A new Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment monograph suggests that the Air Force should cut in half its buy of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters to pay for the kind of force the service will need by 2028. Author Thomas Ehrhard, now special assistant to the Chief of Staff, believes the service will need the money it saves for other higher priorities like a B-3 bomber. Ehrhard considers the F-35 a “middle-weight” aircraft that lacks the capability to meet high-end challenges and that “is over-specified and overpriced for low-end challenges.” The B-3, on the other hand, will be “a critical and indispensible element … for decades to come,” Ehrhard writes. He advocates buying more than 100 at a rate of 12 per year, starting with a manned version but progressing to unmanned “to turn it into a truly global surveillance-strike asset.”
President Donald Trump signed legislation reopening the federal government late Nov. 12, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history. The move sets the stage for tens of thousands of defense civilians to return to work and guarantees troops will be paid in a few days’ time.
