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.”
Pentagon Puts Greenland Under US Northern Command
June 17, 2025
The Pentagon has given U.S. Northern Command responsibility for U.S. military operations in and near Greenland after President Donald Trump expressed interest in acquiring the Danish territory. Defending Greenland was previously the responsibility of U.S. European Command. But Greenland, an icy island in the High North between North America and…