“Air Force officials are warning that unless their budget is increased dramatically, and soon, the military’s high-flying branch won’t dominate the skies as it has for decades,” begins an A.P. story on the air service’s money woes:
“What we’ve done is put the requirement on the table that says, ‘If we’re going to do the missions you’re going to ask us to do, it will require this kind of investment,’” Maj. Gen. Paul Selva, the Air Force’s director of strategic planning, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Failing that, we take what is already a geriatric Air Force,” Selva said, “and we drive it for another 20 years into an area of uncertainty.”
An extra $20 billion each year over the next five — beginning with an Air Force budget of about $137 billion in 2009 instead of the $117 billion proposed by the Bush administration — would solve that problem, according to Selva and other senior Air Force officers.
Based on this excerpt, the average reader might be forgiven for thinking the Air Force’s problems are the fault of a penny-pinching government. That is, after all, Selva’s implication. Fortunately the A.P. got a second opinion:
The Air Force’s distress is partly self-inflicted, says Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. The F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning, the new jet fighters that will supplant the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon, have drastically higher price tags than their predecessors and require a bigger chunk of the defense budget.
“One of the reasons their equipment has aged so much is because they continue to move ahead with the development and presumed acquisition of new weapon systems that cost two to three times as much as the systems they are replacing,” Kosiak said. “It’s like replacing a Toyota with a Mercedes.”
Kudos to the ever-reliable CSBA for being the voice of reason in a story that comes THIS CLOSE to being flyboy propaganda. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again:
The Air Force’s problems are its own fault.
As Kosiak stated, the service spent years in denial, pouring money into designs that were simply too expensive and furthermore ill-suited to likely threats. While the Army and Navy wisely ditched stealthy attack choppers and fighters in favor of new variants of proven, affordable designs (the AH-64D Block III and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet), during the 1990s the Air Force pretended like the Cold War had never ended and that the budget deficit was just a myth. Now we can hang a pricetag on a decade of wrong thinking: $100-billion, the extra money the Air Force says it needs to buy adequate numbers of its gold-plated designs.
There’s just one solution to this problem, and it is not to give the Air Force more money. The service has proved time and again that it cannot exercise budgetary and design discipline: if we gave them more money, they would just pursue even MORE expensive designs. Since disbanding the Air Force is not politically feasible, the solution — and punishment for the Air Force’s failures — is for all major Air Force procurement to be planned and executed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, not by the service itself. OSD is known to take over severely over-budget programs. Well, this time the Air Force’s whole modernization scheme is severely over-budget. Time for the adults to take charge.
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It seems odd that lambast the AF for budget problems because the F-35 is over budget, and then you want the OSD to step in and take cantrol of over budget AF programs. While that sounds good in thoery, in reality the F-35 program is a JOINT AF/Navy/Marine program. The cost overruns are the fault of ALL, Repeat ALL three services. The blame can not be soley directed at the AF.
Furthermore your comments that the Army and Navy “wisely” made better decisions is off base. The raeson the Navy went with the Super Hornet was because the old A-6′s where on their last leg, and their vaunted A-12 was, well wasnt even off the drawing board, after how many years and how many Billion? And remember that was a Navy program. The only way to quickly replace the Intruder was to sneak the Super Hornet into production. And After “Wisely” chooseing the Super Hornet, they are going to buy a whole bunch of F-35′s, whose high cost you blame on the AF.
The ARmy’s “wise” decision came after the OSD told them no on the comanche, after how many Billion in development?
In reality, all the services want bigger, better, more expensive equipment. And all the services have cost problems with their equipment, Take a look at the FCS for the Army, the DD(X), CVN(X)and LCS for the NAVY, and the previously mentione F-35 for all the services. The AF’s problem is no worse than the others.
No wonder the Air Force is on the attack. They’re used to Congress throwing pork at them to buy and fund stuff they don’t want or need. It’s only natural that they demand that the trough stay full.
Seriously… between the Air Force and Congress, which organization can you hold up as an example of restraint and prudent planning?
I’m going to sleep now. Maybe I will have a dream about a sane USAF (er I mean equipment… most of the people are great)… give me new build F-16s, C-130s, refirb’d C-5s to help plug the breach…. >>>alarm clock goes off