Will The U.S. Air Force's New Planes Bankrupt The Pentagon?

The F-35 fighter incorporates all the defining features of a fifth-generation fighter -- advanced stealth, agile maneuver, sensor fusion and high-capacity, secure datalinks. Collectively, those characteristics make it far more survivable and effective in coping with the sophisticated air defenses now becoming available to countries like Syria. (USAF: Courtesy photo Tom Reynolds/Lockheed Martin)

Martin Matishak, Fiscal Times: How the Air Force’s New Planes Could Bankrupt the Pentagon

The push by the U.S. Air Force to modernize its equipment, even as it pursues big-ticket items like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and a next-generation bomber, is setting up the Defense Department for a budgetary flood of spending, according to a new think-tank study.

The Pentagon is planning multiple acquisition and modernization programs, including updating all three legs of the nuclear triad, that will start putting extraordinary budget pressure on the agency in the 2020s, cresting at $232 billion in fiscal year 2022, says the report by the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

"These modernization programs, if not altered from current plans, will require either an increase in defense spending or a reallocation of resources within the defense budget," the report states.

The fact that the Air Force, not the Navy, is the main driver of the looming financial hit is surprising, given the Navy’s pursuit of its budget-busting Ohio-class replacement ballistic missile submarine, a program that could end up costing around $350 billion over its lifetime.

But those costs will be offset as other Navy efforts, like updating the service’s aviation fleet, wind down.

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WNU Editor: Bankruptcy is not the issue (it is not going to happen) .... it is the uncertainty on how many planes will be built with the money that is available that is raising alarm bells.