more than happy to continue operating its obsolescent air force until such time as Saab begins to roll out the Sea Gripen. A Sea Gripen variant would no doubt improve on the Gripen’s already-impressive short-field performance, and given that it’s not all that much bigger than an A-4 Skyhawk, it would be a suitable fighter even for miniature carriers. In initial procurement cost, it’s the second-cheapest behind the Super Hornet, and far and away the least expensive to operate⁵. It fits the swing-role descriptor, capable of carrying a wide variety of munitions at once. Variants can already mount American and European equipment, and Saab’s willingness to open the aircraft’s avionics source code to partners puts the armaments possibilities at essentially limitless, especially for a high-tech economy like Luchtburg’s. Gripens use a probe and drogue refueling system, and therefore have the technical ability to buddy tank.

It’s supercruise-capable, designed to operate from highways and unimproved airstrips, and features a datalink equaled in current service only by the F-22’s datalink. Perhaps most important of all, Saab has, in the past, been willing to offer technology transfers and even co-production, which would serve to kickstart Luchtburg’s own native air industry. Finally, Saab is a known quantity in the export market, trustworthy and reliable.

In the end, the Gripen is (though it pains me to say) not the most combat-capable aircraft on my list. For Luchtburg’s purposes, it is, however, the best fit for the requirements, militarily, politically, and economically.

1. That sounds like a post for sometime down the line: what are its specific aims? I’ll put it on the stack.
2. Luchtburg’s navy is also a post I need to write, but probably after the one about strategic aims.
3. The US, Europe, and Russia, for the purposes of this discussion.
4. Yet another piece of military hardware whose name means ‘squall’.
5. It is a small, single-engined fighter in a pack of large, twin-engined fighters, after all.

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As parvusimperator has his Borgundy, so I do I too have my own little fake country for questions of procurement and geopolitics. Luchtburg, named after an old NationStates country named after a setting for a story I have yet to write, is a Central American Prussian successor state¹.

Geographically, it’s a small country north of the Panamanian isthmus, about two hundred fifty kilometers from end to end, with both Atlantic and Pacific coastlines. The terrain is mountainous and heavily jungled, and population is centered on the coastlines. Transport links between the coastlines are limited; with Panama being a near neighbor, the difficulty of improving rail links over the mountains hasn’t been all that important since the canal opened. Several highways cross the mountains.

Economically, Luchtburg is high-tech services and finances and as such quite wealthy. Local heavy industry is limited to shipbuilding, so outside of naval buys and small arms, Luchtburg is a major defense importer.

Strategically, Luchtburg has two main geopolitical concerns. First, it desires to counterbalance regional powers such as Brazil². In pursuit of this goal, it needs conventional armed forces capabilities superior to theirs. Second, it desires to participate in stability maintenance operations in regions where it has trading partners, primarily Europe and Asia, and as such it needs a robust amphibious, naval, and naval air capability. Although it is wealthy, it isn’t a large enough economy to spend willy-nilly, so ideally, defense systems it acquires should be able to be used in pursuit of more than one strategic aim.

That’s about all you need to know for now. The first which-is-it-gonna-be article from me will be on fighter aircraft.

1. We never claimed this game was at all plausible.
2. Brazil! *fistshake*

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