One of the great things about our editors is their differing viewpoints. David comes at Peter's question from a different angle than Joris:
While the world has changed since 1990, the Air Force has not, at least not where it counts. During the Cold War, the Air Force was structured to provide depth against intense Soviet attacks. It needed a large force of short-range fighters to beat back Soviet attacks, with big enough reserves to replace enormous losses. That kind of situation is no longer even a remote possibility, and most of our potential enemies field just a few squadrons of advanced fighters, if that. Even China has just a few hundred modern Sukhois.
But still, the Air Force is committed to maintaining 2,000 fighter jets over the long term, despite the rising cost of those aircraft. That shakes out to around 200 F-22s and 1,800 F-35s replacing 50 F-117s, 400 F-15s, 400 A-10s and 1,200 F-16s. But the high cost – hundreds of billions of dollars – means that everything else must go: the C-17 line must end before we’ve got the 250-plus of those airlifters that we need; new tankers to replace our 500 ancient KC-135s will arrive at a mere trickle over the next 30 years; a hundred C-130s will retire without replacement despite the growing need for medium-range lift in Iraq and Afghanistan; the electronic warfare fleet based on a hundred or so 1960s airframes will soldier on without any realistic prospect for replacement. In time, the airplanes we need will go away while the Air Force single-mindedly tries to buy a large fighter force we no longer need at all.
What’s the solution? In my humble opinion, the Air Force needs to give up fighters in order to afford the larger, more robust, modern support fleets that are vital to modern warfare. That means killing or severely curtailing the F-35 in order to buy tankers, airlifters and EW platforms plus lots and lots of drones.
We still need fighters, of course, for Close Air Support and to protect the big, slow support planes from the enemy. But we don’t need a huge attrition reserve of light fighters like the F-16. In other words, we don’t need 1,800 F-35s. In fact, the F-22 is much better suited to the kinds of missions we’ll see in the future: and it’s got the long range, high speed and powerful electronics to enable a small force to cover a lot of air space, say over North Korea or the Pacific Ocean. A smart solution to the fighter problem would be to buy around 400 F-22s to form the backbone of the Air Force’s fighter fleet. That, plus we should find the tooling for the A-10 and put it back into production to ensure that Warthogs can rescue ground troops for another 50 years.
By sticking to just one modern fighter design – and an overall smaller fighter fleet – the Air Force could afford all the other, more important, airplanes that it needs, and avoid the otherwise inevitable hollowing-out that is already starting to happen.
--David Axe
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