America's Self-Destroying Air Power: Becoming Your Own Peer Threat

A new report entitled Americas Self-Destroying Air Power Becoming Your Own Peer Threat examines the impact of a crisis in aircraft procurement on tactical, strategic, and enabling capabilities of US air power. It draws on recent government and other reports to describe the problems in US aircraft procurement and their impact on US air power and the challenges the next administration will face in force planning and budgeting.>> The report is available on the CSIS web site at:> http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081001_aircraft_modernstudy.pdf>> The problems described in this report must be kept in context. Every service has, to some extent, mortgaged its future by failing to contain equipment costs, and by trading existing equipment and force elements for developing new systems that it may never be able to procure in the numbers planned.>> The Department of Defense has failed to contain procurement costs and the next Administration faces a future where it must either raise the defense budget or make grim trade-offs by cutting, delaying, or reducing the cost of key programs. US aircraft procurements are no exception. The problems are so severe that the US risks becoming its own peer threat to US airpower.>> Almost every major aircraft development program is in sufficient trouble to raise serious questions about the ability to maintain and modernize the overall fleet of US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft. The Afghan conflict and Iraq War have increased wear on an already aging fleet. Replacements are stuck in a morass of procurement and development problems, cost explosions, and rifts within the Department of Defense.