The F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, the KC-46 refueling tanker and a new long-range strike bomber rank at the top of new aircraft priorities. But those goals, which would cost nearly $400 billion for the F-35 to equip the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and $52 billion for a new tanker, could feel the pain of spending cuts, according to the highest-ranking Air Force officials, along with moves to slash flying hours and pilot training.
They've warned of a maintenance backlog, as well as further delays in priority projects. Nothing, they say, is completely safe from budget cuts.
"There are a bunch of long-term recapitalization programs that are going to be at risk in this current period of budget austerity," said Barry Watts, a senior analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
A long-range strike bomber is particularly at risk, he said.
"Neither the B-52 nor the B-1 (bombers) are going to be able to penetrate modern air defenses and survive very long," he said/.../
Despite the arrival of UAVs, the Air Force, like the other military branches, confronts a "death spiral" where manned aircraft become more and more expensive to maintain while the size of the fleet shrinks as the oldest models are sent to the bone yard.
New programs face the same spiral. The stealthy B-2 Spirit, for example, was slashed to 20 aircraft after the Air Force initially hoped to put 132 of the bat-winged bombers on the flight line, said Watts of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
When the first Bush administration stopped production, per-unit costs soared, driven mainly by research and development expenses distributed among fewer jets, Watts said.
"That's where you go from $800 million a copy, to $2 billion plus," he said. "Essentially, the problem is you have kind of a fixed research and development cost and when you spread that over 20 planes instead of 132, it pushes the costs up."