The F-22 Acquisition Program: Consequences for the US Air Force's Fighter Fleet

Abstract

The majority of US Air Force fighter aircraft in service today are F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s acquired in the 1980s. During that decade, the service had a fighter strength of approximately 36 fighter wing equivalents, with the average aircraft in the fleet about 10 years old. Since then the number of fielded fighters has steadily decreased, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) of 2010 having established a requirement for 16 17 fighter wing equivalents. Additionally, the Air Force has acquired very limited numbers of new fighters since the early 1990s, causing the fighter fleet s average age to increase steadily. Acquisition of the F-22 slowed but did not stop this trend (fig. 1). By 2011 the average age of fighters was 21.3 years. More importantly, the corresponding percentage of planned service life used has markedly increased (fig. 2). By 2009, 80 percent of the fleet s aircraft had used more than 50 percent of their originally planned service life. Clearly, the Air Force s fighter fleet is wearing out.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA567480

Entities

People

  • Christopher J. Niemi

Organizations

  • Air University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Aerial Warfare
  • Air Defense
  • Air Force
  • Air Power
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Cold War
  • Combat Operations
  • Cost Overruns
  • Department Of Defense
  • Fighter Aircraft
  • Law
  • National Security
  • Satellite Guided Weapons
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Aerodynamics/Aeronautics.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Naval Engineering and Maritime Security