Defense Spending "On the Table"

[finnbow]

Sorry about the knee-jerk response, Whell. It just comes natural.

What got me about the article is the notion that we actually need thousands of combat aircraft. Specifically, it says we needed 86 combat wings. Combat wings are defined as follows:

In determining the size of a fighter wing equivalent, Air Force planners use as a baseline the typical active duty wing, composed of three squadrons of 24 mission-ready aircraft each, or 72 combat-coded fighters. This formula still works reasonably well for legacy fighters—F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s. However, the system breaks down when it is applied to newer, fifth generation fighters such as the advanced F-22 and F-35.

“It is important to note that we expect a squadron and wing in the future to consist of fewer aircraft with greatly increased capability,” Clarke said. An F-22 squadron, say, may contain 18 Raptors, but that squadron would be at least as potent as a more-traditional squadron of 24 F-15Cs. “You’re looking to measure a degree of capability,” said Clarke. “An F-22 is more capable than an F-15, and, therefore, counting that by tail numbers just doesn’t make sense.”

That's almost 6,200 legacy fighters (F-15, F-16's) or over 4,600 New Generation fighters (or a combination thereof somewhere between those two numbers).

So, we over 5,000 (combined legacy and New Generation) fighters to fulfill the AF's "obligations," when not a single F-15 has ever been lost in a dogfight? Somehow, I see these "obligations" as meeting the AF's desire to retain its bloated force structure, along with hundreds of high ranking officers, rather than protecing the country as economically and efficiently as possible (or needn't economy and efficiency enter the equation when it comes to DoD?). Or is it about keeping Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics (and the politicians who feed at their troughs) fat, dumb and happy?