USAF moves to address future force conundrum

摘要

Since President George W Bush's 1 May 2003 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq, the US Air Force (USAF) has been fighting a low-intensity war on two fronts with an inventory better suited to large-scale conflicts. Since that time the USAF has been criticised for spending its strained budget on programmes that have little or no relevance to events on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lockheed Martin's costly F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft has often been used as an example of this procurement strategy with the number to be acquired reduced from 381 to 183 as a result of political and budgetary pressures.