I think I have posted as many pro-USAF posts in the last year as I have in the last decade…and I ain’t happy about it.
However, you have to give the Boys-in-Blue a tip of the hat. They have their new fighter by number, even if they have not given it a name yet or given everyone a good view of it.
They have their new bomber on the way. They still have some work to do in replacing the older-than-Sal C-135 Class derivatives and are overdue for new-build strategic airlift…but in the tactical and strategic air arenas, they are cooking with gas.
They’re thinking right. Via Stephen Losey at Air & Space Forces Magazine,
Currently, the fighter fleet—not counting A-10s—is split roughly 45 percent F-16s, 30 percent F-35s, 15 percent F-15s, and 10 percent F-22s.
Beyond the mix of the fighters, the force structure report also provides a new estimate of the total number of fighters the Air Force says it will need in the years to come: 1,509 combat-coded aircraft by 2035.
That’s up from the 1,271 the service estimated it would have in 2026 and the 1,369 combat-coded fighters it was shooting for by 2030 in last year’s report, Tabor said. The additional 140 jets would be a mixture of F-35s, F-15EXs, and F-47s.
2030 is as close to now as we are to 2022…which seems like yesterday.
Getting to the new 2035 goal depends on two key factors falling into place, Tabor said. First, Congress will need to provide the funds the Air Force needs to buy the jets. And the defense industrial base—in particular, prime contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing—must produce enough aircraft in time.
We’re seeing that all over the Navy side of the house, especially in the submarine side of the house. No one said re-industrialization would be easy. What did you think the Peace Dividend meant, vibes?
Top Air Force officials have for years said the service needs to buy 72 new fighters each year to replace its older, retiring jets and modernize the fleet. The fiscal 2027 budget request doesn’t reach that level, proposing 38 new F-35s and 24 F-15EXs for a total of 62. Tabor said those purchases can “ramp over time” to hit the numbers the Air Force needs.
“The question is, can industry produce at those levels?” Tabor said. “They’ve assured us that they can, and we believe them, but we also actually need to see it manifest.”
OK, here is where I have to bring up something I’ve been proposing for years—we need to buy off the F-16 line that our allies are keeping running.
The USAF has not purchased a new F-16 since 2005. Yes, that is correct, 21 years ago.
Last month we heard rumors of an F-16G buy based off the exceptional Block 70. This needs to happen. The F-15EX is a winner, and so would the F-16G too.
Older F-16s will reach the end of their lifespans in the mid-2030s, Tabor said, and “we are very conscious of that.” The simple—“and maybe the lazy”—way to approach that problem, Tabor said, is to automatically replace them with new F-16s. But that might not be the best strategy, he said.
“There is a spectrum of capability that we might want to replace the F-16s with,” he said. “It’s not urgent, frankly. What we don’t want to get to is a point where it is urgent, and we haven’t done the homework and decided ‘hey, this is really the right place to be.’ We do have time to churn through that and make sure that we have a good option going forward.”
Bullsh1t. We need to be ready for a war sooner rather than later. Your “we might want” can stuff it. While you figure that out and demonstrate how you’ll do it, we should keep cranking F-16s out of the factory.
Likewise, we cannot let the F/A-18 line go cold-iron. Until the F/A-18 is in full-rate production, keep them coming—but it appears we are stupidly going to do that. We need numbers, just like the USAF does. That is just on the active duty side.
Remember what Navy aircraft numbers in USNR looked like in the Cold War? I do.
We need that surge capability again…but we need numbers to do that.
The Navy is being stupid. The USAF is being smart.
Go ahead, quote me on that.
Originally published at CDR Salamander.
