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North Korean clones of US drones show Kim’s ambitions, Aquilino says
The country's drones have in the past crossed into South Korea, prompting a military response.
18 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial
US Air Force Could Struggle to Grow Its Fleet
By Jon Harper
The Air Force hopes to ramp up to 386 squadrons by 2030, but it could face challenges just to maintain its current size.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the service would need significantly more funding annually than it has received in recent decades simply to replace aging airframes.
The Air Force has about 5,600 aircraft, many of which are nearing the end of their service life, the nonpartisan research group noted in a recent report, “The Cost of Replacing Today's Air Force Fleet.”
CBO estimates that replacing the planes in the current fleet one-for-one would cost an average of $15 billion a year (in fiscal year 2018 dollars) in the 2020s. That figure would rise to $23 billion in the 2030s and then drop back down to $15 billion in the 2040s. In comparison, appropriations for procuring new aircraft averaged about $12 billion per year between 1980 and 2017, and just $9 billion between 2010 and 2017, the report noted.
“In CBO's projection, the procurement costs of new aircraft ... would rise to and remain at levels considerably above historical averages,” it said.
Fred Bartels, a defense budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, said the Air Force is at risk of shrinking due to fiscal constraints, especially as other services such as the Navy seek to beef up their own force structures in the coming years. Even if the Air Force doesn't decline in size, modernization and force level increases could be delayed, he noted. “I can see the growth being slowed down a little bit here and there.”
To maintain force structure, the Air Force might have to resort to life-extension efforts, he said. But that creates its own set of problems.
“Your aircraft cost even more to operate because you're ... [holding] together a 50-year-old airplane,” Bartels said. “You're just creating different challenges all the time and you're increasing your [operation and maintenance] costs, which in turn decreases the availability of resources that you have to procure a new platform. So you end up in that vicious cycle.”
Delaying modernization also puts the U.S. military at risk of falling behind the technological curve as it faces advanced adversaries.
“You can't expect the same aircraft to still represent air superiority 30 years from when it's first released,” he said.
The Air Force has been conducting an assessment to determine its force structure and modernization needs for the 2020s. Officials have concluded that the service would need 386 squadrons by 2030 to fulfill the requirements of the latest national defense strategy, which was released last year. It currently has 312 squadrons.
The final results of the study are expected to be delivered to Congress in March.
Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen “Seve” Wilson said the service will present a strategy-driven assessment, not a “budget-driven strategy.”
“The force that we think we need for the war fight that we think we need to be prepared for, is that 386 [squadrons],” he said during an interview with National Defense at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December. “We're going to continue to ... have that dialogue with both the House and the Senate.”
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/2/14/air-force-could-struggle-to-grow-its-fleet
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NATO chief seeks to forge deeper ties in China’s neighborhood
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wants the alliance to take on a greater political role in world affairs and help nations in the Asia-Pacific region contend with China's rise. “Military strength is only part of the answer,” Stoltenberg said Monday in a speech during an online event organized by the Atlantic Council and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “We also need to use NATO more politically.” He said alliance member should adopt a more global approach to security issues, unlike the Europe- and North America-centric tack that has often shaped the alliance's agenda. “This is not about a global presence, but a global approach,” he said. “As we look to 2030, we need to work even more closely with like-minded countries, like Australia, Japan, New Zealand and [South] Korea, to defend the global rules and institutions that have kept us safe for decades, to set norms and standards in space and cyberspace, on new technologies and global arms control, and ultimately to stand up for a world built on freedom and democracy, not on bullying and coercion.” Those words are a veiled description of what Western analysts believe is a policy of China blackmailing weaker nations in its orbit through economic and diplomatic pressure. As Stoltenberg put it, Beijing becoming militarily and economically stronger represents a “fundamental shifting" in the global balance of power in which the Western alliance should not be caught flat-footed. Stoltenberg repeatedly invoked NATO cohesion as an organizing principle for the alliance, imploring members to "resist the temptation of national solutions.” His comments came as the Trump administration is reportedly considering what critics have called just that: a partial U.S. troop reduction in Germany without consulting allies. The Pentagon previously portrayed its presence in Germany as a testament to America's commitment to Europe, especially following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The NATO chief dodged a question on the report, first made public by the Wall Street Journal, instead trumpeting the U.S. military's deepening involvement in Europe. Meanwhile, it is hard to evaluate the seriousness of the reported move, especially because U.S. lawmakers and leaders in Berlin were left in the dark. Some media outlets have speculated that a moment of anger by U.S. President Donald Trump about German Chancellor Angela Merkel prompted the idea, while Reuters cited an unnamed official saying that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had worked on the issue for months. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army troops in Europe, told Defense News he finds it unlikely that senior military officials were onboard. “I don't believe that at all,” he said. “No way such a significant decision could be kept under wraps in Washington, D.C., for that long. Based on the conversations I've had the last four days, there's no doubt in my mind that this was a shock to all military leadership in Europe.” Hodges also criticized Polish officials for being eager to fill a potential void. “I would prefer that our Polish allies focus on the importance of the cohesion of the alliance versus immediately signaling that they'd be happy to host U.S. troops that might move from Germany,” he wrote in an email. “Poland is a great ally. But their security is best when we have a strong, unified alliance that is built around a strong USA-Germany relationship.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/06/08/nato-chief-seeks-to-forge-deeper-ties-in-chinas-neighborhood/