Insurgents Offer Tough Air Critique

Insurgents Offer Tough Air Critique is an interesting critique of our Air Force plans for new planes.

"Tough love remains one of those concepts our society embraces mostly in the negative. It’s just, well, too tough. The following commentary certainly constitutes a fine example of tough love, coming from two of the country’s more distinguished military and airpower analysts. Essentially, Robert Dilger and Pierre Sprey argue that the country should scrap plans for the F-35 and F-22 and build what they call ‘austerely-designed and affordable aircraft tailored to missions that actually win wars…’ The fleet would include: a new close air support plane to replace the A-10; a ‘forward controller spotter plane;’ a ‘small, affordable dirt-strip airlifter;’ and a ‘super-maneuverable new air-to-air dogfighter with all–passive electronics.’ Dilger and Sprey argue that their approach would give the country 10,000 highly adaptable planes wiithin current budgetary constraints, compared to what they say is the unsupportable approach of fielding a fleet of roughly 2,000 very expensive planes. Can you hear the Air Force groaning?"