The U.S. Air Force Is Headed for a Crash: Too Many Old Planes, Not Enough Cash
Barring some radical shift in the cost of new technology, future administrations could face a difficult choice: Either boost Air Force budgets to Cold War levels or higher, or shrink the flying branch to an affordable size.
“Growing the force is going to compete directly with modernizing the force,” Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told Breaking Defense, a trade publication.
Today the Air Force possesses around 5,600 aircraft in 312 squadrons, making it by far the biggest air force in the world.
The average plane is old, however. Thanks to the government’s military spending spree in the 1980s and a subsequent decline in spending in the mid-’90s, no fewer than 1,900 of the Air Force’s most important warplanes—including most of its A-10, F-16 and F-15 fighters—are between 26 and 40 years old, according to a December...
