What are the US Air Force's Fighter Aircraft in the Near Future?

While the 2024 defence budget was being discussed in the US Congress, members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives made decisions that disrupted the US Air Force's (USAF) plans to retire old aircraft. Congress took a stance against the retirement of aging F-16s. Accordingly, if the USAF intends to retire F-16s in the next five years, it will submit a report to Congress in advance, and the USAF will hold off on the retirement of the desired number of F-16s until this report is discussed within 180 days. Thus, the retirement of 125 old-type F-16s, which were planned to be decommissioned by the USAF in 2024, has been put on hold by Congress for the time being.

In the meantime, the USAF is expected to submit its fighter aircraft force structure planning for the coming years and the USAF projection on how to meet its fighter aircraft needs to Congress by 19 January 2024. Again, as with the F-16s of the month, fighter aircraft in the Air National Guard (ANG) inventory are prevented from being decommissioned by the USAF without Congressional approval. Congress emphasises that pilots and maintainers who traditionally leave the USAF continue to serve as ANG members for many years, and that the level of experience and the number of pilots are important. For this reason, Congress foresees that a temporary reduction in the number of aircraft and pilots, even if temporary, will not be possible when the need to increase the current capacity arises again in the coming years. In the end, Congress, which did not favour a reduction in the number of ANG aircraft, pilots and maintenance personnel, received a promise from the Air Force not to disrupt flight operations.

Meanwhile, the Air Force continues to insist on retiring 57 F-15C/D fighters and 42 A-10s, which have too many flight hours and can no longer be modernised. However, it is also planned that the number of A-10s to be decommissioned may increase up to 54. The majority of these aircraft are also serving in the ANG. It was important for the USAF to assure Congress that even if these aircraft were decommissioned, there would be no reduction in the level of current flight operations. In this framework, the F-15C/D and A-10s were paved the way for retirement.

US Chief of Staff General CQ Brown Jr. said on 7 March 2023 that the US Air Force would retire all A-10 Warthog attack aircraft within the next five or six years. I believe that the extent to which Congress will agree to this will be determined by the course of the Congressional debate on the USAF force structure plan for the coming years. 

In fact, no one denies the importance of the A-10s. The A-10 has become famous all over the world as an iconic aircraft, especially for its utility in close air support missions during the invasion missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the USAF, despite the high manoeuvrability and survivability of these aircraft, which have to perform close air support missions at low altitude and low speeds in the modern air operations environment, despite their high manoeuvrability and survivability skills, the USAF's prediction that they will no longer have a chance of survival if the US goes to war with a country with modern air defence like China stands out as an assessment shared by all air operations planners.

In any case, with these process changes, the US Congress aims to preserve the fighter aircraft capacity of the US Air Force, to prevent the decommissioning of aging aircraft (except in mandatory situations) without replacing them with new ones, to closely monitor the problems in this context by the Congress and to be a solution partner when necessary.

It is known that the US Air Force currently has 900 F-16 aircraft. If, as planned, 125 F-16s were to be retired in 2024 (14% of the current F-16s), this would mean a serious decline in American air power. Congress does not find this decline politically correct in the current circumstances, nor does it find it politically correct to downsize the force structure of the army. Undoubtedly, the USAF had a plan on how to manage the foreseen risks while downsizing to 125 F-16s. However, when Congress did not approve of risk-taking, there were no risks to manage. Members of Congress believe that current procurement plans will not meet the number of fighter aircraft required by the US national defence strategy. Therefore, it is requested that the policy of not disposing of the old aircraft until new aircraft are procured should prevail.

The USAF procurement plan, which is expected to be submitted to Congress on 19 January 2024, is considered very important in this respect. The detailed report expected to be submitted will discuss a series of multi-year force planning, from the number of USAF fighter jets to the number of aircraft to be procured. The sub-headings of the report requested by Congress will be as follows:

The number of fighter aircraft required to meet peacetime and wartime force requirements 

Resource plan for the modernisation of existing aircraft 

Authorisation, time flow and resource planning required to increase fighter aircraft production and, in parallel, to decommission obsolete fighter aircraft

To determine the extent to which unmanned combat aircraft (Collaborative Combat Aircraft-CCA), which are expected to serve in a complementary role with fighter aircraft, can be used to meet the need for manned combat aircraft,

Incorporation of the measures to be taken in case the CCA programme is postponed or cancelled into the fighter force structure plans. 

Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs), which are defined as CCAs, are expected to be procured cheaper than regular fighter aircraft. Therefore, it is calculated that it is possible to purchase a much larger number of UAVs with the amount of money to be spent on normal fighter aircraft. In this context, US Air Force force structure planners estimate the need to invest $5.8 billion over the next five years in the development of IMHAs. US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall aims to create a fleet of approximately 1,000 UAVs.

As of 2023, the US Air Force has 936 F-16 aircraft. Of these, 781 are known to be F-16C (single-seat) and 155 F-16D (double-seat). The number of A-10 Thunderbolt II in the inventory is 256. There are also 266 F-15s on hand. A total of 218 of the F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft, the most modern versions of the F-15s, are serving in the USAF inventory. An additional 104 F-15Es have been ordered. 

In the coming years, the US Air Force plans to reduce its force structure to four fighter aircraft (F-35, F-16, F-15E/F-15EX and F-22). From the 2030s onwards, a transition to the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter is envisaged. 

Note: The video contains information on CCAs flying with NGAD.

Reference

Greg Hadley, "USAF Wants to Dump Old Fighters. Congress Isn't So Sure", Air&Space Forces Magazine, 21 June 2023, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/lawmakers-air-force-plans-retire-aging-fighters/