The U.S. Air Force Has a Plan to Escape the ‘Doom Loop’

Key Points and Summary – U.S. Air Force leaders briefed Congress on a 10-year fighter recapitalization to escape a readiness “doom loop” created by aging fleets, parts shortages, and high sustainment costs.

-The plan grows capacity while diversifying capability: retain select legacy jets, divest oldest tails, accelerate F-35 and F-15EX buys, push a 6th-gen fighter, and field Collaborative Combat Aircraft as a cheaper force-multiplier.

-Success hinges on solving pilot shortages, boosting mission-capable rates, expanding industrial throughput, and locking sustained funding. With adversaries fielding dense IADS, EW, and hypersonics, officials urge multi-year resources to give industry confidence to scale production and restore credible deterrence.

The U.S. Air Force Has a Plan To Ensure Its Ready for the Future 

The world is unsteady so the demand for American combat power is high. Outlining an ambitious plan to overhaul the service, U.S. Air Force leaders are working to balance a diverse mission set with tailored global presence in specific theaters against killer threats that rapidly evolve.

America’s enemies are “countering U.S. airpower with greater mass and a challenging air defense laydown that limits the United States’ ability to project combat power in traditional ways,” the service recently explained to Capitol Hill.

The Air Force’s tactical fighter jet 10-year recapitalization blueprint to Congress is sound. The broad goal is to grow the fleet while lowering risk from their too-high-for-too-long levels.

The Air Force has been in its own version of a “doom loop” with aging old systems not being replaced on anything close to a 1:1 basis while their demand has far exceeded the supply, causing more maintenance backlogs and idle tails and idle pilots who decide to exit service to fly again.

The higher costs of keeping older systems around while combatant commanders cannot get enough of them means more money for sustainment often at the expense of newer replacements. Meanwhile companies that used to make replacement parts have long ago moved on, causing cannibalization across fleets of aircraft just to maintain readiness.

Reversing these trends—and America’s sagging deterrent—requires what the Air Force prescribes: an unprecedented modernization overhaul that is the largest in its history. This sweeping update to meet the geopolitical moment spans fighters, tankers, bombers, trainers, weapons, airmen and bases, and the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.

The solution is a reasonable all-of-the-above approach. The key is that the Air Force avoided the politically pleasing but capacity robbing approach of putting “all eggs in one [combat capability] basket” many sister services fell prey to the past two decades.

What’s needed, among other things, is a risk tolerant and cheaper “force multiplier” called the Collaborative Combat Aircraft. As such, Air Force plans prioritize 6th-generation manned and autonomous systems above all, while increasing and maximizing production of existing lines like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and F-15EX.

Highlights include:

-maintaining key legacy systems while divesting oldest models,

-expanding the pool of high-end fifth generation fighters,

-acquiring next-gen counter-air autonomous systems, and

-moving fast on a sixth-generation manned fighter jet to round out the inventories.

This means the biggest hurdles to successful implementation will likely be:

-pilot shortages,

-reversing the decline in aircraft availability and readiness rates,

-production capacity, and

-sustained resources to support a long-term demand signal from the Air Force customer to industry.

As with many Pentagon challenges, elevated and sustained resources is the key to industrial production booms. In the document, officials warn Congress of a funding profile that currently does not afford maximum potential fighter jet production.

Thankfully the generational and new investments as part of the defense reconciliation investments in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will launch what Congress and the White House can later choose to sustain.

Flooding the system with a variety of capital means there will be new companies, new workers, new technologies and new equipment coming, fast, to the warfighter. Picking winners and losers quickly, and funding production at scale, will be critical to success of reconciliation efforts.

The Bottomline 

Given the elevated threat levels, high mission risk today, antiquated force structure, pilot shortages, and adversaries unveiling and using sophisticated EW, world class air defense, and hypersonic weapons, Congress should support this bold new plan with those dollars over a half decade. This would allow industry—traditional companies and new disruptive entrants—to trust the commitment to a steady course and an unflinching demand signal to allow needed industrial investments for expansion and new capacity.

About the Author: Mackenzie Eaglen

Mackenzie Eaglen, now a National Security Journal Contributing Editor,  is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Ms. Eaglen is also one of the 12-member US Army War College Board of Visitors, which offers advice about academic program objectives and effectiveness, and serves on the US Army Science Board, an advisory body that provides guidance on scientific and other matters to the Army’s senior leadership. In 2023, she became a member of the Commission on the Future of the Navy, established by Congress to study the strategy, budget, and policy concerning the future strength of the US Navy fleet.

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