Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

CHAPTER 7reversing the decayof American Air PowerCol. Robert Dilger (U.S. Air Force, ret.) and Pierre M. SpreyU.S. Air Force resource allocations and tactical/strategic decisions from the 1930sto today have been heavily dominated by the theories expressed in Giulio Douhet’s1921 book, “The Command of the Air.” Douhet’s premise was that strategic bombardmentof an enemy’s heartland can win wars independently of ground forces. Theunchanging dominance of that strategic bombardment paradigm has caused the AirForce to discount effective, sometimes war-winning, forms of air power and to spendvast sums on air power technologies that are ineffective and often counterproductive.Further, this focus on bombardment technologies has created the huge cost,maintenance and logistics burdens of the present steadily aging and shrinking fleetof U.S. Air Force aircraft.The aircraft in Table 1 (on page 130) comprise the Air Force’s major combat andsupport aircraft inventory. All but two of the 15 aircraft listed began their development30 or more years ago and will remain in the active inventory for a long time to come.(Two – the B-2 and the F-22 – are “younger” at 20 plus years.) At the extreme, theB-52, a 1944 requirement concept which began development in 1952, is scheduled toremain in inventory until 2030 – almost a full century. The age and enormous burdenof this inventory will only deteriorate further under present Air Force plans. 1In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. Air Force received an unasked for bonanzaof three warfighting aircraft. It despised all three: a 40,000-pound F-15 ( theAir Force wanted a very different 80,000-pound aircraft); the smaller, lighter F-16(considered a Mattel toy by most in the Air Force leadership); and the greatest heresy ofall, the A-10 dedicated to the mission of close support for troops in combat, a missionthe Air Force wanted to forget. A group of individuals of various backgrounds, knownas the “Fighter Mafia,” 3 fought a long and harsh battle to place all three aircraft intothe Air Force inventory – and won. Of the Air Force’s 2,581 warfighting aircraft listedin Table 1, 2,390 (or 93 percent) are the very same designs the Air Force originallydid all in its power to scuttle.Air Combat and Funding Lessons of History (1918-2008)The most reliable gauge of any air force’s underlying beliefs is its funding decisions forkey combatants, in this case the relative funding for bombers versus fighters, that is forstrategic bombardment versus air-to-air, battlefield interdiction and close support.