America’s bomber force is facing a crisis
asked with deterrence and, if necessary, striking targets around the globe, Air Force crews operating these aircraft afford the nation’s security leaders unique options best embodied in the phrase: anytime, anyplace. Despite the criticality of this mission, the Air Force currently operates the smallest, oldest fleet of bombers since its 1947 founding. No other service or ally has this capability, which places an imperative on this finite force. The service’s recent announcement that it will be ending its continuous bomber presence in Guam further amplifies the precarious state of bombers. It is a stark warning to senior leaders in the Pentagon, in the executive branch and on Capitol Hill that the Air Force is “out of Schlitz” when it comes to the critical missions they perform…
The erosion of the bomber force is no secret. At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force possessed 400 bombers arrayed to fight the Soviet Union. Today, it has just 157, with a plan to cut a further 17 in the fiscal 2021 budget submission. Air Force efforts to modernize the bomber force a decade ago were thwarted within the Department of Defense by an excessive near-term focus on counterinsurgency operations. Bombers are requested by combatant commands on a continual basis given the concurrent threats posed by peer adversaries, mid-tier nations like Iran and North Korea, and hostile nonstate actors.
The Air Force knows this mission area is stretched too thin, and that is precisely why in 2018 leaders called for an additional five bomber squadrons in “The Air Force We Need” force structure assessment.