Posted on 09/17/2018 1:01:54 PM PDT by caww
he proposed addition of 74 new combat squadrons to the Air Force would be the biggest increase in the service since the Cold War and is specifically intended to counter growing threats from Russia and China.
“We must see the world as it is. … We must prepare,” Wilson said. “We have returned to an era of great power competition."
Wilson acknowledges it will take time and additional funding to acquire the aircraft and recruit the pilots and additional personnel crews, but she called the planned expansion “an obligation to our countrymen.
“We aren’t naive about how long it will take us to build the support and the budget required for the force we need,” she said. “To face the world as it is, with a rapidly innovating adversary, the Air Force we need should have about 25 percent more operational squadrons in the 2025-2030 timeframe than the Air Force we have.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Ping.
Reopen Loring AFB, Maine!
leave some money for the Space Force with X Wing Fighters etc..
What aircraft?
That’s a big order. Are we going to be using more strategic bombing? ICBMs? What else does the Air Force do? (I know, inconus search and rescue).
Attended a lecture by an Air Force general defending North America. He explained the Obama cuts were so deep we are cannibalizing forces from around the world to defend the homeland.
Attention, Space Command ...
You are go for construction of the Death Star!
Paging Darth Vader ... Please pick up the Red Phone.
Obama’s next speech will lecture Trump on not having Green Energy weapons.
First of all, you don't have enough aircraft for that many squadrons, and the only active procurement programs are the KC-46, B-21 and the F-35. Good luck getting Congress to fund life extensions for F-15 and F-16 aircraft slated to be retired.
Second, thanks to the early 2000s fuster cluck of taking rated pilots out of cockpits to put them in air conditioned trailers 'flying' drones, your cadre of experienced mid-level pilots are now all flying vacationers to exotic locales. Where are you going to get the pilots to staff all of these new squadrons, assuming that somehow you do come up with the extra aircraft?
Do we need more squadrons? Or fewer commitments?
The ship has sailed on Loring AFB, long ago. I did a review of that base years later (1997), and while much of the physical plant is still there, it would be a major job restoring function to the site. For one thing, the base is some considerable distance from any supply lines (i.e., railroads or ship harbors), and there are no longer any serviceable pipelines to deliver the vast quantities of petroleum-based fuels or lubricants needed to support the presence of long-range bombers, or the ground crew that would also have to be present. Local economy is pretty much in the tank, and while the presence of the military base would perk things up a lot, it would always be operating on a false base, entirely at the whim of persons and agencies far removed from northern Maine.
Not even an option to try to re-open that post.
Maybe we would not have a problem if we confined ourselves to defending the nation and drop unrepublican globalist concepts like power projection, keeping “commitments” and “global leadership”. The founders of our nation envisoned a republic, not an empire.
Lol
Ping.
better idea
more
USA
USMC
1 airlift? I think she’d better think outside the Force. Smart and stand-off weapons have reduced the need for a large bomber fleet, technology has allowed one fighter to do the work of a flight but nothing can replace the need to get stuff to the fight when it absolutely, positively has to get there. I know they’re not glam but the more airlift we have, the better. You simply can’t have too much.
I have a strong feeling that despite what they want, they will get far more drone squadrons. Second, a priority for cargo and bomber aircraft will be cheap and reliable, because for both, 98% of what they do will be low or no intensity “work horse” type activities.
A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress costs about $58m. Its projected high tech replacement is the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider, which costs 10 times as much. However, the vast number of bomber missions are just work horse type over low tech battlefields. B-52s are also far easier to maintain, because they don’t need temperature controlled hangars, expensive maintenance equipment, etc.
This isn’t to say we don’t need expensive high tech bombers, just that we don’t need as many as the low tech ones.
22 C2ISR squadrons vs. 7 fighter and 5 bomber squadrons?
Hmmm...
Call up the folks at Davis-Monthan and tell them to start unwrappin’...
CC
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