83 Down:

Gen. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, noted in his presentation Thursday at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium at Orlando that the Air Force has seen significant aircraft losses since 9/11, losing a total of 83 manned aircraft—18 of them in combat, the rest in training and other mishaps. This has posed somewhat of a dilemma because these losses came at the end of the “procurement holiday” of the 1990s, and procurement levels have continued low. Most losses have come in fighter aircraft with 48 fighters destroyed in just over five years, most in training incidents. When the losses of 11 Special Operations Forces aircraft are added in, the two categories make up nearly three-quarters of USAF’s aircraft losses since the war on terror began. The Air Force has been able to seek replacements for the three fighters lost in combat through the 2007 and 2008 supplemental funding requests, said Moseley. The other 45 are considered part of the normal asset attrition that the service experiences year in and year out, and which it prepares for in advance when it sets requirements for aircraft inventories.