The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy want to ditch some of their old planes and ships to free up resources for newer ones. Some may be transferred to allied military forces as hand me downs. Others will go to bone yards.
The Air Force is seeking to divest $1.37 billion worth of equipment in fiscal 2022, including 42 A-10s, 48 F-15C/D and 47 F-16C/D model fighters as well as 14 KC-10 and 18 KC-135 tankers and 13 C-130H transports, while the Navy wants to retire $1.26 billion in assets, including two Ticonderoga-class cruisers and four littoral combat ships[.]
More divestments and retirements are contemplated by these services, including all of the Air Force's B-1 and B-2 bombers, some of its B-52 bombers, all of the rest of the U.S. Navy's Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and all of its C-2 aircraft carrier mail/resupply planes. Some of the Navy's older submarines are also approaching their expiration dates as well.
The Marines are divesting themselves of all of its tanks. The Army has greatly reduced its fleet of tanks and howitzers, without entirely dispensing with them.
Conceptually, this is the right idea. But, the divestments are too few, they shouldn't be replaced one to one, and the replacements being proposed aren't always optimal for our nation's military needs.
1 comment:
Huh... Computing what is optimal for our military needs is a fairly unbounded problem and the answer is heavily model dependent. If getting an answer that covers multiple solution spaces is important it can be optimal to 'over invest' and be robust across the solution spaces. (1) And it's just money, counters in a game. Cheers,
Guy
(1) Which is why I'm not in favor of dropping the super heavy cav... I mean tanks.
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