Air Force – USA Gov Policy

It’s the crisis that almost everyone prefers not to discuss: the rapid deterioration of the U.S. armed forces, at the same time that adversaries Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are rapidly building up and modernizing their militaries. Those nations are not only expanding their capabilities; they are not shy about using their newly produced muscle.

Each of the military branches has their own harsh problems to relate. On March 8, the Air Force presented testimony to the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee’s subcommittee on Airland Forces. Testifying for the USAF: Ms. Darlene J. Costello Performing the Duties of the Principal Deputy Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition & Logistics) Lt. Gen. James M. “Mike” Holmes, USAF Deputy Chief of Staff (Strategic Plans and Requirements) Lt. Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, USAF Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations) and Lt. Gen. Arnold W. Bunch, Jr. USAF Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary Of the Air Force (Acquisition.)

These are the crucial points Air Force personnel provided, in their own words:

For the first time in decades, our adversaries are closing in on our capability advantage. Our efforts to address these increasing challenges have been stymied by reduced and unpredictable appropriations.

Even at these funding levels, we continue to face difficult choices between capacity, readiness and modernization. We need …support in the form of stable and predictable appropriations if we are going to build the Air Force that ensures the joint force can continue to deter, deny and decisively defeat any enemy that threatens the United States or our national interests. Any return to sequestration-level funding will force us to chase short term requirements at the expense of long term strategic planning, modernization and readiness.

The Air Force’s fighter fleet is approaching 30 years old on average—the oldest in our history. Without recapitalization and selective capability upgrades, it will not be possible to mitigate the growing risk.

The Air Force is currently 511 fighter pilots short of the total manning requirement and our projections indicate this deficit will continue to grow to approximately 834 by 2022. The shortfall is the result of force structure reductions of active duty fighter and fighter training squadrons. The remaining active component fighter squadrons do not produce enough experienced fighter pilots to meet all of the staff, test, and training requirement

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the Air Force is only able to slow the decline in fighter pilot inventory and will be incapable of meeting our overall requirement for fighter pilot expertise for the foreseeable future. Without these fighter pilots, the Air Force will be very challenged to continue to provide the air supremacy upon which all our other forces depend.

While our potential adversaries continue to modernize, our legacy fourth generation aircraft are rapidly approaching the end of their effective service lives and are limited in their ability to operate in a highly contested environment. Our Air Force must rapidly re-capitalize our fourth generation aircraft. At the same time, we must sustain and modernize our fifth generation fleet in order to maintain our ability to execute our National Defense Strategy in the near to mid-term while looking even further into the future at further modernization efforts that ensure continued dominance in the air.

Due to current operations, the shortfall in Joint Direct Attack Munitions tail kits will continue to increase. The root causes of the problem include extremely high expenditure rates—higher than previous contingencies—and a starting inventory below the desired objective. Additionally, historically low procurements over the past decade…driven by restricted budgets, led to diminished industrial capacity.

Air-to-Air missile inventories in their latest variants are also short of objectives. The AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile (AMRAAM) and the AIM-9X Block II are in limited supply, placing reliance on less capable variants to meet combat objectives.

We view our national security as inextricably dependent on space-enabled capabilities. At the same time, space has become contested, congested and competitive; our space capabilities today are facing advanced, demonstrated, and evolving threats, which require fundamental 17 changes in the way we organize, train, and equip our forces. Congestion has increased the complexity of maintaining space situational awareness. There are over 60 active space-faring nations, nine of which have indigenous space launch capability. Almost any nation or state actor can access space services globally and globalization has made the latest technology available to our competitors and adversaries.

Prior to the testimony, the Heritage Foundation analyzed the Air Force’s condition, and noted that “The USAF is now the oldest and smallest in its history, and the problem is growing as the demand for air power continues to grow…The Air Force’s capacity in terms of number of aircraft has been in a constant downward slope…”

Robert Gehl, writing for Downtrend.com reported that “The United States Air Force now has one-quarter of the number of fighter squadrons it had 25 years ago and only two-thirds of active-duty airmen…”

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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