Finding the Way (Again): Building the Air Force’s New Century Series
Mike Pietrucha
June 11, 2019
We’ve got to kill the major defense acquisition program as it is today, and replace it with something that looks like the Century Series development of the Early Air Force.
–Dr. William Roper
Dr. William Roper, the Air Force’s senior acquisition official, has set a new goal for the development of combat aircraft: Create an Air Force acquisition process that can design a new fighter every four years, and maintain that high development tempo for the next generation of programs. His proposal explicitly hearkens back to the Century Series aircraft, built for the Air Force during a flurry of modernization in the 1950s. All told, six fighter/interceptor designs had their first flight between 1953 and 1956 (three more designs remained unflown), resulting in 5531 aircraft delivered to the Air Force alone.
Roper’s is a worthy goal, designed to break the Air Force out of a paradigm in which it takes entire careers to field a single fighter aircraft, often late, over budget, and unable to meet initial requirements. It’s been decades since an Air Force fighter reached (or exceeded) a planned production run — the last was the 2231 F-16 deliveries between 1978 and 2005. The subsequent programs, F-15E and F-22, delivered far fewer aircraft than anticipated, and the total F-35 buy has yet to be determined. But while the Century Series looks like a great model, the conditions under which those aircraft were designed and purchased was vastly different from the conditions facing Air Force acquisition today. To achieve Roper’s goal, the Air Force would have to make major changes to the way acquisitions work, from the requirements process to the decision-making that enables it — all areas where the service continues to face challenges. The New Century series will require a lot more than a better design phase.
