Big Challenge for Military Is Aging Aircraft

Air power is in the forefront of U.S. strategy for enforcing peace in the post-communist era. Over the past 10 years, U.S. military aircraft have defeated Saddam Hussein, policed the Iraqi no-fly zones, pounded Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia into submission and carried out myriad other missions aimed at assuring what the Air Force calls “global reach, global power.”

Relying on air power makes a lot of sense during periods of diminished danger, because it enables the U.S. to respond quickly to distant threats while putting relatively few American lives at risk. Since few countries can match the capabilities of American fighters and bombers--not to mention more exotic “electronic warfare” and intelligence-gathering planes--air power is usually the fastest way of effectively countering aggression.

America has possessed air superiority for so long that many now take it for granted. No U.S. soldier has been killed by hostile aircraft in nearly half a century, and the last confirmed loss of a U.S. fighter jet in aerial combat occurred during the Vietnam War.

With no major adversary on the horizon, what could possibly deprive America of this vital advantage? Aging aircraft could. Virtually every category of Air Force plane, from fighter to tanker to trainer to transport, has either exceeded its maximum acceptable average age or is within months of doing so. A third of the bomber force consists of 40-year-old B-52s that the service plans to operate for another 40 years. Most of the Air Force’s tankers are decrepit military versions of the old Boeing 707, a plane airlines retired 20 years ago. Its top-of-the-line fighter was designed in the 1960s.

Does this sound like a force capable of asserting global air superiority in the years ahead? The story gets worse. The nation’s only electronic jamming aircraft, the Navy’s carrier-based Prowler, traces its origins to the Korean War. Without the protection it provides, other U.S. aircraft would be vulnerable to Iraqi or Serbian missiles. But the plane is grossly overworked, its wings are failing and its electronics are antiquated.

And then there’s the Marine Corps. Policymakers are concerned that its new V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft--which flies like a plane but lands like a helicopter--crashed twice in 2000. The crashes were tragic. But how many people have noticed that the obsolete helicopters the V-22 is supposed to replace have been crashing at the rate of one every six months since the mid-1990s, or that the Corps’ aging Harrier jump jet is continually grounded due to mechanical problems?

The Clinton administration noticed, but it did relatively little to fix the problem of aging aircraft. Instead it engaged in what it called a “procurement holiday” to celebrate the end of the Cold War. During the Clinton years most military-aircraft makers exited the business, and the three that remain are all struggling.

The pilots flying the aging airplanes are struggling too. The commander of Operation Northern Watch--which enforces the northern no-fly zone--recently found himself flying the same F-15 fighter into Iraq that he first flew 20 years ago.

This is a scandal. Despite the strongest economy in history and a $300-billion defense budget, the nation is gradually losing ground in what may be its most critical military capability. How is it possible that no program is in progress to replace air tankers that average 39 years old, or to develop a successor for an essential radar jamming plane considered unlikely to last much beyond 2010?

Whatever the explanation for these oversights may be, the new administration needs to remedy them. America’s Cold-War inheritance of military aircraft is rapidly being used up covering various global commitments, and current modernization plans can’t cover future requirements.

Any future surge in overseas threats--such as the rise of fascism or communism in the last century--would quickly reveal how tenuous America’s claim on global air superiority has become. The question for the Bush administration will be whether it has more foresight than its predecessors in responding to this challenge. Once a crisis is upon us, it will be too late to fix the problem without placing American lives at risk.