Air Defence in Northern Europe
Air Defence in Northern EuropeTHE CURRENT SITUATION AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS
Finland
The current peace-time organization of the FAF is as follows:
Headquarters, Tikkakoski
Lapland Air Command, Rovaniemi
- 11 Fighter Wing
Satakunta Air Command, Tampere
- 21 Fighter Wing
Karelia Air Command, Kuopio
- 31 Fighter Wing
All three Air Commands are identical in their organization, consisting of a headquarters, a control center with radar and air surveillance network, an aircraft repair shop, a signal repair shop, a logistics center and a staff company in addition to the fighter wing itself. The base system consists of main bases and alternative standby bases, including road bases.
- Support Squadron Tikkakoski
- Air Force Academy Kauhava
- Air Force Signal School Tikkakoski
- Air Force Technical School Halli
- Aircraft Depot Tampere
- Test Flight Center Halli
- Signal Depot Tikkakoski
- Signal Test Center Tikkakoski
The peace-time complement is about 4500 persons, and the total number of aircraft is about 200, including 60 fighters and 54 BAe HAWK fighter trainers. The wartime strength is about 30 000 persons. The majority of the reservists belong to the optical air surveillance and air base systems, both covering the entire country, or to the anti-aircraft units. The latest equipment modernization cycle has been concentrated on the air surveillance and control system and the fighter fleet.
A renewal of the long-range radar equipment has just been completed, in which the old Marconi system was replaced with the new French Thomson CSF 3-D long-range system. The Finnish-made middle-range radar devices of the late 1970s are now experiencing their first update modification cycle, and the first new gap-filler radar devices, Swedish Ericsson Giraffes, have been purchased. The air base approach radar systems, which are part of the air surveillance and control system, are now of the new British Plessey Watchman design.l1
The modification cycle of the control centers is almost completed, so that these are now based on network-type data transfer, allowing a fighter to be intercepted in northern Finland under control from a center in the south, for instance.
The largest modernization project to come to the public eye has been the renewal of the fighter fleet of Draken and MiG-21 Bis aircraft, which are reaching the end of their technical service life and are also becoming operationally obsolete in a rapidly developing international technological environment.
This had been part of the FAF’s long-range planning from the early 1980s, and the program commenced officially in 1989, when the first replacement candidates were named. A very comprehensive specification was drawn up and the first contacts were made with possible suppliers, Saab for the JAS 39 Gripen, Dassault for the Mirage 2000-5 and General Dynamics for their F-16. Since the bilateral trading agreement between Finland and the Soviet Union was still in force at that time, one further candidate, the MiG-29, was considered for purchase under that arrangement.
During the evaluation period McDonnell Douglas and US Navy informed the Finnish authorities about a possible fifth candidate, the F/A-18 Hornet, which had originally been regarded as too expensive. This additional information placed it in the same category as the others in terms of total cost structure, and once the parliamentary defence policy committee had recommended that, for reasons of economy, the new fighters should all be of the same type and the entire purchase should be made as a one deal, the Hornet was included in the competition and a quotation was requested from the McDonnell Douglas Company. The evaluation was carried out in two phases: flight performance and controllability test flights on the manufacturer’s premises and radar and weapons system test flights in Finland in winter with identical FAF target patterns. Maintainability availability and other cost calculations, together with negotiations over industrial participation, were carried out alongside the tests by the various specialized groups. The request was made for 100% offset purchases, and every candidate supplier was ready to accede to this.
The eventual decision was made in the late spring of 1992, and the final formula for determining the outcome, after a massive data processing operation, was quite a simple one:
PERFORMANCE/TOTAL COST (including both purchase price and the life-cycle costs).
Performance was evaluated in the context of a typical mission: in winter, at night, a scramble take-off from a road runway, air surveillance and target acquisition, interception beyond the visual range, a dogfight, break-off, navigation to base, landing, rearming and refueling. The various parts of the mission were weighted differently, of course, with beyond visual range (BVR) interception ability by far the dominating factor.
The clear winner in the competition proved to be the F/A-18 Hornet, which was successful in all areas, its BVR capability and firepower with an AMRAAM AIM-120 missile load being especially impressive. Cost factors were also favourable, since economy of scale had proved its worth, given high production figures and a large user family.
A Letter of Intent was signed on 6th May 1992 and the offset agreement on 19th May 1992. The government made its purchase decision on 4th June of the same year, and the Letter of Acceptance was signed on 5th June. Thus the massive evaluation and negotiation task had been carried through in three years. There were two things in particular which gained respect in the international feedback: adherence to the preplanned schedule, and completion of the type selection process without any media leaks. The key to success lay in the detailed, comprehensive specification, which had demanded a great deal of effort at the time but subsequently effectively eliminated any loose ends or extra iteration cycles.
The total package included 7 two-seater F/A-18 Ds and 57 single-seater F/A-18 Cs with the new AN/APG-73 radar, new and more powerful F404-GE-402 engines, plus AMRAAM AIM120 radar missile and Sidewinder AIM-9M infra-red missile armament. The two-seaters were delivered directly from McDonnell Douglas and were flown from St. Louis to Finland in November 1995 and February 1996, while the F/ A-18 C fighters and their engines are being assembled in Finland by Finavitec Ltd, formerly Valmet Aviation Ltd. The first delivery was made in summer 1996, and they will continue in the same pace as the older fighters are withdrawn from service, so that the entire fighter fleet will have been renewed by the year 2000.
The doctrine of the FAF has been streamlined by both its war experiences and its peace-time resource limitations. Air superiority, or rather the ability to deny the adversary air superiority, was put forward as the most important factor for the protection of strategic targets and for front line operations, and thus air combat capability is priority number one among the various alternative mission areas.
On the other hand, Finland has never invested in defence at the expense of other governmental responsibilities, in fact the contrary has tended to be the rule, so that the resources available for defence have traditionally been modest. There is one benefit that has arisen out of this; that the limited resources have allowed no margin for political speculations and have created a long-range stability which has enabled continuous upward progress to be made. This in turn has been an important contributor to the morale and motivation of the personnel. In any case, any attempt to build up a miniature superpower air force with such resources would have led to ineffective assortments of aircraft types and mission priorities, whereas by concentrating the system entirely on the most important mission it has been possible to build up a force which also has some quantity effect in that specialized field. This simplifies both training and material administration and development, and dictates certain clear-cut priorities for recruiting. The pilot selection system recruits a new pilot group each year, on a ratio of one to every 40 - 50 applicants. They all are selected and trained as fighter pilots, backed up by a small supporting cadre of former fighter pilots. Individuals with a background as a fighter pilot also make up a considerable proportion of the ground controllers.
One fairly original feature of the FAF are the fact that the fighter wings operate two aircraft types. This both improves pilot training and reduces the overall costs. Every fighter wing also has a Hawk squadron, which gives new pilots full air combat maneuver training after their basic and advanced training at the Air Academy and before they move on to the fighters. At the same time, this arrangement permits continuous air combat training with different types of aircraft, the "Red Flag" being carried on the wings on a daily basis within the fighter squadrons. The instructors in the Hawk squadrons, being qualified fighter pilots themselves, can quickly show the newcomers the correct air combat principles and alternatives.
The Finnish Anti-aircraft System can be divided into two components: the control system and the weapons system. The control system is integrated nationwide, and information passes to and from between the air force control centers and posts and the anti-aircraft control and weapon units. Fire control on a resource and safety basis is the responsibility of the air force within the air defence fire control system, and basic shooting techniques and tactics that of the regimental control centers in the strategic target areas and the battalion control centers in the army units. The key functional components are the air surveillance system, the air situation display system and the communications or signals system. Tactical management follows the operational order of battle.l8 The weaponry consists of gun and missile systems, which are categorized into close-range, medium-range, or target protection, and long-range, or area protection systems. The antiaircraft system comprises all of these components at present, and most of them are modern.l8
The Commander of the Air Force is responsible for the air defence of Finland. In effect, he wears two hats:
- In the Defence Staff he is the Air Defence Commander and the Commander-in-Chief’s air specialist, who handles the deployment of air defence and anti-aircraft assets nationwide within the strategic target structure, the air commands and the military commands.
- As the Commander of the FAF he has his headquarters, operations center, air commands and the rest of the organization to maintain peace-time operational readiness, training and material functions and to execute the Air Force’s mission in wartime.
The commanders of the air commands work in cooperation with those of the military command to coordinate air, ground and naval assets and use them at the right time and in the right place according to mutually and jointly prepared plans. The Inspector of Anti-aircraft Defence at the Defence Staff is responsible for the materials development and the training of anti-aircraft troops in all branches. He is an assistant to the Air Defence Commander at the Defence Staff.
There have been no radical changes in expectations regarding air defence in Finland. The majority of the air surveillance and control system has been modernized, and the program will continue by building up redundancy in the sensor and data transfer systems.
The new fighter fleet will remain in service for many decades after the turn of the century- One of the benefits of the new Hornet system is the user family’s common philosophy of continuous updating of the fighter. The two-year cycle of new operational computer programs guarantees continuous availability of the latest weapons, electronics and other systems. The look-down shootdown capability and the BVR fire-and-forget firepower, able to handle the cruise missile and multi-target environment, are, of course, the main assets of the new fighter. But the overall multi-role versatility of the aircraft also is most important.
The post-war Achilles’ heel of Finnish air defence has been the lack of systems for offensive counter air operations. Even now, for economy reasons, only air defence weaponry was purchased. From the systems standpoint, however, the situation is now entirely different. Extensive, time-consuming modifications would have been needed earlier in order to install new weapon systems in fighters, but now the Hornet system is immediately ready to use a wide variety of specified stand-off missiles ideally suited for offensive counter air operations. Thus the achievement of a rapid, marked improvement in the overall effectiveness of the fighter system is now only a question of money and not of systems capability.
The Hawk fighter trainer will obviously be fitted with a new, more durable "combat wing" in the early 2000s, and some kind of mid-life cockpit update is possible after another twenty years or so, but before that a small number of support planes of various kinds and about 30 elementary trainers will be replaced with new aircraft types.
The organization is rationalized by transferring the fixed wing aircraft of the transport squadron from Utti to Tikkakoski, and will be combined with the reconnaissance squadron to form the support wing. The helicopter squadron stayed in Utti, and became an army unit.
In the anti-aircraft sector the ItO-79 area protection missiles are becoming obsolescent, and a preliminary survey of potential replacements has been carried out, showing that appropriate alternatives could be found from several sources. There was one financial advantage, combined with system performance, which tipped the balance in the direction of the Russian BUK-M1 system, namely Russia’s debt to Finland, inherited from the era of bilateral trading, which amounts to about 8 billion marks, a certain small proportion of which has been earmarked for offsetting against arms supplies. Russia has a long tradition as a developer of a multitude of anti-aircraft missile systems, so that this system in any case represented the best choice for the defence forces. Also, the above funding solution allowed the old system to be replaced ahead of schedule, delivery taking place at present.
Latest Topic | Air Warfare | Symposium '98 | Fighter Tactics | Fighter Aircraft | Missiles | Fighter Aviation Topic | Fighter History | Warbirds | News Links | Current News | Links | Physiology | Photo Gallery | Bibliography | SIIVET - Wings | What's New
J Lindberg. Copyright © 1997-2006 Fighter Tactics Academy. All rights reserved.
Revised: tammikuu 01, 2006.
