Fixing the Fighter-Attack Shortfall

The indispensable Ron O'Rourke is out with another of his information filled updates, this time on the Strike-Fighter Shortfall. Lots of questions raised in this report and by it. Here are a few I have:

1. What exactly is the strike/fighter shortfall? How many planes is it, and of which type? What is the number based upon?
2. What is the impact of the recently reported slide to the right on delivery of the F-35?
3. What's wrong with extending a new Multi-Year Procurement buy and then selling those planes on the international market if they prove to be in excess of derived requirements?
4. Is there any thought being given to an ASW variant of the SuperHornet, perhaps networked with UAV's and P8's?

Here's an interesting passage from the page 8, part of a recent HASC report:

"The committee remains unconvinced that naval strike-fighter shortfalls should be viewed
against the totality of Department of Defense strike-fighter inventory. The capabilities of the
naval strike-fighter force are inherent in the capability of the aircraft carrier as a strike
platform and, as such, force structure requirements for naval aviation must be viewed as
those required to support sufficient carrier air wings (CVW) to match the number of
statutorily mandated aircraft carriers."

So what does that mean? It appears to me that this committee is saying that Navy Tacair and Air Force Tacair are apples and oranges. Is this so? Is there no overlap? Is there no analytical framework that would aggregate US Tacair power in a meaningful way? There appears a bit of a tautology here, one that starts with the premise that you shouldn't look at Navy Strike/Fighters as part of a broader ability to project power, but rather we need enough planes to support the Air Wings necessary to support the Congressionally-mandated carrier force level. Which brings us round to the question of upon what is the required carrier force level required? Is it not also a function of the nation's ability to project power?

I ask these questions because it is not apparent to me that Navy Tacair would suffer in any meaningful way in an aggregation with land-based Tacair. Quite the contrary, I have a feeling that we continue to move toward a paradigm in which our ability to project power will be frustrated by with-held basing and overflight rights, leaving carrier-based airpower in an advantaged position.

Perhaps having the argument is one of those no-no's in the Goldwater-Nichols era--but I think the country would benefit from a serious evaluation of the balance between land and sea-based Tacair in our future.

Bryan McGrath