It is obvious to all that the US will remain the dominant air power in the world for at least the next thirty years probably longer, but it is at the moment suffering from financial constraints and a rapidly changing mission. To counter this I have a few rather radical proposals (although it is realy to late for some of them)
1) Disband the air national guard, all USAF squadrons should be full time regulars.
2)cancel all except fo the carrier based JSF (so no VSTOL variant or USAF variant)
3)reduce overall size of the USAF, but equip all units with F/A22s (with continued spiral upgrades [specifically in the area of A2G]) over a long period of time.
4)Merge the marine aviation units with the navy units to produce a a USNAA (United States Naval Air Arm) end the usage of fixed wing aircraft by the marines and the deployment of such aircraft on LPH’s, marines will only operate helos.
5) Cancel cobra upgrades and replace it with apaches, form a joint attack helicopter force shared between the marines and the army. (standardization)
6) Form a joint transport command responsible for all transport aircraft.
7) Retire B52 and B1B, mothball future bomber projects but restart B2 production (with slightly uprated engines and systems aswell as the new stealth tiles all over)
Although the above is far from everything I would do, I do feel that this would offer a very good capabilityand better handling of the budget.
But, large numbers of personnel would have to go and the airframe numbers reduced. US military aircraft Industry would suffer, as the raptor (initially at least would have limited export potential)
thoughts?
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July 15, 2005 at 3:54 pm