U.S. Air Force officials lack the air power needed to prevent a potential war with China from settling into “the kind of bloodbath” on display in Ukraine.
“We've got to get to the ability, maybe not all times in all places ... to attain and maintain air superiority,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, the deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said Thursday. “We don't want the kind of bloodbath that's going on in Ukraine right now. And so therefore, we have to get to the advanced capabilities that it takes to change the battlefield.”
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Air Force planners have budgeted to purchase 72 new fighter jets in the upcoming fiscal year, comprised of a mix of vaunted fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighters and the F-15EX. Yet the Air Force's ability to continue acquiring six dozen warplanes per year could be tested by defense manufacturing constraints.
“The defense industrial base can only support so much procurement and the ability right now to go beyond 72 — there are some challenges,” Moor said. “You know that it's great to think that COVID is over, but supply chain and workforce issues are not over at all.”
The F-15EX, made by Boeing, has been billed as “a backbone fighter for the service,” in part due to its “capacity to carry hypersonic weapons.” The Air Force budget request calls for 24 of the upgraded F-15s, along with 48 F-35s, as part of a purchase plan intended to max out the size of the F-15EX fleet at 104.
“As we reach what we believe is a sustainable fleet size and what we need in the F-15EX, we'll have to see what capacity is available in the F-35 world, or whatever else it may be that we look at,” Moore said. “I don't think it's a one-time thing, but I do think that right now, it’s predicated on the fact that we have two hot fighter production lines.”
The difficulty of procuring new planes could put Pentagon planners on a collision course with U.S. lawmakers. Moore’s team wants to retire about 32 of the oldest F-22 Raptors, known as Block 20. This fifth-generation warplane was produced in smaller numbers than originally planned due to the budget cuts mandated by sequestration, and Congress refused last year to allow the Air Force to shrink the number of F-22s further.
Moore, however, sees a tension between upgrading those fighter jets and developing new and more advanced fighters. The upgrades would cost “around $3.5 billion” and “would take a decade” to begin. Worse yet, he suggested, it would distract Lockheed Martin’s limited number of engineers from developing more advanced capabilities.
“Lockheed is not fully staffed for engineers. And so if we were to stand up an effort like this ... they would have to pull some engineering talent off of F-35,” Moore predicted. “That is a trade to us that doesn't make any sense at all — to upgrade aircraft a decade from now, at great expense, while impacting the F 35 Block Four at the same time. We don’t think that that’s a viable course of action.”
And the effectiveness of the existing fleet has fallen short of Air Force expectations, with just over half of the vaunted F-35 stealth fighter jet fleet considered “mission capable,” according to monthly average readiness rates shared with Congress last month. And all the mission-capable F-35s in the U.S. military aren’t much use without pilots to fly them, an obvious point that has become a cause for anxiety across the military services. For instance, the Marine Corps could muster only 218 of the 498 F-35 fighter pilots they needed last year.
“All of the hardware in the world, if it doesn't fly, isn't actually combat capacity,” Moore said during an event with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “There is progress being made here. ... What's more important is that we're honest about what it takes to operate advanced weapon systems and what we can expect of them and then drive the folks that are involved in that enterprise to produce at the level that we think is reasonable.”
The pilot shortage is driven by “competition with the airlines,” whose poaching of pilots is “more directly and more adversely impacting the joint force than that emanating from either Russia or China,” according to the top Marine Corps general.
“We are at a competitive disadvantage and risk our reservoir of pilots drying up,” Gen. David H. Berger, the Marine Corps commandant, told a Senate panel last month. “This is not just a Marine Corps problem. It is a joint force problem, and we will continue to work with the other services and Congress as our understanding of this issue develops.”
Air Force officials have launched a “war on readiness,” as the executive officer for the F-35 program calls it, “with a focus on addressing near-term top degraders while looking over the horizon to identify, mitigate, and eliminate future impacts to F-35 readiness.” Only 29% of the current F-35 fleet has been rated “full mission capable,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmitt told lawmakers last month.
“This is unacceptable, and maximizing readiness is my top priority,” Schmitt said. “I have set a target over the next twelve months to increase availability by at least 10%.”
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The success of their ability to improve the availability and effectiveness of U.S. air power, from the number of planes manufactured to the pilots capable of flying them to the spare parts available to repair the planes when they return, could have a shaping influence on any future war with China or another high-end adversary.
“The reason the war in Ukraine is a war of attrition is because neither side has air superiority,” as Moore observed.