That’s what defense-industry wonks have taken to calling the day, in April last year, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced several major changes to big-ticket acquisitions programs. Among the changes: curtailing F-22 fighter production and delaying the so-called “2018 bomber.”
“With these moves, the aerospace industry’s top customer more or less decamped from a significant share of the fixed-wing military aircraft market,” Rebecca Grant, a for-profit aerospace consultant, writes in the current issue Air Force magazine. “As a result, major risk now suffuses the entire aerospace industrial base. The question is to what extent the nation can manage that dramatically enlarged risk and keep it from doing serious harm to future national security.”
My Comment: This is a rather good analysis and commentary .... David Axe (as always) has done his homework. A must read for those who "feel down" on the direction that the US Air Force is going, and who may need a little lift in their morale.
As to what is my take .... David Axe is probably correct. But even if he is wrong, I take solace with the knowledge that our "competitors" out there are even more screwed up than us.