By Marina Malenic
The Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons expects the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to examine upgrades to aging portions of the Pentagon’s air-launched weapons arsenal.
“The Air Force has been investing heavily in airframes…and in many ways, the capability of Air Force platforms has outpaced the capability of weapons,” Maj. Gen. Charles Davis told Defense Daily in a telephone interview yesterday. “We have to catch those up a little bit.”
Davis expects the QDR to weigh options for upgrades of existing platforms with new starts, given the likelihood that defense budgets will begin to contract over the next several years.
“Parts of the weapons inventory is getting old and needs to be upgraded,” Davis said. “We also need to look at what the next generation of weapons is going to be.”
The QDR is a review of force structure requirements. The latest effort is expected to be sent to Congress along with the fiscal year 2011 budget in February.
Davis said one of the air service’s top priorities in the review is translating national security needs for long-range strike into either a new platform or upgrades to existing platforms.
“There could be decisions to go forward with a new bomber, a new cruise missile, enhancements to existing platforms, or some combination,” he said.
“Another question is, what’s beyond JASSM?” he added, referring to the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, the Air Force’s next-generation stealthy cruise missile being developed by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
That program has been plagued with cost overruns and development setbacks, but Davis said he is pleased with the weapon because it is “performing better today than what we anticipated if you look at the original requirements.” He traced many the of the program’s problems to “requirements creep.”
“In the future, we have to make sure everybody is fully accepting of requirements as written and willing to live with requirements as written,” he said. “Part of that is the need to accept that changes will lead to cost.”
Modernization of the Air Force weapons arsenal will also entail equipping the warfighter with greater flexibility in effects, according to the general.
“You need weapons that are flexible for a variety of situations,” Davis explained. “We need to have selectable effects–you need to be able to engage a moving target one day and maybe be able to hit a building without damaging the adjacent house the next.”
He cautioned, however, that such weapons will come with a high pricetag.
“That desire for flexibility in many cases can make for a very lengthy and costly program, often fielded over several increments,” he said.