Politics The US Air Force is losing ground to Russia and China

Greetings,

The US Air Force is losing ground to Russia and China

The Air Force’s top general is warning Congress that one day soon the U.S. might not be able to keep pace with Russia and China when it comes to producing and fielding next-generation fighter jets.

In two Capitol Hill appearances this week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh sounded the alarm about the advancements Beijing and Moscow have made with their military aircraft, progress that threatens to erase Washington’s vaunted technological edge.

Today, the U.S. has “couple thousand more” warplanes than China, but “at the rate they’re building, the models they’re fielding, by 2030 they will have fielded—they will have made up that 2,000 aircraft gap and they will be at least as big—if not bigger—than our air forces,” Welsh told the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee on Wednesday.

Besides the number of jets, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) today boasts 325,000 personnel, slightly more than the U.S., Beijing is rolling out new fighter variants and other advanced weaponry regularly, the four-star warned.

“We are not keeping up with that kind of technology development,” he told the panel. “We are still in a position of—we will have the best technology in the battlespace especially if we can continue with our current big three modernization programs,” including the new B-21 bomber and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, “but they will have a lot of technology that’s better than the stuff we’ve had before.”

Welsh raised the Russian specter on Thursday when he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee…..More Here

Click here for reuse options!
Copyright 2016 Hiram's 1555 Blog