America’s Air Superiority Crisis
By David Deptula on July 12, 2017 at 5:11 PM
The Air Force already has a big hole in its capabilities for the future: it needs what it is calling Penetrating Counter Air, a very fast, long-range, sensor-loaded and furiously lethal aircraft. But that effort is designed to fill a need in 2030. Dave Deptula, head of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute and a former lieutenant general who orchestrated air operations over Iraq and Afghanistan, argues the US already faces a quantitative gap in America’s all-important efforts to ensure we own the skies in any battle. Read on! The Editor.
The United States Air Force is suffering an air superiority crisis after 26 years of combat operations. Today, the service possesses just under 1,000 aircraft capable of air-to-air combat — F-15s, F-16s, F-22s, and F-35s. That is down more than 65 percent since the end of the Cold War. Given the global demands of our national security strategy, operational considerations, and force rotation factors, this amounts to fewer than 100 fighter aircraft available in a particular location at any given time.
http://breakingdefense.com/2017/07/americas-air-superiority-crisis/
