De Andrew Hunter's own admission, who leads the US Air Force's acquisitions, the technological tempo imposed by China is now "incredibly fast", and the equipment acquisition doctrine, implemented for around thirty years, no longer allows it to respond.
It is in this context that this same Andrew Hunter presented the new strategic pillars which now serve to frame the acquisitions of the US Air Force, and the conduct of future programs, in particular in the field of drones.
Indeed, after 30 years marked by sometimes excessive technological ambitions, constantly revised upward program deadlines and costs, and the major US defense industry majors at the center of the game, the USAF is now committed to a doctrine reminiscent of that applied during the 50s and 60s, a radical break with that which led to the F-35 becoming the central pivot of many Western air forces around the world.
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China's technological pace worries the US Air Force
Regular readers of Meta-Defense will obviously not be surprised, as the subject has been the subject of numerous articles since 2019. Indeed, it already appeared, at that date, that Russia, but especially China, had engaged in an arms race similar to that which the world experienced in the 50s and 60s.
Thus, since the early 2000s, the Chinese air force has admitted a new fighter into service every five to seven years, with metronomic precision, each new aircraft bringing its share of specific capabilities and new technologies, benefiting, incrementally, the next generation.
The same has happened in the field of munitions, on-board electronics, and even, for the last ten years, engines, which has allowed Chinese aircraft manufacturers to catch up, in just over twenty years, on the twenty years of technological delay they had on Western aircraft at the beginning of the 90s.
Now that Chinese aircraft manufacturers have more or less caught up with their Western counterparts, they are able to impose their own tempo across the entire sphere of aeronautical defense technology, particularly against the United States, the major adversary in the Pacific, and in particular, around Taiwan.
This observation has been known to the US Air Force since 2019, and the Roper doctrine, which was intended precisely as an industrial and technological response in order to give the US armed forces the necessary ascendancy and responsiveness in this area. However, this was dismissed in 2021 by the new Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall.
USAF changes acquisition doctrine to confront China, to accelerate its operational and technological response capabilities
Yet it was this same Frank Kendall who, a year and a half later, put many of the advances of the Roper doctrine at the heart of the reform he undertook to launch within the US Air Force, precisely to respond to the Chinese challenge.
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