Air Force officials are warning that unless their budget is increased dramatically, and soon, the military's high-flying branch won't dominate the skies as it has for decades.
After more than seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Air Force's aging jet fighters, bombers, cargo aircraft and gunships are at the breaking point, they say, and expensive, ultramodern replacements are needed fast.
"What we've done is put the requirement on the table that says, 'If we're going to do the missions you're going to ask us to do, it will require this kind of investment,"' Maj. Gen. Paul Selva, the Air Force's director of strategic planning, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The Air Force is going to be confronting a major procurement crisis because it can't buy all the things that it absolutely needs," said Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller. "It's going to force us to rethink, yet again, what is the strategy we want? What can we give up?"
"One of the reasons their equipment has aged so much is because they continue to move ahead with the development and presumed acquisition of new weapon systems that cost two to three times as much as the systems they are replacing," Kosiak said. "It's like replacing a Toyota with a Mercedes."
:: heh... insert your own joke about geriatric, and CAP here.
We don't call it the Silver Hair Patrol for nuttin'.
Recently, 4 guys got selected to fly the Raptor. 4 guys!
...and the air force put out a press release.
At this rate it will be easier to get flight time in the Astronaut Corps!
I guess the one good thing about being a CAP officer is...
I have zero chance of being locked up in a box flying a UAS.
Gosh, the day may come when the Air Force operators pilots point to us and say,
"Those CAP guys have all the fun."
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