In an interview given at Defensenews.com, the director of acquisitions of the US Air Force, Will Roper, declared that the US Air Force was preparing to announce, on October 1, a profound upheaval in the management of its development and acquisition programs. combat aircraft. No more pharaonic programs with developments over 2 decades, the US Air Force wishes to return to short design and manufacturing cycles, even if it means implementing several models of specialized aircraft in its fleet.
It is nothing more, nothing less, than the return of doctrines which were short in the 50s, 60s and 70s, with devices having shorter life cycles, and developed in a few years by integrating technologies from demonstrator programs. Exit also the great theories on the optimization of maintenance by having a very homogeneous fleet, it seems that the Air Force has returned to notions of specialized aircraft, developed for specific missions, and acquired in average series of a few hundred copies.
This approach aims, initially, to develop a new air superiority device, the FX program, synthesizing the technologies already stabilized at the moment, in a time frame of less than 5 years. This aircraft, intended to replace the F15Cs reaching the limit of their potential, will support the 186 F22s in service. On the other hand, it will be developed to have simplified maintenance and high availability, which is far from being the case of the F22, or the F35 today.
By this announcement, we can guess that Will Roper meets the Pentagon's requirements to have the necessary and sufficient means to be able to simultaneously face a conflict in Europe and the Pacific, with protagonists who have developed heavy new generation devices and therefore adapted to air superiority. It also signs, in the more or less medium term, the next downward revision of the US Air Force's F35A format, to return the Lockheed aircraft to its major role, that of a light fighter intended to replace the F16, and not that of super versatile aircraft for which it does not have the capabilities. We can even see a real logic with the life extension of the A10.
We will obviously have to reach the press conference on October 1 to have the exact details of these upcoming plans. The fact remains that this announcement is the absolute opposite of European programs, FCAS like Tempest, both in their deadlines and in their methodologies. Indeed, by this profound change in paradigms, the US Air Force means that it intends to prepare for a short-term conflict, which could occur as early as 2030, where the Europeans do not envisage entry into service before 2035 or 2040. In addition, it abandons the idea of ​​a single multi-mission aircraft in favor of a fleet of specialized aircraft, like China and Russia, which have followed exactly this methodology for 2 decades, with the programs Su34, Su35, Su57, Pak DP Russian side, and the Chinese JH7, J10, J11, J-16 and J20.
On the other hand, this new approach corresponds in every point of view to that proposed for 2 years within the framework of the Defense with Positive Valorization doctrine, with specialized devices, built at regular intervals, covering the entire spectrum of missions, and whose entry into service would be before 2030. We can only hope that this upcoming upheaval across the Atlantic will bring Politicians and Industrialists to escape from the conceptual straitjacket that governs defense planning today in France and in Europe….