Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

Col. Robert Dilger & Pierre M. Sprey • 1594. battlefield interdiction, particularly in adverse terrain and against primitive,highly camouflaged supply lines.• Develop and procure only aircraft and weapons of the utmost austerity, strippeddown to only the capabilities directly required by actual combat experience.“Nice-to-have” features and capabilities for hypothesized future combat leaddirectly to shrinking force size and degraded effectiveness in real combat.Table 7 is an example of applying these effectiveness-based procurement groundrules.Note that this effectiveness-based procurement outline provides nearly 10,000aircraft over 20 years without exceeding current annual aircraft procurement budgets.The plan does include 183 F-22s for the simple reason that they have already beenacquired at no further acquisition cost after 2010; it includes 200 F-35s, redesignatedas A-35s, simply to fill commitments to allies who remain interested in it and to serveas battlefield interdiction aircraft in some limited-stress missions, albeit less effectivelyand at higher operating cost. The F-22 and the A/F-35 commitments were made yearsTable 7. Effectiveness-Based Aircraft Procurement OutlineMission Aircraft Design Number to beProcuredClose Air Supportand BattlefieldInterdictionClose Air SupportClose Air Support Fightersat no more than$15 million eachForward Air Control (FAC)Aircraft at ~$1 million eachApproximateTotal Cost4,000 $60 billion2,500 $3 billionAirlift New Air Refueling Tankers 100 $28 billionAirliftAir-to-air combatAir-to-air combatBattlefieldInterdictionDirt Strip Airlifters at$30 million eachF-22s already purchased at$350 million eachNew Air SuperiorityFighter at no more than$40 million eachF-35. Redesignate as A-35;acquired mostly to meetcommitments to allies at$250 million each1000 $30 billion183 already sunk; noactual additionalprocurement cost.1,100 $44 billion200 $50 billionTotals 9,983 $251 billion(does not includesunk F-22 costs)