It's official. The USAF did want more F-22s and considered a 180-some force to be a high risk approach, but after the Defense Department provided the service with a new assessment of future wars, the USAF changed its mind. That's what the service's top leaders say in a signed piece in this morning's Washington Post.And being able to change one's mind is the sign of deep though, right?
The most important fact about this story is that it had to be written at all. Gates said on Monday that the AF had fully supported the decision to close the F-22 line.
Look what the 1970s brought us - disco, the Village People, the F-15 ...
Nobody with any great power and influence (current or retired officers, for example) has spoken against it, except for the usual suspects on the Hill. Maybe Gates is reading the all-time-record comment thread on Ares.
The second important piece is here: First, based on warfighting experience over the past several years and judgments about future threats, the Defense Department is revisiting the scenarios on which the Air Force based its assessment.
More money spent on anti-terrorist training and tactics will pay off in Iraq and Afghanistan. In China? Not so much
Read this in conjunction with the paragraph before it, which states that Donley and Schwartz concluded last summer that a 381-aircraft force was "low-risk" and that 243 was "moderate risk". It's not a huge logical leap to say that 183 was termed "high risk" - that is, likely to prove deficient against future threats.
The USAF has not changed its methodology, but the DoD "is revisiting the scenarios" - that is, changing the inputs to the process.
Garbage in ...
That is of course the DoD's job; but the Gates team seems to have done this in only one specific case. And when was it done? As we've reported before, the USAF in March was saying that it needed more F-22s.
Third pivotal comment: Analysis showed that overlapping F-22 and F-35 production would not only be expensive but that while the F-35 may still experience some growing pains, there is little risk of a catastrophic failure in its production line.
Of course, according to this article, the F-35 doesn't work very well in hot climes, but whatever. We never fight in those
In its simplest terms, whether a risk is acceptable or not depends on the level of risk - its probability - and its consequences. Most of us will buy a $1 raffle ticket for a $50 prize even if we know that 100 tickets have been sold. Russian roulette has a much higher chance of a "win" - five in six - but most of us won't do that. That's risk management.
Now define "catastrophic". If you mean, for example, that JSF unit cost doubles and production rates are halved - as has happened to a lot of programs - there may be "little risk" of this. But its effect in a fixed-budget world would be to gut the US Air Force: the consequence is so severe that the only acceptable level of risk is zero.
Far lesser, and more likely JSF problems - a further delay in flight testing, more moderate increases in cost and rate reductions - will have a major impact because of the project's size and because there's no backup plan.
They could accelerate the aging of the force, compel the USAF to shrink its front-line strength and starve the other needs - nuclear reconstitution, ISR, space and cyber - that the two USAF leaders mention in the WaPo piece. Indeed, a two-year slip and a 25 per cent overrun in the price tag would easily equal the cost of 60 more F-22s over the same period of time.
But, now, the punchline ...
But finally, missing from this piece is the full byline: Michael Donley is secretary of the Air Force. Gen. Norton Schwartz is chief of staff of the Air Force. Both were appointed to their present positions by SecDef Gates last summer, after he fired their predecessors, who had argued in favor of more F-22s.