Air Force Secretary: Aging fleet threatens ability to fight wars; 'No fourth-generation fighter would be allowed into war over Tehran or over Caracas'

Above: A pair of F-16 Fighting Falcons sit on the flight line as the sun sets at Balad Air Base in August. They are among those aircraft classified as 'fourth generation' jet fighters -- in service from approximately 1980–2010 and representing the design concepts of the 1970s.

The Air Force’s attempts to fund replacement of its aged aircraft fleet by cutting personnel is failing, and if Congress and the White House don’t provide an infusion of cash soon, the service will no longer be able to win wars, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne declared.

Wynne, speaking at a Washington think tank Sept. 19, said that the service’s stay-within-its-topline bootstrap approach isn’t arresting the aging aircraft problem, and the inventory age is still rising, from 23.9 years today to 26.5 years by 2012...

“No [USAF] fourth-generation fighter would be allowed into war over Tehran or over Caracas, once they buy what the Russians are selling them,” Wynne said. He noted that as far back as 1999, only stealthy B-2s and F-117s were actually allowed to overfly the murderous air defenses around Belgrade in operation Allied Force, and foreign air defense systems have improved dramatically since then...

“This can’t go on,” Wynne asserted. “At some time in the future, they will simply rust out, age-out, fall out of the sky. We need, somehow, to recapitalize this force.”

Read the rest at Air Force Magazine

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