Regardless of how much the Air Force has to shrink, it can’t do the air superiority mission with just fourth-generation fighters, no matter how “efficient” they may look on paper, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said on June 17. During an AFA-sponsored Air Force breakfast event, Welsh acknowledged that USAF will field a “mix” of fourth-generation F-15s and F-16s as well as fifth-generation fighters like F-22s and F-35s “years into our future.” But the F-35 is not negotiable, he said. “When we truncated our F-22 buy, we ended up with a force that can’t provide air superiority in more than one area at a time,” he acknowledged. The F-35 “is going to be part of the air superiority equation whether it was intended to be, originally, or not.” Competitors with fifth-gen fighters will field them not in 15 to 20 years, but “five to 10 years from now,” Welsh said, and if the US doesn’t have a credible fifth-gen force to counter them in a “high end fight” it will be “in trouble.” There’s “nothing else that can do” what the F-35 can, he said. “Out there where people fight and die, for real, if a fourth-generation aircraft meets a fifth-generation aircraft, the fourth-generation aircraft may be more efficient, but it’s also dead.”
Members of the House Armed Services Committee say the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile program has been set back three months due to the ongoing government shutdown. The comment is noteworthy because the JATM's status has been kept tightly under wraps.
