Air Force Fleet Wearing Down
USA Today | May 08, 2007
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. - The Air Force's fleet of warplanes is older than ever and wearing out faster because of heavy use in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the service's top combat commander.
Gen. Ronald Keys, who leads the Air Combat Command, points to cracked wings on A-10 attack planes and frayed electrical cables on U-2 spy planes.
Compared to 1996, the Air Force now spends 87% more on maintenance for a warplane fleet that is less ready to fly, Air Force records show.
They also show that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, Air Force and other military aircraft are flying more missions in harsh environments.
Keys said he's concerned that policymakers will only pay attention when a plane either crashes on takeoff or over a city "because a wing falls off."
"I don't want to write a letter, or have my successor write a letter, 'Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your son or daughter are dead because the wing fell off on takeoff. We knew it was going to fall off, we just didn't know when.' That's kind of what we're getting down to," Keys said.
Arcing wires near fuel tanks recently forced the Air Force to ground its fleet of 33 U-2 spy planes in March for at least a day, Keys said.
The average Air Force warplane is 23.5 years old compared with 8.5 years in 1967. In 2001, the average plane was 22 years old.
The Air Force says it wants to buy new planes to lower the average age of its fleet to 15 years over the next two decades. That will cost an estimated $400billion.
There are 356 A-10s in service. The plane is often used to support ground forces in close combat. The A-10 carries missiles and bombs, but its cannon is particularly effective in strafing.
The Air Force recently bought replacement wings for 132 of its workhorse A-10s at $7 million per plane. The Air Force wants another $34 million for more replacement wings this year.
In the past week, A-10s have attacked enemy forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The planes shot at and bombed Taliban rebels in Afghanistan; in Iraq, A-10s performed a variety of reconnaissance missions to find and stop insurgents from burying roadside bombs.
Aircraft age is misleading, said Christopher Bolkcom, a national security analyst at the Congressional Research Service. Some aircraft may have been lightly used for years and have safe flying hours left. Maintaining old planes may be expensive but often cheaper than buying a new aircraft, he said.
"Chronological age is only one measure of aircraft health," Bolkcom said. "Age is not a safety issue."
While refurbished planes often fly as well as new ones, they may also require more crewmembers to fly and maintain them, said James Jay Carafano, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "These life-cycle costs really matter," he said.
And this from a maintainer dude.
This probably doesn't interest many other people besides me, but I posted it anyway.
The article only discusses the U2 and the A-10, but they're not the only aging aircraft in our fleet. The 130s of every make and model are nearly archiac. I work on some that are older then I am. The average age of the planes I work on is 20+ years with our newwest one being manufactured in 87 or 88.
Bolkcom speaks like a true asshole who's never had to maintain an aircraft in his life.
We've got parts on these planes that have been repaired so many times we've lost count. We've also got parts that are so worn down and degraded we have to send them off to Depot to service, which effectively takes them out of the supply system for a year or more. The wiring and systems in most AF planes have been repaired, spliced, replaced, crimped, tapped or fucked with so many times that most of them don't even bear a passing resemblance to the original wiring diagrams.
The planes are so bad that half the time they don't even recognize good parts as good. I can pull a part off the aircraft that's checking bad. I can take it into the backshop, run it up on a test bench, align it, tweak it, set the defaults and turn it back out servicable. Put it back on the plane and the plane says it's bad. I can order two more of the same part, both check servicable on test benches, but one will work and the other wont. It's not because the parts are bad, or the techs fucked something up, it's because our planes are so fucked up that they can't function half the time.
Reports say we're spending 87% more on maintenance. I believe it. The scary part is every time I pull a part off a plane and fix it instead of having the AF buy a new one, I save the AF millions in some cases. The cheapest part I work on is over $100,000USD. The most expensive is valued brand new at over $17,000,000USD. It costs the AF about $100,000 to fix the $17million item. That's a huge cost savings. And we're spending 87% more. Imagine the costs when it gets to the point where we can no longer fix the things.
The average operational time for a brand new part is measured in months before it will suffer a fail or problem of some sort requiring us to break it down and replace or fix parts inside of it. Looking at a history of some of our parts, the life expectancy has dropped, not to weeks, but to days or in some very bad cases, even hours. Some of them are so bad that you might get one or two good flights with it before having to replace it.
We desperately need new equipment, new LRUs and SRUs, new planes, new everything. And we're not getting them. Given another decade of waiting around to fix this issue is going to have catastrophic results. I'm not saying planes are suddenly going to drop from the sky because wings fell off(which, sadly, is a real possibility with some of them), but it'll get to the point where half the fleet is grounded at a time because we don't have enough parts to fix them.
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What say Wicked Pilot and Golan on this? I know as an engineer, my dad was often bitching over replacing parts and patch-jobs because of cost and excessive wear and tear. I never once thought the world's premier air force would get to such a state one associates with former Eastern Bloc state forces.
So, that's just Lonestar's navy without major issues.
This is due largely to the fact that the US is spending less on it's military in wartime than it has during peacetime. A smaller portion is the fucked up acquisition system, and how Congress keeps dicking with it ("Oh, we'll save $5 billion by cutting the buy of this aircraft." "Oh, this aircraft is so expensive per plane now, we'll have to cut the buy again.")
The projected buy of the F-22 total is less than the number of F-16s we bought in 1 (one) year in the 1980s.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
Beowulf hit it out of the park. I think it's a GDP-spending and micromanagement issue. I mean if we got just one more percent of the GDP...which would still be lower, or close to on-par with what we received through the Cold War...
It's amazing that Congress has not figured out yet that reducing the buy of airplanes dramatically jacks up their cost, so cutting your production buy doesn't save you anything and should only be saved for situations of extreme disgust with the product (like the C-5A Galaxy on its initial production run). Nobody's accused our politicians of being smart, but they've had clear examples of this time after time. Killing the RAH-66 Commanche program, due to the termination clauses in the program, didn't save the Army any money - they'd have been better off building the damned thing. Then the B-2 is a perfect example - first they were going to buy 130. Then it was 72. Then it was 20...the program has to recoup its costs somewhere! So you end up with a product that costs more to make, than if you made every part of it out of solid gold. Don't get me wrong, it's a great product, but to tell you the truth we should have about 50 more of them, at other locations. Plus there's the whole idiocy of having all your strategic resources consolidated at one location - can you imagine what would happen if, say, a big class-5 tornado ripped right through Whiteman AFB, and trashed the fleet?
Now on to maintenance...I'm in a slightly different situation than Wicked P, my airplane is roughly 30 years newer on average. I will say that the GWOT is trashing our airplanes. My jets come back from the desert hammer-fucked, and typically get turned back so quick that there isn't sufficient time to repair all the broke stuff. People have to realize that there will be life after OIF and OEF, that these aren't worth destroying our capabilities over. Frankly, with the current mood and leadership we have in place, I'm not so sure rebuilding really will be a priority once it's all done.
Oh one other thing I meant to comment on. I think out gov't and the Pentagon absolutely fucked ourselves when we allowed all the defense mergers in the 90s to take place. As it is, right now, you only have 2 main aerospace contractors - Boeing and Lockheed Martin. For the aircraft industry, you also have (on a limited basis) Northrop Grumman, however they're not doing heavy work anymore - just the Global Hawk, whatever odds-and-ends airplane the Navy needs (right now the Grumman side is developing the E-2D Hawkeye, and building E-2Cs for the occaisional foreign customer), but as a heavyweight and real opposition to Boeing or LM, they're done. Right now NG's only product in the offering is an Airbus product, and they're onboard to give it an 'American' face. But anyway the old system of winner-takes-all, which worked great when you had 5-8 different contractors, doesn't work at all when all the work for the next 20-30 years goes only to one company - it's feast or extreme famine. As a result, companies try to run up the bill on the gov't, through varying means - with LM it's usually budgetary overruns and production delays (and they're known for this, they've done it with every product they've made since the C-141), and with Boeing and the C-17 production line, it's been a series of threats and blackmail to cajole the goverment into buying more of the product (ZOMG, IF YOU DON'T BUY MORE AIRPLANES RIGHT NOW, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHUT THE LINE DOWN AND CLOSE THE FACTORY! DON'T MAKE ME DO IT, I'LL DO IT I SWEAR!!!). In airlift, right now, you have a screwy situation - The C-17A line is very near the end and facing shutdown (although I think a fair amount of the noise people are hearing is bullying from Boeing); the C-5B fleet is going through upgrade to C-5M standard (with new engines and avionics), however this program's cost is spiraling out of control and is now double of what it originally was, so it's doubtful if the even-less-reliable C-5As will get the upgrade; the C-130 fleet is being hammered as never before - the Active Duty owning mostly -130Es, which are falling apart at the seams, and the Guard and Reserves 'owning' most of the newer H models, however they've all been activated so long that not as many are legally available for the war, and the new production -130Js aren't being built at a sufficient rate to replace them. There's a C-130E sitting at Ramstein that hasn't flown in 4 years - 4 years!!!! Then there's the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition, the JCA, and the main reason the AF is in it is to prevent the Army from getting their own substantial airlift fleet. That's years away from coming on-line. Meanwhile, more C-17s really are probably the best solution, but it doesn't help that Boeing is in the corner screaming "GIVE ME MONEY NOW OR I'LL FUCKING SHOOT MYSELF, I'LL FUCKING DO IT I SWEAR!!!"
So, in summation:
C-5A - gigantic hunk of shit that should just be retired, fuck it.
C-5B - less of a hunk of shit, still a problem, but will be upgraded and probably less shit. Question is how much will it cost?
C-17A - great airplane, cheapest it's ever been, more should be bought now to bulk up the fleet and replace the C-5As.
C-130E - fucked.
C-130H - doing fine.
C-130J - not as good a model as the H, but still an overall performance increase.
JCA - I'll believe it when I see it.
IMO, they should swap the -130Es and H's around - give the Guard/Reserve all the E's, and give AD all the H's, if there are sufficient numbers anyway.
On aircraft, and for that matter all arms companies, merging: isn't that an inevitable consequence of projects being more complex and expensive nowadays anyway? The same thing happened in the UK earlier, with most companies from Avro to Bristol to Hawker getting mashed up to form BAe then that became BAE Systems whose sole purpose now is to buy everyone else out.
The cutting of units bought on initial orders is stupid and likely doesn't help this matter either as companies need to find more capital to fund such projects in the first place before gov't contracts.
It also seems surreal that the US is following the UK in giving the military more to do, whilst at the same time cutting costs or not increasing them with inflation.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:
So, that's just Lonestar's navy without major issues.
Oh yeah, let's see here...
(1) A next generation CVN that has been started, stopped, and started so often in the past 10 years that it's now double what the last Nimitz(which was originally going to be the first CVNX) is gonna be.
(2)Flight Deck full of Hornets and C-2/E-2s, with some F-35s thrown in.
(3)No viable replacement for our FFGs(as the potential replacement has been canceled)
(4)LPDs that are commissioned in unacceptable conditions.
(5)Getting rid of our minesweepers. All of them
(6)No serious replacement for the CGs on the horizon
(7)Emasculated DD-replacement run.
(8)A submarine fleet that is a shadow if it's former self
(9)In absolute numbers, the fleet is so small that CVBGs have been thrown out the window...4-ship CSGs and 6-ship ESGs are the order of the day.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
I don't know if it's an inevitable byproduct as you described; however US law enables the gov't to deny mergers if they're found to be anti-competitive. I think we can all agree that once a program has been decided, the winning contractor then seeks to milk every precious cent they can from the gov't; isn't that in itself anti-competitive? I think we should return to the WWII way of manufacturing, where even the losers get a cut of the production. Then there's less encouragement to milk the cash cow (you're going to get money anyway), plus it provides the gov't other sources of production if one proves unworthy.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this is by far the oldest fleet the US military as a whole has ever operated. We have been running, and running hard, on investments made in the 70s and 80s...with a little thrown in since, but not nearly enough.
Which is why we need to initate a build for 2,000 F-22s.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
MKSheppard wrote:Which is why we need to initate a build for 2,000 F-22s.
I don't think we need 2k F-22s... we just need enough to replace the F-15 fleet. And then order enough F-35s to replace all the F-16s (eventually, anyway. The guard can use F-16s for a while). Get the B-3 designed and built in sufficient numbers to be able to retire the B-52s before they're 70. Get the next gen tanker in production. Get more C-130s built to replace the Es. And replace the Minuteman III.
That's what the USAF needs. The Navy needs enough birds to actually fill the decks, and not with just Superbugs and F-35s. Then they need to cancel the LCS, full fund a replacement destroyer for the Burkes, and a cruiser replacement for the Ticos. Get the CVNX off the drawing board. There's more, I'm sure, but I'm a Zoomie.
The Army needs to cancel the FCS, and possibly raise another division or two. *shrug* I'm not sure what the Army needs, but the FCS isn't it.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
Lonestar wrote:[
(3)No viable replacement for our FFGs(as the potential replacement has been canceled)
.
(5)Getting rid of our minesweepers. All of them.
Could you clarify on this one?
If you're talking about the LCS program, the recent evidence is why the Lockheed Martin version got canceled due to cost overruns, the General Dynamics version is fine.
Currently two more Littoral Combat Ships are scheduled to be authorized for next year's budget, with at least one and possibly two more authorized for the next year if Congress is satisfied with the status of the program. http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F= ... &C=landwar
As far as the minesweepers go, one of the main modules for the LCS program is a minesweeper variant. The focus is going towards using unmanned underwater vehicles based at the LCS to deal with mines to avoid exposing the ship itself to the danger.
re: Shep and the 2,000 F-22s comment...while I certainly think more than 170 should be produced, I sure don't think 2,000 is the magic number - that would just encourage the fighter douchebags who run my service. I do think the number should be between 400 and 800; however future runs of something to replace the F-15E and F-117 should be considered, and I'd think the F-22 would make an ideal platform for that. Really, honestly, I'd like to see an A-10 or AC/MC-130 guy be CSAF, not just another F-15 guy like always. That might change priorities around...
Beowulf, 2 comments off what you said - 1, Gen Moseley has said that his #1 priority airplane is the replacement for the KC-135; the F-35 ranks in at #11 or so. I can see where tankers are especially important, that need is why you haven't seen as much of an answer from the USAF on more C-17 buys - just getting more of them without new tankers just ramps up receiver demand on an old fleet of tankers, putting the tankers first gets the ball rolling on a long process.
annnnd 2, about the "Guard and reserves can keep the F-16 for awhile"...while I agree to a point, the essential point has been for Guard/Res crews and aircraft to be interchangeable with AD. In my unit (I'm a Reservist) we occaisionally fly with AD crews and vice versa; and at Balad AB these days you'll see just as many ANG F-16s deployed there as Active - the airplanes are just loaned there for the expeditionary squadron, which is a "rainbow" unit with members from all over the place, AD and not. So, having them operate very different machinery changes that.
Any news on Japan's attempt to have us sell them the F-22? Last I checked they were saying "Well since you won't sell us the F-22 and it's stealth shit after we sold some classified equipment to the Soviets that you sold us in trust, we'll pretend to look at the Typhoon instead of just waiting for the F-35 or joining the development program (which includes some of the stealth characteristics we wanted from the F-22, just not the really confidential shit we really wanted) and be able to save money by using the maintenance facilities of the American Lightning II's here."
Golan III wrote:re: Shep and the 2,000 F-22s comment...while I certainly think more than 170 should be produced, I sure don't think 2,000 is the magic number - that would just encourage the fighter douchebags who run my service. I do think the number should be between 400 and 800; however future runs of something to replace the F-15E and F-117 should be considered, and I'd think the F-22 would make an ideal platform for that. Really, honestly, I'd like to see an A-10 or AC/MC-130 guy be CSAF, not just another F-15 guy like always. That might change priorities around...
Beowulf, 2 comments off what you said - 1, Gen Moseley has said that his #1 priority airplane is the replacement for the KC-135; the F-35 ranks in at #11 or so. I can see where tankers are especially important, that need is why you haven't seen as much of an answer from the USAF on more C-17 buys - just getting more of them without new tankers just ramps up receiver demand on an old fleet of tankers, putting the tankers first gets the ball rolling on a long process.
annnnd 2, about the "Guard and reserves can keep the F-16 for awhile"...while I agree to a point, the essential point has been for Guard/Res crews and aircraft to be interchangeable with AD. In my unit (I'm a Reservist) we occaisionally fly with AD crews and vice versa; and at Balad AB these days you'll see just as many ANG F-16s deployed there as Active - the airplanes are just loaned there for the expeditionary squadron, which is a "rainbow" unit with members from all over the place, AD and not. So, having them operate very different machinery changes that.
About the F-117 being replaced, IIRC, the F-35 is stealthier when clean than the F-117, so we don't really have to replace it. Considering that the F-35A has a larger useful load (2x2000lb bombs + 2xAIM-9X + gun, vs 2x2000lb bombs), we should be able to just let the F-117s rot in a hanger once the 35s get in full production. As far as CSAF goes, it'd be a shocker if they had someone who didn't have wings be it for once. Of course, since every general has either wings or a missile badge, that probably will happen never.
As far as the tankers go, my list was in no particular order. WRT the F-16s, just send the newest F-16s to the guard and reserves as the AD force gets the 35s. Eventually there will be enough to equip the guard as well, but since the AD fighter force is more likely to be deployed, they should get priority.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
Does anyone know if the USAF is going to take a look at the IRIS-T's to see if they might have some advantages over the AIM-9X to make it worth purchasing?
We could reconfigure things up and down the board but the big thing that nobody wants to do (because it would piss on too many toes) is go back and figure out which role each service shoudl play in the grand scheme of things and then cut them down to forces just for those roles. So here's my own list of what we should all be doing and what is needed to get it done:
1) USAF: Long range strike and escort/air superiority plus air transport. What this means is we have just a few needs:
a) A REALLY excellent air superiority fighter (F-22 fits the bill) in sufficient numbers to both guard the US (and overseas installations) and to deploy as long range escorts for bombers
b) A good medium range bomber/strike aircraft (The F-35 is gonna have to do this because fuck if there is anything else with the 111s gone)
c) Two fucking excellent high capacity long range bombers. I say two because you need some options between volume and speed.
d) Two to three cargo aircraft. The 130 line is fine for tactical airlift but strategic needs a shitload more -17s and a replacement for the C-5
That's it really. I'd honestly can anything related to missiles since the Ruskies and the Chinese aren't coming over the hill anytime soon and filling up (c) plus with a continuing SSBN presence land based missile forces of any kind are wasteful or men and money that could be better spent buying more C-17s. Some might also note that I've left CAS out of this equation. Honestly I think that the A-10 is an awesome craft as is the Spooky BUT it distracts the AF from its core mission of theater dominance when CAS is a mission more crucially in the hands of the Marine/Nacy combo or the Army (though I'm not giving them planes).
2) USA: The mission is to take and hold ground, pure and simple. This means foremost a huge logistics capacity on the ground, but more importantly boots on the ground. What does the Army need?
a) More divisions period. However they need to be a little shuffled. Right now its 1 Armored, 1 Armored Cav, 4 Infantry (really Mech Inf), 2 Light Infantry, and 2 Airborne. Honestly I think the first bonus would be from concentrating the mechanized forces a little and pumping up the actual light divisions. Lets say we can get 12 Divisions again as a minimum I would re-organize as 2 Armored, 2 Armored Cav, 2 Infantry (Mecahnized), 5 Infantry (Light), and 1 Airborne
- The big hurdle would be dropping the 82nd from "airborne" into a mechanized infantry spot but honestly we arne't going to be jumping in from planes anymore, you just can't do it right and heloborne and mechnized makes more sense with the Army's overall mission.
b) Long term replace the M1A2. Right now nothing can fuck with it but you need to have the armored fist ready to throw down and sooner or later somebody will be ready to. That said it should be good for at least another 10 years or so
c) Two classes of IFVs, the Bradley isn't the universal solution and the army needs something big enough to act as a screening force for the tanks as well as a second vehicle that is the heavier punch in the lighter formations
d) A new APC. Those (Light) divisions need to be kept mobile and a good APC is invaluable. The M113 is ancient but its sound and would be a great platform for building either a lightweight IFV or a new APC both of which are needed. Drop the freakin FCS and accept tracks for the love of God
e) A better infantry kit overall by this I mean if you give the soldier a rifle that works, a GPMG a squadmate carries, mortars on command and a radio that works they'll get the job done. Stop overloading the average soldier with too much shit and focus on the basics first which means reliable and easily available guns radios and personal armor.
f) Keep the attack helos here, make them live sleep eat and breathe with the grunts and it will get them more on point.
3) USMC: Kick the fucking door in then get out of the way. Right now the idea is the Marines are so multi-purpose they can fit in any hole and the role needs to be simplified and clarified
a) Since everyone is getting a few more troops lets actually field 3 full divisions, this means enough LAR, enough tanks to have at least a BN formation per division plus arty.
b) A replacement heavy lift helo. The CH-53 is great but we need to look at replacing it now, especially if we've got 3 full divisions because that's a lot of potential moving to be done.
c) Replace or actualy make the Osprey worth it. Either find a way to put some fucking guns on the thing or find something else in the medium lift category.
d) Narrow the strike wings a little. We don't need -18s to do interdiction and long-range strikes, we need fookin CAS. This means more Super Cobras and maybe migrate the A-10s over but leave the air superiority mission to the AF and the Navy
4) USN: See Lonestar's post and you can see what they need.
Sorry this got a bit rambling but I'm gonna call it quits here maybe come back and add extra thoughts but this is enough for me for right now.
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-Kingdom of Heaven
General Schatten wrote:Does anyone know if the USAF is going to take a look at the IRIS-T's to see if they might have some advantages over the AIM-9X to make it worth purchasing?
It’s incredibly unlikely that the IRIS-T has any significant advantage; most specifications quoted of the two weapons are near identical. AIM-9X probably has a longer effective range. Both missiles are a direct outgrowth of dissatisfaction with the British led ASRAAM that was supposed to arm all of NATO.
The US considered developing a whole new missile, as it’s done for several failed Sidewinder replacement programs, but found that modifications to the M model could do everything that was needed. The X model has barely been in service for four years, and the only rational replacement for it would be the true next generation of air to air missiles which will be controlled completely by thrust vectoring. This will allow for better range and agility, and most importantly it will allow for far more missiles to be packed inside of stealth aircraft.
General Schatten wrote:Any news on Japan's attempt to have us sell them the F-22?
Japan doesn’t know what it wants to do in terms of new fighters, the cancellation of the craptastic F-2 really screwed over all their planning.
Its official position is that it won’t even consider the F-22 until the US congress changes the federal law which specifically bans exporting the plane to anyone. This is a perfectly reasonable position. It is by no means certain that the US congress will do this, and making a detailed evaluation and comparison costs money and would require the US to start transferring information about the plane.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
American military is so vast and powerful that it can singlehandedly screw up any opponent in any part of the world, and yet it's bitching about cuts for Navy and Airforce? That's what I call surreal, sorry.
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Keep in mind that politicians routinely say we need to expand the military, when we outspend the rest of the world already.
It makes you wonder.
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"I really hate it when the guy you were pegging as Mr. Worst Case starts saying, "Oh, I was wrong, it's going to be much worse." " - Adrian Laguna
Well, it depends on how the money's being spent. With so much money being wasted on big-ticket items which cost an ungodly amount of money per unit, the US has been said to be heading towards a process of "unilateral disarmament".
Frankly, unless radical thinking overtakes the decision makers (ie. "let's build a cheap simple fighter"), the size of the USAF and USN will shrink substantially and they'll have no choice in the matter. The average age of aircraft in the USAF rises ever higher and replacements can't be bought one-for-one. Even if the replacement is much better than the (multiple) aircraft it's replacing, it still can't be everywhere at once or be flying all the time.
Oh yeah, let's see here...
(1) A next generation CVN that has been started, stopped, and started so often in the past 10 years that it's now double what the last Nimitz(which was originally going to be the first CVNX) is gonna be.
(2)Flight Deck full of Hornets and C-2/E-2s, with some F-35s thrown in.
(3)No viable replacement for our FFGs(as the potential replacement has been canceled)
(4)LPDs that are commissioned in unacceptable conditions.
(5)Getting rid of our minesweepers. All of them
(6)No serious replacement for the CGs on the horizon
(7)Emasculated DD-replacement run.
(A submarine fleet that is a shadow if it's former self
(9)In absolute numbers, the fleet is so small that CVBGs have been thrown out the window...4-ship CSGs and 6-ship ESGs are the order of the day.
(1) I just don't see why a CVNX is necessary at this stage apart from a jobs program to the shipyards. It's not like the current carrier fleet has too many aircraft- isn't it the case that each carrier has nowhere near it's full complement of aircraft on board anyway?
(2) Well, leaving aside that they won't be "full" per se, why are these aircraft types a problem?
(3) That's a problem.
(4) Also a problem.
(5) Incredibly stupid.
(6) Aren't the CGs just DDGs when it's all said and done anyway? It's not like the Tico's are Slava or Kirov equivalents. Those are actual cruisers.
(7) Really necessary at this stage? The Spruance DDGs as it was were retired before the end of their service life, and there are shitloads of Arleigh Burkes- I wouldn't be surprised if there were almost as many of them/ more of them than every other destroyer type in the world's navies combined.
(8) It's former self was built to fight a Navy that no longer exists. Even as a shadow, it's the largest SSN fleet in the world.
Talen, in terms of total dollars spent, then yes. I mean Russia or China are the only countries who could realistically outspend us, assuming they had our economy and resource base. But for GDP percentage, I think we spend, what, 2%? 3? We really do need to expand, we've been running on borrowed time and money and unless we do something about it it's not going to work all that great much longer.
And Stas, that's because we might want to maintain our advantages, instead of not paying our military members and industries until they'll do whatever to survive.
Wilkens, no point in having fighters escort bombers if the bombers are stealthy penetrators to begin with. Who knows, the next bombers may well be F-22 variants, and be quite capable of defending themselves. Or maybe Dale Brown will have his way and we'll start putting AMRAAMs and HARMs on our B-1s and B-52s...enter the Megafortress/Old Dog!
btw according to Aviation Week Japan is pushing hard for the US to reverse that law, and allow them F-22 exports. I guess the next question is, should they be allowed to build under license/tinker with the aircraft, as they've done with the F-4, F-15, and F-2?
Vympel wrote:Frankly, unless radical thinking overtakes the decision makers (ie. "let's build a cheap simple fighter"), the size of the USAF and USN will shrink substantially and they'll have no choice in the matter.
They did that. Once. With the F-16A.
And then swore never to do it again.
Congratulations! We have just bought a day only fighter which is more manuverable than a suitably upgraded F-104! Hooray!
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
And Stas, that's because we might want to maintain our advantages
You mean the overwhelming military power to be able to beat up any country in the world as a "world cop"? Russia and China cannot outspend you and never could. They spend 10 times less than you do, and even this strains our economy. The USSR spent 3 times less than the US did and it strained it's economy. And I'm not even talking about India and others.
Simply, the US is overspending - and much of this overspending is going to needlessly expensive stuff - and it could have cheaper mass-weapons with the same level of support infrastructure.
The whole idea that the US continues to spend money as if the Cold War was still going on is unsettling to many countries, and Russia and China are not the only ones to voice their concerns.
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