Secrecy Is The Enemy Of Readiness
Just as perfect is the enemy of good, sometimes secrecy is the enemy of readiness.
F-22
The F-22 is artificially limited in its performance during training exercises out of fear of revealing too much about its capabilities.
F-22 pilots may be restricted from flying the F-22 the way they would fly it in combat -- due to security concerns about exposing the F-22's unique capabilities," the report said. "These restrictions limit the value of the exercises and can result in pilots developing bad habits, according to Air Force officials. (1)
On a related note, this may be an explanation for those occasional stories about foreign aircraft/pilots who claim to have defeated F-22s – along with the desire by the American military not to embarrass foreign militaries during training exercises.
For many years, the Air Force refused to commit the F-22 to operational missions – missions which would have yielded vast amounts of actual performance data. F-22 IOC was declared in 2005 but the first combat sortie did not occur until 2014 in Syria
Secrecy has crippled the ability of the Navy to evaluate the Virginia
Because Navy security rules prevent the ability to collect useful operational test data from Virginia Virginia
Refusing to test against a primary threat because of secrecy concerns is insane.
B-2 Bomber
For many years, the Air Force refused to commit its B-2 bombers to operational missions – missions which would have yielded vast amounts of actual performance data. The first B-2 was delivered in 1993 but the first mission did not occur until 1999 in Kosovo.
Electronic Warfare
The US military has many electronic warfare (EW) platforms and the Russian’s Ukrainian and Syrian involvements would seem to offer an excellent opportunity for some real world EW testing but, so far, we seem to be withholding much of our EW capability although it has been noted that EC-130 aircraft have been ‘disrupted’ over Syria. EW is an area that is very difficult to find definitive information on so, to be fair, it’s difficult to determine the exact extent to which our EW is, or is not, being actively employed. However, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that we are greatly throttling back our EW other than monitoring Russian performance.
Conclusion
While there is a strong argument to be made for secrecy, if it is taken to the extreme where we don’t even know how our systems perform then it’s been taken too far.
Another key point is that there are very few real secrets anymore. Cyber hacking by Russia, NKorea, Iran, and China has been so successful that attempting to preserve ‘secrecy’ is probably pointless. The benefits of actual testing now far outweigh the dubious preservation of secrecy.
As an example, when the F-117 was developed the Air Force kept it under tight wraps, refusing to even admit its existence until it was used in Desert Storm. At the time, this was probably appropriate and effective. Today, however, the Chinese are probably seeing our F-35 technical data in near real time! Thanks to the Internet and proliferation of networks, the days of physical isolation of a secret platform being able to ensure secrecy are long gone.
We need to start vigorous, real world testing and find out what works and what doesn’t. Secrecy is no longer possible.
(1)Military.com website, “Air Force Missing Out on Opportunities to Employ F-22, Report Finds”, Oriana Pawlyk, 20-Jul-2018 ,
(2)DOT&E Annual Report 2011, p. 176
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