Please, Sir, May I Have a Little More?

Says the Air Force, only their idea of "a little more" is $20+ billion more a year.

It's hard to feel a twinge of sympathy for the Zoomies on this. Their quarter-billion-a-copy F-22 can carry two bombs, which makes it seem as though ground-attack was an afterthought. The F-35 is a little cheaper, a billion dollars will buy five of them.

F-16s, which are not cheap, were last purchased for $20 million. Will a F-22 be able to shoot down 14 F-16s? And can you see them using a $200 million+ airplane to drop bombs on a bunch of guys who are carrying AK-47s and wearing nightshirts?

The Air Force is in a bind of its own making. The last non-gold-plated combat airplane that the Air Force purchased was the A-10 and the stories are rife as to how the Air Force hated that airplane, because it wasn't supersonic and all it did was kill tanks and drop bombs to support the ground-pounders. The Air Force has tried to kill off the A-10s time and time again, though stunts such as maintaining them as poorly as a fourth-world nation would. The Air Force always has gone for the most expensive airframe they could; cost has never been an objection for the Air Force.

A long time ago, a defense procurement guy told me about the trends in the growth of the Pentagon's budget and the cost of military aircraft. Seeing my eyes starting to glaze over, he cut to the chase and said that by 2050, the entire military budget of the US would buy one jet fighter for the Air Force.

Seems the Air Force is still on that path.

UPDATE: You might also want to read this from Jeff Huber's blog Pen & Sword.