Air Force Times April 17, 2008
Officials say current plans create fighter gap
By Erik Holmes
The Air Force will begin facing a shortage of fighter aircraft by 2017, and the shortage will balloon to 800 aircraft by 2024, senior Air Force officials said April 9.
That so-called “fighter gap” could force the Air Force to keep aging F-15s and F-16s flying beyond their anticipated retirement dates by sinking billions into additional service-life extension programs and upgrades.
Senior Air Force leaders have long complained that acquisition plans for fifth-generation fighters — the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II, or Joint Strike Fighter — are insufficient to replace aging legacy aircraft, but this is the first time they have publicly disclosed the extent of the projected shortfall.
The gap is the result of the F-22 program being capped far short of the 381 aircraft the Air Force says it needs and F-35s being purchased at a rate of only 48 per year through 2034, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, military deputy to the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.
“The size of the F-22 force is certainly a contributor, but the real contributor to [the gap] is ... the Joint Strike Fighter production rate,” Hoffman said. “We still stand by 1,763 [F-35s] as our final number, it’s just when do we get there and how do the legacy aircraft age until that last one is delivered? JSF replaces all our F-16s and all our A-10s, but they may not live long enough until the last JSF comes along.”
Air Force leaders have pushed for more F-22s and larger annual purchases of the F-35, but they appear to have made little headway on either front. Congress and the Pentagon have committed to purchasing only 183 F-22s so far, and F-35 procurement maxes out at 48 aircraft per year beginning in 2013.
Plans call for the fleet of 2,386 F-15s, F-16s and A-10s to be replaced by 183 F-22s and 1,763 F-35s, or a total of 1,946 aircraft. More than 100 F-22s already have been delivered, and the F-35 will reach initial operational capability in 2013, according to Air Force budget documents.
The Air Force is looking into how the fighter gap could be filled by extending the lives of legacy aircraft such as F-15s and F-16s, said Lt. Gen. Daniel J. Darnell, deputy chief of staff for air, space and information operations, plans and requirements.
“We’re ... already starting to review what that mix of legacy aircraft might have to be,” Darnell told Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee members at an April 9 hearing.
He said the Air Force is conducting an F-15 fleet viability study, due out in early summer, and will consider a proposal to further extend the life of the jets, the entire fleet of which was grounded late last year after an F-15C broke apart in flight because of massive structural failure. Currently, 177 F-15s are programmed to remain in service until 2024, but that number could go up.
The Air Force is considering further life extensions to F-16s as well, Hoffman said.
Some F-16s are slated to continue flying until 2025 with an 8,000-hour flying life. To meet that goal, the fleet is undergoing a $570 million service-life extension program for its engines.
Extending the F-16’s flying life to 10,000 hours — which would allow the jets to be flown an additional six to 10 years each — could cost an estimated $2.2 billion, according to GlobalSecurity.org. The Air Force has identified another $3.2 billion in necessary, but unfunded, upgrades, including installing more advanced radar.
Congress appropriated $335.2 million in fiscal 2008 for F-16 upgrades — more than for any other platform in the Air Force’s inventory — and the service’s fiscal 2009 budget request asks for $273.7 million more for modernization.
Loren Thompson, an Air Force expert with the Lexington Institute, dismisses the idea of an Air Force fighter gap, arguing it exists only against an artificial benchmark of what the service wants to buy.
“At some point, you have to say to yourself, a gap compared to what? Against what?” Thompson said. “If [another nation] was buying [fighters in large quantities], you’d say, ‘Yeah, we need to keep up.’ But they’re not. It seems as though we’re posturing ourselves for the threat we want to fight rather than the fight we’re actually in.”
Indeed, some lawmakers, congressional staff and defense analysts have questioned the Air Force’s plan to replace 1,647 F-16s and A-10s with 1,763 F-35s. The F-35 is at least four times as capable as the legacy systems it will replace, according to Air Force budget documents, so the skeptics have argued that the legacy aircraft do not need to be replaced at a 1-to-1 ratio.
A 2007 report by Steve Kosiak and Barry D. Watts of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments suggests that because of the F-35’s greater capability, a fleet of 800 to 1,000 F-35s might be sufficient. The report says buying 1,763 F-35s could require the Air Force to make significant cuts to other programs, such as next-generation long-range strike aircraft and the new refueling tanker.
Any cuts to the Air Force’s portion of the F-35 program would exacerbate the potential fighter gap, but the Air Force may not have a choice at the end of the day, Thompson said.
“It’s a big question mark whether the money for next-generation fighters is going to be there,” he said. “I think, frankly, the political system is migrating away from the view that we need to replace all of the legacy [fighters] with stealthy aircraft because the threat seems to demand a different mix of capabilities.”
And the massive F-35 program — the most expensive defense program in history at an estimated $298.8 billion for Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft — could become a tempting target for budget cuts.
Defense analysts and lawmakers — and, in private, some senior Air Force leaders — have also expressed concern that the Navy may delay or cut back its purchase of F-35s. Such a move could drive up the price for the other program participants, which include eight foreign nations.
“It’s a joint program [and an] international program, and we have tight linkage between any hiccups that any member brings into it,” said Hoffman, the Air Force acquisition official. “If we get reductions in funding to the Joint Strike Fighter program, that then impacts ... the other partners’ cost.”
A significant per-aircraft price increase could force the Air Force to buy fewer F-35s, Thompson said.
Also, a Government Accountability Office report issued in March warns that the F-35 program is likely to be over budget and behind schedule, which would further exacerbate the anticipated fighter gap. But a Defense Department report issued in early April shows estimated acquisition costs dropping by $981 million, or 0.3 percent, over the life of the program.
The Air Force has resisted calls to sink billions into upgrading legacy systems, arguing the money would be better spent on buying new, more capable fifth-generation aircraft. Officials point out that just a fraction of the money spent on legacy upgrades — as little as 15 cents on the dollar — creates new capability. The majority goes toward maintaining existing capability, they argue, so it is not a wise use of money.
© Copyright 2008, Army Times Publishing Company
