In an acknowledgment that the military may be pricing itself out of business, the Air Force on Wednesday called for a shift away from big-ticket weapon systems that take decades to develop and a move toward high-technology armaments that can be quickly adapted to meet a range of emerging threats.
An Air Force strategic forecast, looking 20 years into the future and spurred in part by looming budget constraints, also calls for a faster pace, with lower price tags, in developing both airmen and the technology they use, warning that the current way of acquiring warplanes and weapons is too plodding.
The report, described as a “call to action” by Secretary Deborah Lee Jamesof the Air Force, limits itself to how the country’s most tech-heavy military service can adapt to looming threats and budget constraints. But it is also a warning to and an admission from the entire Defense Department that with military compensation and retirement costs rising sharply, the country may soon be unable to afford the military it has without making significant changes to the way it does business.
Space and information programs could also see their spending cut in this new approach, military analysts said, with a view to building them in a more piecemeal way that would allow for quick adaptation as new technology emerges.
“The notion is, we can’t afford the big bang programs anymore, so what if we approached it differently, looking at adding capability in smaller chunks?” said Beth McGrath, a director at Deloitte Consulting and former deputy chief management officer for the Defense Department. “We say, ‘This is the big thing we want,’ and then we go buy the big thing. But there’s a better way to do this.”
Air Force officials said they also believed they could incorporate this new system into some existing programs — the service has been retrofitting its aging B-52 bomber fleet for decades to meet changing needs. A senior Air Force official said Wednesday that engineers were looking into whether they could integrate some of the newest advances in aircraft engines, including the latest in propulsion technology for fuel savings, and put them into existing systems, instead of simply starting from scratch all over again with new planes.
General Allvin, who worked on the report, said in an interview that the service also must look for how to make airmen more adaptable to new technology, and seek ways to harness advances underway at American tech giants like Google. He suggested that the Air Force might restructure pension and retirement programs so airmen could still qualify for military retirement benefits even if they spend their careers switching back and forth between the service and high-tech firms in the private sector.
“What if you entered the Air Force knowing you could serve for a few years, then go to work for an innovative tech company, and then return to the Air Force?” he said. “We could enter into partnerships with cutting-edge companies and allow our work force the opportunity of a more flexible retirement system that allows you to do two different jobs and still get to a 20-year retirement. It might take 35 years, but you would get here.”
After two costly and exhausting land wars and the fiscal reality of government austerity, the Air Force report could signal similar shifts by the entire military.