Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)

The need to defend air bases was made painfully clear at Hickam Field in December 1941. Yet even now we continue to park aircraft in the open, often wingtip-to-wingtip, all over the country and have essentially no way of providing terminal defense against air attack.

America's Air Force today is smaller and older than it was in my day, but what worries me more than size or age is just how ready we are to fly, fight, and win in a future war.