Fighters and Bombers

Interesting article from Slate's Gregg Easterbrook, via RCP. He argues that the US Airforce's fighter development plans are coming at the possible expense of much more effective, and low risk, bombers forces.

"unexpected technical breakthroughs resulted in extremely accurate munitions that can be dropped from high altitude by bombers, at less cost and risk than using low-flying fighters."

He may have a point. We're spending billions of dollars ($320 to be precise) to develop new fighter aircraft when our existing fighters rule the sky. Much of the tasking for these fighters is to deliver precision munitions - which can now be delivered easier by high altitude bombers at little risk to pilots and crew due to satellite and GPS technology. 80% of the bomb tonnage dropped of Afghanistan came from high level bombers. Why would we want to deliver bombs using expensive, high risk fighter planes? Politics.

"The fix is in with key congressional committees, and the pork has been elaborately scheduled for division among constituents and congressional districts. The aerospace contracting lobby does not want any change in the copious money flow now authorized for new fighters."

Of course, the USAF is full of old fighter jocks, who like the idea of spending their budget on fancy high tech fighters as well. Easterbrook does ignore one salient fact: that while our bomber fleet is old, and the numbers are declining, they can still do the job, and have been, so spending money on new planes may not really be necessary right away, and we do have a couple of relatively recent models (late 70s, early 80s) in service, the B-1 and B-2, along with the gracefully ancient B-52. A lot of our fighter models date from that era as well, and all of these planes have been constantly refreshed wiht new avionics technology as it comes available. But a new bomber capability might be more cost effective way of achieving the USAF's ground support and interdiction missions than the pricey new fighters. Interesting point, to say the least.