Air Force Budget Seeks to Buy More F-35s, Reduce Ranks →
The 2014 budget request from the Air Force includes funding for 19 additional F-35 fighter jets and cuts active-duty personnel by 1,900 airmen, according to an article in DoD Buzz.
The Air Force is already the most top-heavy branch in a military that for years has been cutting enlisted personnel while increasing top officers, a phenomenon known as “brass creep.” The Project On Government Oversight has long been a critic of both brass creep and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
When Acquisition Mistakes Hurt Defense →
The U.S. Air Force is buying 20 light support planes for the Afghan air force, but because of acquisition mistakes by the U.S. the planes may arrive after U.S. Air Force trainers have left the country.
And they will cost an extra $74 million. Read how it happened.
IG Blasts Air Force's F-22 Crash Report as Sloppy →
The Air Force’s investigation into the fatal 2010 crash of an F-22 fighter jet was sloppy and their conclusions were “not supported by the facts,” according to a new report by the Department of Defense Inspector General.
“…a billion-plus of taxpayer’s money went to essentially nothing.”
-Air Force Lieutenant General Charles Davis, the service’s top uniformed acquisition official.
Where was that money supposed to go? To a supply-chain management software project that was so behind schedule the Air Force had to cancel it despite sinking $1 billion into the project. Now there is an investigation into how this program went so wrong.
“Stealth technology demands significant trade-offs in range, security, weapons carriage, sortie generation, and adaptability. Stealth provides no advantage in conflicts such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq (since 2003), and (despite its obvious utility) it cannot guarantee success in future struggles with a near-peer adversary. Most importantly, the cost of F-22s and F-35s threatens to reduce the size of the Air Force’s fielded fighter fleet to dangerously small numbers, particularly in the current fiscal environment. These facts suggest that the Air Force should reconsider its long-standing position that fifth-generation fighters are the only option for recapitalizing its fighter fleet.”
Canada is on the hook for $25 billion worth of F-35 fighter jets, and they aren’t happy. POGO’s Winslow Wheeler headed north of the border to tell the CBC their shiny new jets also come with a lot of problems.
(Source: cbc.ca)
