No-one is trying to plan defence budgets into the future. It’s a fact that USAF needs to replaces a huge chunk of it’s fleet in 2020-2030s – the fighters are the obvious one (F-35). But then there’s the trainers, transporters, tankers etc etc.

As for cost spreading out, yes you can do that. But when a big chunk of your airframes expires or becomes insanely expensive to operate or unreliable to operate, then you don’t have time.

And that’s the problem the US is facing – massed obsolescence/expiration of a big chunk of the fleet in a short period of time.

The first decade of the 2000s were in some ways wasted years for USAF. It’s lost them time and created a backlog of things that need replacing/considerable upgrading.

As for replacement aircraft, that is irrelevant if you don’t have the money to buy them.

I don’t see much of a problem.

And how are you going to fund it all?

That’s the problem.

You’ve got over 2,000 airframes to replace and most of them will be approaching crunch time in 2020-2030 period.

Even assuming $80 million per airframe, that’s $160 billion without taking into account R&D costs, service entry costs, etc etc.

There’s also T-38 Talon replacement (up to 500 a/c).

I don’t think the likes of Libyans or Syrians or Iraqis or Iranians or Venezuelans were/are too concerned with a Dutch or English destroyer. They were/are probably more concerned with US/NATO warplanes and cruise missiles.

To this end, the USN carriers and large LHD’s are the “super duper ships.”

Oh and if every country had an army just for UN duties, world peace has been achieved. That’s a good thing unless your a military enthusiast in which case WWIII is a desired goal to see how your favourite military toy perfroms.

The problem started in 1991 when the Cold War finished.

There was a real lack of investment in new aircraft especially support aircraft like tankers or tactical transports (only small number of C-130Js acquired by USAF).

The T-X Talon program has continuously been delayed whilst KC-X procurement also been a long and arduous process just to get to a winner. Then E-10 got cancelled, F-35, C-130J and C-17 all got delayed, F-22 got cut to the bone (and was delayed) and other programs such as U-2 replacement (RQ-4 Global Hawk) have not been successful.

So it’s not just the politicians but also the Air Force procurement processes which have proven to be bureaucratic, innefficient, badly managed and occassionally corrupt.

So you have a backlog that in some instances stretches back 20 years.

The Air Force has already lost some capabilities because of all of this – e.g. retirement of EF-111 Raven (Sparkvark) has seen EW role transferred to Navy and USMC.

Meanwhile a lot of assets have been utilised extensively in over a decade of military operations, especially the tankers, transports and electronic aircraft. This obviously uses up airframe life a lot quicker than regular peace time flying.

So come 2020-2030 you’ll have a whole heap of assets expiring and needing either extensive upgrades or replacement. And given scale of this (as stated over 2,000 aircraft), there is simply not enough money to do it all. So something will have to give.