Keep Cold War era-spending through the nineties? That would have been so fiscally responsible.

The armed services should have prioritized and cut their legacy systems/obvious pork/crappy procurement process way back when Clinton made those cuts. They are to blame (along with certain members of Congress).

I know this will look like a stupid question, but couldn't Bush have reversed those cuts if he wanted to in the six budgets he has presented? And what has been the effect of the Iraq War (fought one supplemental at a time, the better to keep up the pretense it will end some day) on the F-15s?

No, Andrew, not a stupid question.

Many of those cuts have been reversed once the whole thing no longer seemed like a good idea, but the reversals have happened in other areas deemed higher priorities, it usually takes about a decade of consistent effort to show results, and spending is still a bit on the low side in GDP terms. This matters because most military spending is bases, salaries, and other basics, and are fixed. Procurement is actually a pretty low percentage, so the marginal changes matter more.

As for the effects of Iraq, it has been to stress the fighter fleet considerably. Much of that stress happened before 2001, in 10 years of enforcing those "no fly zones".

However... the Pentagon has also been deeply foolish in using F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighters to fly surveillance missions during OIF, and to routinely go aloft with a pair of 250 or 500 pound bombs as a mission load. This is like using your Lamborghini mostly for trips to the corner grocery store. The cost per flying hour is about $15,000, the airframe flying hour limits tick down with each hour in the air (most fighters limit out at 8-12 thousand), and replacement is incredibly expensive.

That's fine on an occasional basis - the capabilities are there, you're going to be in the air sometimes anyway, and the troops say they need you. OK. But using them in this way as a matter of routine practice has been an act of military mismanagement by the Pentagon that will cost the future force dearly.

Think of it this way: every 1,000 total front-line fighter fleet flight hours in Iraq is about $15 million operating + $15 million amortized replacement costs = $30 million.

Brazil's EMB-314 Super Tucanos can carry the same LITENING targeting pods that enable the jet fighters to fly those surveillance missions, are wired for smart bombs, and can fly above 15,000 feet if required to stay out of most ground fire threats. They cost $8-10 million each to buy, and cost a lot less per hour to operate than an F-15. The situational awareness is far superior to UAVs, and speeds 4x faster let them get where they need to go quickly enough.

In fact, Embraer had a $500 million/ 50 plane deal with Venezuela, and were going to set up a plant in Florida to build planes, but the USA killed the deal by embargoing its engines (which use US military tech). Not letting Chavez strafe his population with them is cool with me, but the US was NOT smart enough to pick up the buy as compensation and use them. Which I complained about at the time on DID as an act of tripartite stupidity (diplomatic, industrial, and military). Gotta be more than just a bully, guys.

The AT-6B is a less desirable choice, but it has been available since about 2005 with similar capabilities, and is based on the same T-6 trainer used by the USAF and Navy.

These turboprop COIN (COunter-INsurgency) planes couldn't be used to enforce the no-fly zones, because Saddam still had jet fighters, and surface to air missiles were regularly being fired at American planes (an act of war that nullifies the truce signed in 1991). A Super Tucano or AT-6B can't survive in that environment - but it definitely can survive in the current environment where all that has been destroyed, and buying 50 or so to put 4 squadrons in theater (+2 trainers in USA) would probably have paid for itself by now with no decline in close support effectiveness.

It would also have let the US (a) begin putting Iraqis in back seats as part of plan combining better coordination with Iraqi forces and a faster transition plan for the IqAF, and (b) created a core of aircraft that could have been gifted to Iraq when America leaves. Of course, oncve Iraqis have experience in the type, they could also be bought new within Iraq's budget if the US wanted to keep its own. That last bit may happen anyway - Iraq has an RFP out for COIN aircraft that includes the Super Tucano, AT-6B, and 2 similar aircraft.

By the way, was anyone in Congress clued in enough to be asking these questions? In a continuation of the pattern shown re: MRAPs et. al., no....

Joe, a big part of the problem seems to be that prop planes aren't sexy enough for the USAF to consider using as anything but trainers. Too "third world", or something.

The Marines or the Army? Well, maybe. I don't have to tell you how hard either of those services ought to be pushing, especially given how much the USAF would like control over all UAVs...

Well, there are certain truths you have to realize.

The first is that the USAF is in a high-threat environment right now. No, not in OIF or OEF, but in the budget and relevency wars. The actual budget for new airplanes is pretty small compared to the rest of the fed budget, but it always seems to be the hot-potatoe that ends up being tossing back and forth. Not like some bridges to nowhere I might add. Thus the USAF will strive mightily to appear relevent (and effective) in our nation's wars, no matter how small the contribution.

The second truth is that the airplanes are actually doing real well in-theater. They're doing much less than we've designed them to do. The flying over there is much less stressful on the jets than full-up training missions here in the states. There's just not much call over there for a continuous 6 G maneuver. I would bet that the deployed pilot's training program is falling way behind too. When I was flying there I went non-current on a lot of training items just because we don't do THAT stuff in-theater. And, counterintuitively, the jets are being better maintained than jets here in the states. Think about it, they get first call on parts and repairs. It used to be that the crewchiefs would send all the bad jets they could on deployment because that's the only place that they would get all the expensive parts needed to fix them. That said, as the planes get older, more and more flying restrictions will be placed on them due to corrosion and metal fatigue. Training will suffer, has suffered, as in turn will military effectiveness.

The last truth, to make this post short is that there's too much cr@p in the military budget. A good example is the military retiree health care funding. Did you know that it's lumped into the defense budget? That's right, the generals have to decide to whether to buy bullets and jets or honor promises made by the US government for retiree healthcare. As a military retiree that wants to fill a prescription, that military clinic where it's filled, came out of the same budget that is used to buy body armor for our troops. How the heck can we reconcile that?

The Air Force really needs 381 F-22 Raptors and 220 FB-22 to replace the fleet of 676 F-15's. I am surprised we still have yet to reverse those crappy defense cuts from the hill billy Clinton Administration.