{"id":11589,"date":"2014-01-03T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T19:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=11589"},"modified":"2014-03-31T14:04:52","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T03:04:52","slug":"a-strategist-retrospective-the-declining-usaf-tactical-fighter-fleet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-strategist-retrospective-the-declining-usaf-tactical-fighter-fleet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Strategist retrospective: the declining USAF tactical fighter fleet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was originally published on November 12, 2012.<\/h3>\n

(The Strategist will return with new material on Monday January 6, 2014)<\/p>\n

Andrew Davies\u2019 graph of the week<\/a> about the elderly USAF tactical fighter fleet raises several issues. But before that it is worthwhile looking at the big US Defense budget picture<\/a> below. The two big peaks are the Reagan defence build-up and Global War on Terror (GWOT) 2001\u20132014. Most of the current USAF fighter fleet was acquired in the Reagan years leading to, as Andrew noted, a fleet that is steadily aging.<\/p>\n

\"US<\/a><\/figure>\n

The graph suggests that it\u2019s unlikely that the USAF will again build a Reagan-era size fighter force. Reagan cut taxes and increased spending. This led to bigger deficits, which in turn led to raising taxes and cutting spending in the elder Bush\u2019s presidency and the Clinton years. This worked, the US Federal budget went into surplus. But today, with the \u2018fiscal cliff<\/a>\u2019\u00a0looming, it seems that the US is once again moving towards raising taxes and cutting spending. As the graph indicates, the Obama administration plans to constrain defence spending over the next five years. US defense spending will still be roughly half the world total, but a big Reaganesque increase looks unlikely.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no joy for the USAF in all this and the USAF fighter fleet will just continue to shrink and grow old. There are those<\/a> who think that the size of the Cold War fleet is still appropriate. But most wars since the Berlin War fell (excepting the 1991 Desert Storm campaign) have used relatively few USAF fighters, as vital to mission success as they were. The Precision Guided Munition (PGM) revolution now means that fewer aircraft can do the work of the larger iron bomb fighter fleets of the Reagan era.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in the last two decades the focus hasn\u2019t been on building USAF fighters but improving the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) system to make best use of the PGM revolution. The demands of the GWOT have led to the USAF acquiring a large fleet of drones. The Predator\/Reaper force is being built up so that it can provide 65\u00a0continuous (24\/7) patrols worldwide, with an ability to surge to 85. This is a big investment. Today the USAF Chief believes his Service leads the world in ISR systems by a significant margin<\/a>. Given the improved weapons and ISR, buying fewer fighters seems more reasonable.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s also a sub-plot, with some<\/a> holding that with the pivot to Asia and the great distances in the Pacific theatre, short-range fighters are of limited value, and at odds with the AirSea battle<\/a> concept. Viewed this way, buying them simply imposes a high opportunity cost. Affordable long-range airpower is seen as the question, with unmanned strike aircraft the answer.<\/p>\n

This is all to some degree making a virtue out of a vice. While the benefit side of the cost-benefit equation has been sustained, the cost side is out of control. The F-22 program\u2019s<\/a> cost ballooned and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter isn\u2019t doing well. Dubbed the plane that costs more than Australia<\/a>, even the trade-journal Aviation Week and Space Technology\u2014normally a strong supporter of the American defence-industry\u2014has been harshly critical<\/a> of the F-35 program. Even a Reaganesque-sized defence budget mightn\u2019t be able to rebuild a large USAF fighter fleet.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something seriously structurally wrong here. The post Cold-War American defence industry seems to have trouble-producing affordable fighters of the calibre of the 1970s F-15 and F-16. The head of the JSF program has publicly criticised<\/a> Lockheed, the entry to operational service seems uncertain<\/a>, and there is now talk of competing<\/a> the JSF support package. The USAF\u2019s sole new fighter, the F-22, has had an onboard oxygen system problem<\/a> that has taken considerable time to fix. Has the technical capacity of the American defence industry declined that much?<\/p>\n

As Andrew noted, the USN is in a better position after taking an often-criticised low-risk approach with the Super Hornet. While not as advanced as the F-22, the USN bought 349 Super Hornets in the 2001\u20132012 period, compared to USAF\u2019s 179 F-22s, and for a lot less money. Numbers do count<\/a>\u2014try being in two places at once\u2014and Navy aircrew seem to have no trouble breathing. In the 1960s, when the USAF\u2019s Century Series fighters were seen as less useful for the real wars being fought, the USAF gritted its teeth and bought navy aircraft. This option exists today.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the USAF fighter fleet is declining in scale and this decline seems unstoppable. The case isn\u2019t being made for large fighter fleets in the modern era, US Defense budgets are declining, fighter costs are ballooning and the American defense industry seems to lack the zest and sheer technical capabilities it once had.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear where this leaves us. Maybe the dominance of manned tactical fighter aircraft is slowly ending and innovative, affordable unmanned air vehicles from smaller, more agile defence companies will progressively take over during this and the next decade. Such systems will do things differently to manned aircraft but maybe that won\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

If not so, the decline in USAF fighter numbers relative to others might be a real problem that we need to think about. Should America\u2019s close allies be concerned by this evident decline in American military power? Is this a good future? And do we need to be thinking hard about what this means to our force structure and capabilities?<\/p>\n

Peter Layton is undertaking a research PhD in grand strategy at UNSW, and has been an associate professor of national security strategy at the US National Defense University. <\/em><\/em>\u00a0Graph courtesy of USgovernmentspending.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was originally published on November 12, 2012. (The Strategist will return with new material on Monday January 6, 2014) Andrew Davies\u2019 graph of the week about the elderly USAF tactical fighter fleet raises …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Strategist retrospective: the declining USAF tactical fighter fleet | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-strategist-retrospective-the-declining-usaf-tactical-fighter-fleet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Strategist retrospective: the declining USAF tactical fighter fleet | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post was originally published on November 12, 2012. 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