New Report: Air Force Can’t Afford ‘Runaway’ R&D, Needs More Aircraft
Oct. 23, 2025 | By Greg Hadley
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Pentagon investment over the past decade has so favored research and development over procurement that it “has left the Joint Force increasingly undersized, outdated, and less likely to prevail in high-intensity conflict against a peer,” according to a new report from the Center for a New American Security.
The Oct. 21 report calls the Air Force’s combat fleet “smaller than at any other time in recent history” and authors Carlton Haelig and Philip Sheers call on DOD to redirect “runaway” R&D spending to buy production-ready F-15EX, F-35, and B-21 jets.
“The United States now faces a near-term window of increasing vulnerability in which China may believe that the PLA could defeat the United States,” they warned. “The United States must procure more forces that can be fielded quickly while continuing to fund advanced technologiesand help them transition to production as quickly as possible,” the CNAS report states. “Both actions are needed to strengthen deterrence against China in the near and long term.”
The Air Force has always leveraged advanced technology and invested more heavily in research, development, test, and evaluation than the Army and Navy. The Space Force is even more technologically based, and does so at an even greater rate.
Yet it is only since the late 2010s that the RDT&E budget has grown out of proportion, exceeding the procurement budget for the first time in service history. Even in the 1980s, when USAF fielded a new ICBM missile, the F-117, F-15, B-2, and more, that didn’t happen, noted retired Col. John “JV” Venable, now a fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
The Air Force’s 2026 budget request sought $46.4 billion in RDT&E—28 percent more than the $36.2 billion sought for procurement. The Army and Navy also increased their RDT&E budgets, but CNAS found the Department of the Air Force was alone among the military departments spending more on research than procurement.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/new-report-air-force-cant-afford-runaway-rd-needs-more-aircraft/
