by DAVID AXE
The U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet modernizes on a roughly 20-year cycle. It takes at least that long for most new planes and munitions to complete development and enter service in meaningful numbers. Consider the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, which entered squadron service in 2005, 24 years after its initial requirement was written. New weapons are both driven by, and in turn drive, new tactics and procedures.
Broadly speaking, every couple decades represent a “generation” for the Air Force. Since the weapons completing development today will serve for decades to come, we know what the next generation will look like. But what about the one after that — the one we can start building today, essentially from scratch? What about this “Air Force After Next”?
I propose that the Air Force After Next could be represent the first generation in a century to take advantage of new ways of buying and using air power, particularly when it comes to fighters. By embracing the private sector’s “just-in-time” philosophy, the emerging “fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny” acquisitions model and the “orbit” construct that is rapidly gaining Pentagon currency, the Air Force After Next could be the most powerful and adaptive tactical air force, ever.
Read the full proposal at Offiziere.ch.
(Photo: Bryan William Jones)
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Air Force Copies Marines’ “Bolt-On” Gunship Plan
Offiziere.ch: the Emerging U.S. Counter-Insurgency Air Force
Congressional Budget Office’s Plans to Save the Air Force
Air Force Turns a Corner
The Day U.S. Air Power Was Saved from Itself
Analysts: Buy Fighters, or Die
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No.
Simple upgrades can’t even be fielded properly. Example, JSTARS upgrades, C-130 cockpit upgrades, and the dumb idea of not wanting more C-17s (ignoring the fact that early C-17s will get worn out in the near future (USAF forgetting how the C-141 aged into oblivion). A low rate C-17 production needs to keep going.
B-1 upgrades screwed up and slowed down (upgrades that would make it easier to maintain), and long laundry list of other simple upgrades.
F-22 upgrades stopped and screwed up in 2005-6 to fund Operations: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2.
The USAF can’t even manage upgrades. There is no way they can have the proper sight to manage new acquisitions without a significant change in leadership culture (current leadership doesn’t have the skill to do it)…
So no. The blue-sky hopes mentioned above have no basis in reality.
ELP,
Did you actually read the full proposal? I’m talking about the USAF 40 years down the line, after all of today’s planes — and indeed tomorrow’s planes — are gone.
There won’t be an Air Force in 20 years if we go at this rate.
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