The Quest for Relevant Air Power

50 │ POST–COLD WAR CHALLENGES
the USAF, the study was headed by an academic and harnessed
people from both academia and the military. 233 Another USAFsponsored
survey in the ensuing years includes an examination of
the campaigns over Bosnia, published in January 2000. 234
Force Structuring and Procurement
Western air campaigns of the post–Cold War era reveal a large
discrepancy between American and European air power. Inadequate
equipment largely accounts for this variance.
Approaches to Procurement
While Europe as a whole is not far behind the United States in
defence spending, its military capabilities nevertheless lag significantly
behind. Duplications, lack of integration, and retaining Cold
War structures within Europe have all contributed to this gap. 235 In
several European countries, defence planners continued throughout
the 1990s to focus upon worst-case scenarios—including a major
conventional military onslaught on Western Europe—instead of
shifting their primary focus to the most probable tasks. 236 The issues
of retaining Cold War structures and inefficient spending, two related
subjects, have been aggravated by a price escalation for sophisticated
weapons and shrinking defence budgets. Price escalation
has particularly related to combat aircraft, as each aircraft generation
has been considerably more expensive in real terms than the
one it replaced. 237 This surge in costs has been coupled in the post–
Cold War era with extreme delays in aircraft programmes. Financial,
technical, bureaucratic, and political problems have created
routine deferments of up to 10 years. 238 According to distinguished
British defence analysts, while defence planners are not unfamiliar
with affordability issues, they can no longer be disguised or circumvented.
239 Further obstacles to military innovation in Continental
Europe have been the limited resources devoted to research and development,
with the exceptions of the UK, France, and Sweden. 240
With the end of the Cold War, a major shift from threat-based
to capability-based force structuring has occurred. To retain freedom
of action, the UK and France have aspired to cover as full a
spectrum of capabilities as possible. 241 Yet, owing to technological