"What does Al Qaeda's air force look like?" said one defense official working on the Pentagon's assessment, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review.
First, just what makes this mental titan in the DOD think that Al-Queda is truly our biggest long-term threat????
And as for the Axis of Evil...who does he think is the CENTER of that Axis...which was never named by the Pesident? It was the Red Chinese who armed and funded the Taliban, met 5 times with Osama Bin Laden, and openly celebrated and cheered 9-11 before it happened with their PLA Colonel's "Asymmetric Warfare" book, and then at the time while it happened with their media delegation in San Diego (resulting in their forced early deportationon the QT), and subsequently on their domestic television when Ziang Jemin visited D.C.!
I would note that The PLA has a rather large and growing stockpile of fighters. Perhaps they could easily unload the older ones to a radical islamic state. Or they could even start exporting them these much newer ones, ...the Indian version of which defeated our F-15s in war games:
Finally, more broadly, we are looking at a wide spectrum of aerial threats: I.e, the terrorists are flying Recon-UAV's into Israel. Can the bomb-payloads be far behind? And Al-Queda also seemed to do quite well without its own wings on 9-11... where is the city air-defenses?
You have identified what is wrong with the pasty-faces at the Pentagon.
In the building, they are always fighting the last war (or action) and resource accordingly. 'Pod.