OUR AGING AIR FORCE – AT 2:38 P.M. ET:  If you think we can cut the defense budget, please consider this.  The numbers are stunning.  From Daily Beast: 

The U.S. Air Force's planes are old and getting older. The average Air Force plane is 28 years old, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means hundreds, if not thousands, of Air Force pilots are flying planes built before they were born.

Replacing huge numbers of aging aircraft with newer models could be very, very expensive. The cost could swell to $26 billion annually by the mid-2030s.

And that's before taking into account the flying branch's ambitious plan to stand up 74 new squadrons.

Barring some radical shift in the cost of new technology, future administrations could face a difficult choice. Either boost Air Force budgets to Cold War levels or higher, or shrink the flying branch to an affordable size.

“Growing the force is going to compete directly with modernizing the force,” Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told Breaking Defense, a trade publication.

Today the Air Force possesses around 5,600 aircraft in 312 squadrons, making it by far the biggest air force in the world.

The planes on average are old, however. Thanks to the government's military spending spree in the 1980s and a subsequent decline in spending in the mid-'90s, no fewer than 1,900 of the Air Force's most important warplanes—including most of its A-10, F-16 and F-15 fighters— are between 26 and 40 years old, according to a December Congressional Budget Office report.

Most people replace their cars every six years, according to Autotrader. But the Air Force might hold on to a fighter jet for nearly half a century. And the youngest B-52 bomber in the American arsenal was built when John F Kennedy was still in the White House.

COMMENT:  Pretty frightening, considering the pace at which both Russia and China are expanding their military capability, with the emphasis on China.

We have the future of Western civilization in our hands, and that means the future of freedom.  Ronald Reagan famously said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

The Democrats might think about that, but they won't. 

December 26, 2018