<text id=00od0600><title>Organization and Deployment: New Aircraft</title>
<history>US Air Force: Briefing</history>
<article><hdr>Organization and Deployment—New Aircraft</hdr><body>
<p>A date for the end of the Cold War, if one must be chosen, may as well have been 28 January 1992 when President Bush announced that the B-2 'Stealth Bomber'—the result of an exceedingly ambitious 'black' program at the outer edge of technological capabilities—would not be further developed. Just 18 months earlier, Pentagon planning had looked to an Air Force with no fewer than 132 B-2s (and growth to 40 tactical wings rather than a cutback to 26 or fewer). The B-2s were to be backed up by 95 B-1B penetrators and 94 surviving B-52H bombers in the stand-off role. Advanced missiles, among them the AGM-129A ACM (Advanced Cruise Missile), were part of plans for the 1990s and remain so, but today's strategic force is down to fewer than 200 long-range bombers, and ACM procurement was cut back sharply.
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<p>The Lockheed F-22 Rapier ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighter) was developed to supplant the F-15C Eagle. Even in a time of tight dollars and 'downsized' forces, 500 F-22s are wanted, but in 1994 no assurance existed beyond an FSD (full-scale development) fleet of nine single-seat F-22As, two two-seat F-22Bs, and two test vehicles.
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<p>Two hundred and ten C-17 airlifters were once planned, a total officially reduced to 120 but possibly likely to end up even smaller. Many of the recent USAF aircraft programs have been subject to criticism, but few as pointedly as the C-17 (where the cost of getting the first example into the sky would have paid for 50 Lockheed C-5B Galaxies). More rigorous control over development of new items of equipment is a part of the changing 1990s.
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<p>The USAF had once planned a special operations force of 55 Bell/Boeing CV-22 Ospreys. This plan is unlikely to be resurrected and the USAF's helicopter fleet, like the bulk of its fighter force, will be strongly in need of service-life extension efforts in the 1990s. Virtually every principal aircraft in service—B-1B, F-117, F-15, F-16, MH-53J and others—will need upgrading as a compensation for new airplanes unlikely to be purchased.
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<p>The final major aircraft purchases of the century are trainers, including the T-1A Jayhawk TTTS (Tanker Transport Trainer System), JPATS (Joint Primary Air Trainer System) and EFS (Enhanced Flight Screener). Like all USAF programs from the purchase of nuts and bolts to the acquisition of hi-tech missiles, these programs will be eyeballed far more closely than in the past.
