“The youngest of the U.S. military services [the Air Force] finds itself burdened with the oldest equipment,” Gayle Putrich writes in Defense News. “More than 800 of the service’s aircraft — 14 percent of the fleet — are grounded or have mission-limiting restrictions due to age, according to service officials.”
The worst off? 45-year-old KC-135E tankers, 40-year-old C-130E and C-5A airlifters, 25-year-old F-15 fighters and 20-year-old HH-60 rescue choppers. There are other old planes in the Air Force, but none are as tired. After all, every type of plane ages differently. A 1962-model B-52H has more life left in it than an F-15 from 1980.
Yes, our Air Force is old. But don’t panic. The service has programs that, with smart investment, can replace all of these aged planes in around 15 years. Barring further Congressional meddling, the KC-X tanker program will put 180 new tankers on the ramp. The C-130J and C-17 lines are still hot; buying another 100 of each type over the next decade, rather than current plans keeping the C-130J on life support while shuttering C-17, would fully replace the A-model C-5s and C-130Es. The F-22 (pictured) is in production; extending the line past its planned 2010 termination, adding another 100 or so jets, would let us take the old F-15s out back for a mercy killing. And the HH-47 was all set to rapidly replace the HH-60 until protests from the companies that lost that competition filed formal protests.
The $15 billion we spend annually on Air Force aircraft should be enough to cover all these buys, assuming one major change to current policy: Kill the F-35, that sprawling program to equip the Air Force, Navy and Marines with stealthy short-range fighters. That’s right, kill it, even though it’s just a few years from full-rate production. Do what the Army did three years ago when it pulled the plug on the bloated RAH-66 Comanche attack chopper program right on the cusp of mass production, freeing up funds for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the service’s chopper fleet.
That move took courage, but it was the right thing to do for our soldiers and our national security. Killing the $250-billion F-35 program in favor of more airlifters, tankers and Raptors will take even more courage, in light of all the international industrial partners on the program and the lucrative potential export market for the jet. But it’s still right. We simply cannot afford all those Lightnings; nor do we need them. Sticking with the F-35 means losing the Air Force, slowly but surely, to old age. To recapitalize the light fighter fleet, I propose buying advanced models of the F-16 that are already flown by Emirates and other nations. These are a steal at around $50 million apiece and no development cost. And don’t buy so many: we don’t even need all 1,200 F-16s (pictured) we currently own. With the Soviet Union gone, there’s no prospect of epic dogfights over Germany or suicidal bombing runs against enemy tank divisions. We just need enough light fighters to patrol for insurgents and occasionally surge for an international air campaign against some rogue state.
The Navy wouldn’t mind seeing the F-35 go away; it’s quite happy with the affordable, tough and sophisticated F/A-18E/F Super Hornets it’s buying. The Marines, despite sacrificing entire squadrons while awaiting the F-35B jump-jet version, don’t really need a jump jet at all when they could just stack their assault ships with new choppers and buy Super Hornets to fly from shore bases.
Sure, our foreign partners would gripe too, since F-35 means big bucks for their aviation industries. After all, that’s what F-35 really is: a work scheme for airplane makers. We really don’t need the jet. We certainly don’t need it in large numbers. And we absolutely cannot afford it when there are so many other programs we DO need — C-17, F-22 — that are in danger of shutting down.
Kill the F-35. Buy new F-16s to recapitalize a smaller light fighter fleet. Round out the tanker, airlifter, heavy fighter and rescue chopper fleets. Be brave, Air Force, like the Army was, and do what’s right rather than just what’s good for industry.
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Why don’t we just buy a lot less F35s for the Air Force and Navy and concentrate on buying the jump jet versions for the Marines since they seem to need jets pretty bad. Plus, they already sacrificed entire squadrons for the F35B, so why not just wait a little bit longer?
I couldn’t agree more. After reading Air Power Australia you can’t help but come to the conclusion that the F35 is too much of a compromise aircraft, certainly not suited for the role that Australia needs and according to the various U.S. military services not really what they need.
What could be used in the place of the F35 to replace its various military roles. I have never understood why the Air force fly the A-10 warthog. As a ground support aircraft, it seems more logical for the Army or Marines to be flying it. While various aircraft would be needed to replace the F35, perhaps a increase in the numbers of A-10 would be a low cost solution for one of it roles?
[...] Magazine NBM Publishing Popular Science The Washington Times Univ. of South Carolina Press Robot Economist on New Cannon Monday March 12th 2007, 2:48 am Filed under: Axe Blogs Fellow blogger Robot Economist wrote into add some insider perspective on the Army’s next-generation howitzer, which I profiled last week. More important that the howitzer is the shells it fires, RE contends. And the Army has plans to introduce the XM982 Excalibur GPS-guided shell (think a ground-fired version of the Air Force’s Joint Direct Attack Munition) that might let the service squeeze another couple decades out of its old M-109-series guns: If guided munitions like the JDAM and Excalibur can close the capability gap between old platforms (B-52s and M-109s) and new platforms (B-2s and the NLOS-C), how can you know that a new platform is needed? When the Air Force complains about the age of their bombers, they have a good reason. The last B-52 Stratofortress was built in 1962 and they plan to keep them in service for almost 90 years. The Army received the last M109A6 in 2001 and the average age of the entire fleet is only about 10 years old. They even plan to keep the Paladin in service alongside the NLOS-C all the way through 2020! Frankly, I would be more impressed if the Army diverted funding away from the NLOS-C towards a truly revolutionary approach to indirect fire, such as the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System. Or better yet, RE says, the service should invest that cash in an IED-resistant, next-generation HMMWV. In fact, the military has several programs to buy just such a thing. Frankly, you could make the argument that incremental improvements to old vehicles plus new munitions are all the Army needs to stay ahead … and are all it can afford in this budget environment. Hell, you could say the same of all the services. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]
we dont need weapons at all. The ‘threats’ out there are within the US. Bush made them. No arab nation is any threat to us. Lets spend the $ on our poor and youth.
[...] Related: Air Force photos Better, smarter A-10s Air Force priorities screwed up Air Force abandons killer drone No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]
[...] Thing is, this is all the Air Force’s own damned fault. While bombers, tankers, airlifters and choppers — all of which are actually useful — rust away, the Air Force sinks all its money into land-based light fighters that have been rendered mostly irrelevant by the demise of the Soviet Union and its MiG armadas. Instead of adapting to counter-insurgencies and Pacific detente, the Air Force is investing more than $200 billion in 1,800 F-35 Lightning IIs (formerly “Joint Strike Fighter”) to replace all F-16s plus other aircraft, apparently hoping to fight another Cold War. The Center for Defense Information objects: It may be that for some, perhaps all, missions, the JSF is a significant performance step backwards, but one that comes at great cost. As a result, the JSF program may be more a threat to the U.S. military’s efforts to modernize its tactical aviation capabilities than a solution. Whatever value the JSF program might have is that of a technology demonstrator, for which production of more than a very small number of test samples is unnecessary. [...]
Lets buy F-15, 16, and 18′s. Forget stealth crap.
Its just an expensive toy to experiment with on a
poor nation that cant fight back. Already the F-117 is a good attack plane. Nothing can beat an
F-15 or 16.