Timothy A. Walton & Dan Patt
Despite the United States Air Force’s (USAF) stellar performance in recent operations, a geriatric fleet of aircraft, low readiness rates, and dismal prospects in a potential future conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mean the service could decline within a decade from invaluable to incapable. More importantly, a weak Air Force would face major challenges defending the homeland, maintaining strategic deterrence, and projecting power in support of the nation, which could increase the likelihood the PRC starts a war and defeats the United States and its allies.
The Air Force needs to adopt a new approach to shaping its force that addresses the changed character of warfare, most consequentially against the peer threat of the PRC, and creates the capacity and flexibility to address global demands. The US Air Force’s traditional approach, involving expeditionary and serial power projection, is increasingly insolvent against the PRC for a variety of reasons: China can target in mass the gradual deployment of forces to the Indo-Pacific; forces are vulnerable at airfields once they arrive; the PRC could achieve its aims of aggression, such as invading Taiwan or seizing other allied territory, before US forces could roll back enemy defenses to attack the PRC’s center of gravity; and if the conflict continued, the Air Force would struggle to replace its losses, much less grow in size.1 Absent viable shifts, our analysis indicates that within a decade China could defeat the United States and its allies in a major campaign—even if the Air Force received additional funding for aircraft, weapons, or readiness.2 This suggests that more of the same approach to designing and fielding an Air Force will not work well in the future.
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