They don't need another multi-function billion dollar aircraft.
They need body armor, bullets and armor-plated vehicles.
The U.S. does not need new fighter aircraft because, for the past 35 years, it has seldom used the ones it has for air combat. Since the end of the Vietnam airwar in January 1973, U.S. fighter pilots have shot down just 54 hostile aircraft. That's merely 1.5 per year. Therefore, how can we justify extremely expensive next-generation aircraft for which there appears to be no valid mission?
A closer analysis reveals that fighter-versus-fighter combat is increasingly rare. Of the total U.S. kills since 1973, six here helicopters, and four were trainers. That leaves only 44 potentially serious opponents downed in three-and-a-half decades.
...
However one defines the war on terrorism, it doesn't involve any aerial combat. Yet almost certainly, the current global conflict will prove multigenerational: the Crusades lasted 200 years, and if the terror war lasts only half as long, the great-grandchildren of today's soldiers will still fight jihadists in ground combat.
America, therefore, needs a .30-caliber service rifle far more than it needs any stealth fighter.
...
Current stealth technology is about 20 years old, and it cannot be added on to. Conversely, electronic countermeasures pods and dedicated jamming aircraft can be purchased relatively cheaply. The tradeoff is so obvious that we have to ask: is the acquisitions process really that broken?
The fighter pilot has had a great run: he was the most glamorous warrior of the 20th century, proving his worth from 1915 well into the 1980s. But he has been overtaken by events. So let's keep him flying in aircraft adequate to the mission, augmented by sensors and weapons that can kill enemy aircraft on the rare occasions that it's necessary.
Then, let's use some of the savings to buy what we need: body armor, bandages, radios—and .30-caliber rifles.
(Barrett Tillman, Flight Journal, April 2008, p. 89-90. Excerpted from the author's 2007 book "What We Need: Extravagance and Shortages in America's Military")
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