Winslow T. Wheeler, This Pentagon Needs Watching
Phony Reform and the F-35

Rarely does a government department write its own swan song as clearly, and without apology, as Carter and the Pentagon do today with respect to the Air Force and the air components of the Navy and Marine Corps. It is all made obvious in an obscure and mostly ignored document that accompanied the new defense budget in early February and that was almost certainly approved with verve by Under Secretary Carter. I refer to the "Aircraft Investment Plan, Fiscal Years (FY) 2011-2040."

This plan envisions the next thirty years for the Air Force and the aircraft for the Navy and Marine Corps. It is the road map to the future for the military arm that has most dazzled Americans since the unconditional victory its advocates assert it won in World War II. From the new high tech drones they see finding and destroying the Taliban's and al Qaeda's leadership to the wonder-weapon airplanes imagined to keep all future powers like China and Russia forever cowed because they can never catch up, the aviation plan lays out the future of what many Americas ardently believe is our premier arm of military power. The cutting edge of how we should, nay will, do things in the future.

It is not a road map to a more glorious future; instead, it charts the rot that people like Under Secretary Carter plan to impose on our military forces. Contrary to what politically driven dilatants might allege against the Obama administration, the plan is not to ruin our aviation forces with less money, but with more. Contrary to what the weapons dilatants might fear, it does not oppose "high tech" (rather complexity) in our air power, but advocates some of the most complex, costly, and stupid weapons ideas since the Imperial Japanese Navy's super-battleships of World War II, long ago sent to the bottom of the Pacific.

Without even the cognition to note it, the aviation plan starts out with the smallest and oldest Air Force and naval aviation inventory we have had since the end of World War II. The cause is not a lack of money, which today is higher in inflation adjusted dollars for the Pentagon than at any point since 1946. Nor are the Air Force or the Navy and Marine Corps being starved within the larger budget; their current spending is significantly above what they averaged all through the Cold War when their aircraft inventories were far larger.

Rather than a total combined fighter and attack aircraft inventory of over 8,000 aircraft in the 1950s and '60s, today we have just 3,264. The new DOD vision is to shrink the force even more; down to 2,929 in 2020 - a 10 percent reduction. While the inventory goes down, the budget goes up: the combined Air Force/Navy tactical (combat) aviation budget would grow from about $12 billion today to roughly $17 billion in 2020.

Shrinking is also the recommended plan for other whole categories of aircraft. From today to 2015 the combined inventory of support intelligence and command and control aircraft will go down to 527 from the current 580, but the budget to buy them goes up from approximately $5 billion to about $8 billion. The inventories of cargo aircraft and air-refueling tanker aircraft will stay roughly constant, while spending for them out to 2020 goes up, sharply in the case of tanker aircraft. The same is true of long range bomber aircraft.

While the plan skates over the issue of inventory age without a single mention, it is obvious that problem will worsen as well. Remarkable are the numbers of aircraft that the new plan retains out to the year 2040. The "legacy" fighters (the F-15s, F-16's, F-18s, and A-10s that were originally designed in late 1960's) will be hanging around until 2040. In other categories, the plan mumbles vaguely about "modernization" but nowhere do we see funded in the plan actual replacements for already antiquated manned command and control, surveillance, and intelligence aircraft, and some cargo and tanker aircraft.

We get this shrinking and aging aviation force for a 32 percent increase in money: the plan would up the $22 billion we spend in 2011 to $29 billion in 2020.

It does, however, get worse.