![]() ![]() ![]() The industrial base supporting the development of combat aircraft is the narrowest since the 1920s. The average cost per flying hour is the highest that it has ever been. We are in the middle of the longest period of continuous warfare since the founding of the United States. Our readiness is at the lowest levels in our history. Our average fleet age is the oldest that it has ever been. ![]() ![]() We have the smallest fleet since we became a separate service. The Air Force’s fighter/attack fleet is now reduced to a list of undesirable superlatives. Air Force fighter/attack strength has been substantial, with the total numbers dropping below the minimum sustainable fleet size. Six decades of parallel tactical fighter/attack aircraft development for the U.S. Until Air Combat Command’s concept for OA-X was released in 2008, no follow-on attack aircraft had been contemplated since the short-lived A-7F Super Corsair was cancelled in 1990 after two prototypes had been converted. In the case of manned attack aircraft, no program to follow the A-10 was developed, instead electing to replace the A-10 with a fighter aircraft. By 1966 the number of fighter/attack aircraft in production was reduced to five, by 1976 to four, three by 1986, two by 1996, and only one in 2006. Air Force had six fighters/interceptors in production. The last attack aircraft of the previous generation will provide the common lineage for follow-on efforts, ensuring that the Air Force maintains an effective and affordable capability for the modern conflicts that have proven both common and enduring.īy historical measurements, the Air Force has all but stopped developing tactical aircraft. RADICAL (Rapid Aircraft Development Increments Common Attack Lineage) is a bar-napkin proposal to reproduce that effort with a common technological baseline, producing a series of attack aircraft to continue and sustain a robust attack enterprise well into the 2040s. Three of those aircraft (A-37, A-7D and A-10) remained in service until the early 1990s, with the A-10 still in service today. The outcome of this mishmash of attack programs was that the Air Force procured not one but four new front-line attack aircraft after 1961 - a retired Navy aircraft, a heavily modified trainer, an improved variant of the Navy’s A-7A Corsair II, and the purpose-built A-X. Spreading its attack eggs among several baskets, the Air Force also evaluated what was then called the AT-37D between 19. In the meantime, the Air Force procured surplus Navy A-1 Skyraiders, which were flown in combat by Air Force pilots as early as 1964. By January 1965, the program that would become A-X split early into an interim and long-term solution - which resulted in the purchase of the A-7D and the A-10A, respectively. McNamara started the process that would result in the development of the Air Force’s last attack aircraft. In 1961, then-Secretary of Defense Robert S. ![]()
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