Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

204 • Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck is Hereearly 1990s. This spike in aircraft age can be traced to the procurement “good times”of the late 1970s, when the Air Force was able to produce close to 350 to 390 fighter/attack aircraft annually for a couple years, falling to around 200-220 in the mid-1980s.It is interesting to note that DOD spent roughly $7 billion (in FY 2008 $) per year tobuy those 200-plus aircraft compared to the $5 billion annual procurement bill for20 F-22s bought each year in the 2003-2009 time frame.This near-suspension of procurement traces its origins to the end of the Cold Warin the first Bush administration. Air Force fighter procurement fell from the more than200 a year discussed earlier to 20 or fewer aircraft per year starting in the mid-1990sduring the Clinton years and continued into the first decade of the 21st century withthe decision to cap the buy of F-22s at 183 aircraft, procured at an annual rate of 20aircraft. Thus, despite parallel major reductions in Air Force fighter force levels toroughly half those of the 1980s, the “procurement holiday” of the 1990s, added to thehigher-than-planned OPTEMPO of these forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts,has led to a major headache for the service’s leadership. The competing demands of anaging force, becoming more and more expensive to keep operational, and the need toreplenish these worn-out forces with modern aircraft is a planners’ nightmare.In order to reduce the average age of its fighter forces to its desired 10 to 15 yearslevel in the next five to 10 years, the Air Force would need a huge spike in procurementquantities to reach that goal and then require an annual procurement rate of between100 and 120 aircraft per year in order to sustain that average age. Unfortunately, theAir Force’s aircraft procurement in its budget request totals 93 aircraft in FY 2009,of which only 28 are new fighter aircraft – the last 20 of its planned 183 F-22s and 8F-35As – while 52 are UAVs: 38 Predators, nine Reapers and five Global Hawks.The F-35 Will Not Solve the U.S. Air Force’s ProblemThe replacement of F-22 procurement with the less expensive F-35 will not solvethe problem. The Air Force budget projection shows F-35A procurement rising to 48aircraft by FY 2013 (with actual and planned procurement between FY 2007 and FY2013 totaling 142 aircraft), still not enough to turn around the worsening force agingproblem. Even this total quantity and out-year procurement rate are questionablebased on the past unstable record of this program. For example, compared to the FY2007 FYDP, the Air Force FY 2009 FYDP procures 89 less F-35As through FY 2013.Furthermore the F-35 program office has reduced the F-35A peak production ratefrom the previously planned 110 aircraft per year to 80 aircraft per year in FY 2015and beyond. These relatively small quantities appeared even more questionable inlight of reported reductions in out-year funding in the fiscal guidance for the preparationof the FY 2010 budget combined with yet more cost growth as discussed in thefollowing paragraphs. In any event, even these planned procurement quantities arenot sufficient to attain the Air Force’s average age goal, much less maintain it into the