The president’s latest defense budget
request for 2023 would shrink and age America’s geriatric Air Force even
further. This for a service that by automobile standards has more than a dozen
fleets of aircraft that qualify for antique license plates.

Worse, the US Air Force “operates eight fleets exceeding an average age of 50 years, and one—the KC-135—now exceeds 60.”

Yet the budget would have the Air Force shed another 1,500 aircraft over the next five years while buying a small fraction of that to replace them.

Even though the number and severity of
threats to the United States have steadily risen, the US military is only
getting smaller. The rationale from Pentagon leaders is that they must take
risks in the present to invest in the future. This capability-over-capacity
bias translates into prioritizing research and development (R&D) over
buying what is available now.

Yet the ratio of military procurement to R&D has been in decline for decades. The arguments for why have remained remarkably consistent. The “historically low” ratio of purchases to research during the 1990s was explained by the “success of the Gulf War to prioritize the development of next-generation weapon systems.”

The result of the post–Cold War “peace
dividend” was a “procurement holiday” from which the military has never fully
recovered.

The same
arguments from the 1990s still prevail today—only with updated buzzwords.
Proponents of robbing capacity to buy more future capability argue that the
military should shrink to pay for making existing forces more lethal,
transformational, and modern.

Just this week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the Senate that his budgets take resources from procurement and capacity—or supply of forces and equipment—to “invest in future capabilities, the kind we need for the next fight.” Army General Mark Milley echoed that sentiment, saying this budget is designed to “modernize the force for the future operating environment, 2030 and beyond.”

Someone should tell the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs that over
three-quarters of the fighting force of today will be the same forces fighting
in 2030.

To make matters worse, demand for military forces has yet to go down in three decades. Trading away capacity—especially before the promised next-generation technology arrives primed and ready—results in a force with tiered modernization incapable of carrying out the full ambitions of the defense strategy.

Cutting vast amounts of legacy weapons to pay for bets on developmental technologies, while not without merit, suffers from four flaws: (1) It discounts developmental risk and focuses on technology before operational concepts; (2) it ignores massive deferred modernization bills coming due now; (3) it assumes a supine Congress; and (4) it underinvests in sustainable equipment choices.

Budgets
that don’t keep pace with inflation and sustained high demand for forces means
shrinking the military to pay for qualitative improvements will result in its
inability to meet requirements and perpetual readiness shortfalls. Not only
does Pentagon leadership consistently and willfully underestimate the long-term
mission demand on US forces, they similarly misjudge the likelihood of surprise
in the nature, location, and simultaneity of future conflicts.

Even if transformation succeeds, if it is zero-sum, it will create an unbalanced military, reduce the efficiency and cost savings of the acquisition system, and leave future policymakers with worse and fewer choices.

The post Air Forces Need, You Know, Airplanes appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.