The Air Force will shed 50 of its Minuteman ICBMs as a result of the QDR. The Air Force explanation, from General Wood, they are “excess to our strategic needs.” He pointedly refused to discuss whether they would be converted with conventional warheads—one quick-turnaround option for getting a precision global strike capability.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
