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The Air Force's top general on Tuesday reaffirmed his service's commitment to fielding a new stealth bomber by 2018.
The future bomber will be capable of penetrating sophisticated enemy air defenses day or night, said Air Force chief Gen. Michael Moseley... To survive daylight raids in heavily defended enemy territory, the bomber would need to be fast and highly maneuverable in addition to stealthy.
"We can make 2018," Moseley said, "because we've asked industry to look at using the existing engines, existing sensors, existing weapons, weapons bays, just like we built the F-117 in the late '70s and early '80s. We used F-15 landing gear; we used internal structures off of other airplanes." The 2018 [bomber] will have the signatures and the capability to survive day or night in any of those environments," Moseley said, adding that the new bombers will "tear up" enemy air defenses. The new fifth-generation bomber will be much stealthier than even the B-2 stealth bomber and F-117 stealth fighter, as those planes used 1970s and 1980s technology, he added.
He said that beyond the 2018 bomber, the Air Force is considering a next-generation one that will incorporate much greater "technological leaps." New technologies the service is examining include a Mach-5 speed capability and the ability to fly at very high altitudes -- possibly exoatmospheric ones.
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That is our global vigilance piece, to be able to surveil the entire surface of the earth from space or from the atmosphere, and be able to see activities on the surface. The second piece of that is our global reach, which is the ability to take assets or capabilities anywhere on the surface... And then the last piece of that is global power, which is the ability to project force; that is, the ability to project firepower anywhere on the surface because at the end of the day, the soul of an Air Force is range and payload. So the things that an Air Force - that makes an Air Force unique in today's fight, which sets the stage for tomorrow, is we're the only service that has the mission of global vigilance to be able to surveil the planet, to be able to see anything that goes on, to be able to range that activity, whether it is with mobility assets or whether it was a strike assets, to command and control it and to assess the effects.
And we haven't even talked about peer competitors; we haven't talked about the rise of a couple of countries that are becoming a bit more aggressive on the world stage. What does all of that mean? That is what I've talked about when I say that the horizon is a bit uncertain and we need to be preparing for that horizon while we deal with today's problem. Long answer to a short question.
We are at the point where the F-15, F-16, and the fourth-generation systems, which is everything except the F-22 and the F-35, is at a point of comparison with the new exported Sukhoi and MiG fighters that are being co-produced in a variety of places, and the surface-to-air missile systems that are on the open market as well as the early-warning radars and target-tracking radars.
But let me preface that discussion by saying the mission of an Air Force in a theater - of the Air Force in a theater - is to first get control of the medium and the air domain. If you can't control the air domain and space, and soon to be outer space, then nothing happens on the surface. We take this very, very seriously. The last time a soldier - a U.S. Army soldier - was killed from an attack by the air was in April 1953.So the partnership we have with the U.S. Army, Marines, and Navy, this is a big deal for us in the theater, and this is a responsibility that is not to taken lightly. And it is the first fight in any theater is to get control of the airspace, whether that was the first week or so in Operation: Iraqi Freedom or wherever we will go next.
We have changed fundamentally the way we rotate. In our force-generation model into the theater, we now have an AEF, Air Expeditionary Force concept that serves us very, very well, with our aviation units and our support units. But also it's given us a chance to look at the mix of skill sets. AFSCs, Air Force specialty codes - we have 263 of those and I have said why can't we get down to something that looks like about a hundred or so.
But let me go back. When we talk about being out of business, one way to look at that is the obsolescence of a system relative to what I talked about before about the rate of technological change and the militarization of the technological change. There are people out there building systems right now, air-breathing fighters, capable space systems, that our current systems become obsolete. We are at the point where the F-15, F-16, and the fourth-generation systems, which is everything except the F-22 and the F-35, is at a point of comparison with the new exported Sukhoi and MiG fighters that are being co-produced in a variety of places, and the surface-to-air missile systems that are on the open market as well as the early-warning radars and target-tracking radars.
"We can make 2018," Moseley said, "because we've asked industry to look at using the existing engines, existing sensors, existing weapons, weapons bays, just like we built the F-117 in the late '70s and early '80s. We used F-15 landing gear; we used internal structures off of other airplanes." The 2018 [bomber] will have the signatures and the capability to survive day or night in any of those environments," Moseley said, adding that the new bombers will "tear up" enemy air defenses. The new fifth-generation bomber will be much stealthier than even the B-2 stealth bomber and F-117 stealth fighter, as those planes used 1970s and 1980s technology