Martin Matishak, Fiscal Times: Is the US Facing a ‘Fighter Gap’ With China and Russia?
The Air Force’s top general is warning Congress that one day soon the U.S. might not be able to keep pace with Russia and China when it comes to producing and fielding next-generation fighter jets.
In two Capitol Hill appearances this week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh sounded the alarm about the advancements Beijing and Moscow have made with their military aircraft, progress that threatens to erase Washington’s vaunted technological edge.
Today, the U.S. has “couple thousand more” warplanes than China, but “at the rate they’re building, the models they’re fielding, by 2030 they will have fielded—they will have made up that 2,000 aircraft gap and they will be at least as big—if not bigger—than our air forces,” Welsh told the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee on Wednesday.
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WNU Editor: The push for more money continues.
2 comments:
Just as important as the number of aircraft (or other equipment) currently in your arsenal is the ability to quickly replace loses.
Sadly, as fantastic as the capabilities of these tools are , they are far too complicated to generate rapidly. In a conflict with a nation-state, we could very quickly find ourselves on par or even behind countries like China and Russia without much hope for catching up...
The F-35 and 22 have weaknesses, and when those weaknesses are found and exploited by an enemy, replacing loses (even replacing F-18s and 15s) will be nearly impossible with current financial and manufacturing abilities.
No
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