The Air National Guard needs fighters. New fighters? Or just fighters?

I've recently started seeing more discussions regarding the Air National Guard's needs to recapitalize its fighter force. It may have been going on longer but I got interested in it after seeing the debates in Washington regarding the ending of production of the Lockheed F-22A Raptor. Don't get me wrong, I think the Raptor is an awesome piece of kit and a fine aircraft to form the sharp point of the spear of the USAF, but at its going prices and decidedly Cold War origins, I won't be weeping for the end of the Raptor production as it's money better spent in other areas of the USAF, most particularly the need for fighters for the ANG, an issue that came to the forefront after the inflight structural failure of a Missouri ANG F-15C back in 2007.

Just recently Lt. General Henry Wyatt, director of the Air National Guard, told a group of defense reporters that the ANG needs new fighters, without making specific recommendations for specific type. The link will go to the article on the Air Force Times' website, but there were a few items in the article that piqued my interest:

Without endorsing a specific type of fighter for the future, Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt said providing the Air National Guard with the same capabilities as the active Air Force will prevent a repeat of the first Iraq war. At the time, the Guard’s A-7s were sidelined because the active fighter force was flying the newer A-10s, F-15s and F-16s. Things have improved since then, and Guard squadrons are routinely deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But if I'm not mistaken, the Navy successfully flew their A-7 Corsairs in Desert Storm. According to the FAS, the Navy's A-7E fleet demonstrated a 95% operational readiness rate during Desert Storm and their effectiveness has been well-documented. I don't necessarily think that the A-7 was an older platform when you consider there were USAF aircraft in theater during Desert Storm that were considerably older than the A-7 (B-52s come to mind right away) and the B-1B did sit out Desert Storm for its own technical reasons and lack of, at least then, conventional weapons capability.

With the next generation of fighters coming online, Wyatt wants to make sure the Guard gets what the active Air Force is getting. It would be a waste of money to stick the Guard with outdated aircraft that can handle its primary mission — homeland protection — but don’t mirror capabilities of the aircraft in the active force, Wyatt said.

Herein lies a paradox in recapitalizing the Air National Guard- General Wyatt states that air sovereignty would be the primary mission of the ANG force, yet in the same breath he wants the same capabilities as the active duty force. Now I'm well aware that a sizeable portion of combat missions overseas are now performed by ANG personnel and aircraft like the F-16 or A-10. But it seems like contradiction to me to ask for the same as the active duty force gets for a primary role that he's even saying older aircraft can handle.

Wyatt said he did not want to enter the debate over whether the Air Force needs more F-22s than the 187 maximum set by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in favor of funding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

But did he not say he wants for the ANG what the active duty force is getting?

“What I’ve tried to convey is the message that I am basically platform-agnostic — I don’t care,” Wyatt said. “I’m interested in the capability and I’m interested in recapitalizing our aging fleet.”

Now we might be seeing glimmers of pragmatism. Being platform-agnostic, as he put it, is a good starting point as advances in electronics have given older platforms new capabilities- just look to the AESA-equipped F-15Cs or what the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet offers with AESA/Growler EW functions. But to say "aging fleet" prompts reinsertion of the General's foot in his mouth. Aging aircraft are an issue across the US military as flight hours are being consumed by the pace of overseas deployment on numerous airframes from the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the Boeing CH-47 Chinook and the Marine's CH-46 Sea Knights. But aging aircraft can still perform roles, after all we have KC-135s still flying that make some of the B-52 Stratofortress fleet look young.

The Air Force is considering options for filling that gap, including service extensions for the F-15 and F-16, but no decisions have been made. If the major overhauls are deemed feasible, the Guard could see 100 to 150 of its F-16s get service extensions, Wyatt said. Studies are being conducted on also overhauling F-15s.

Eighty percent of the F-16 force alone is to be phased out over the next eight years as they are out of airframe hours. And the multirole F-16 is one of the cornerstone aircraft of the ANG fleet and it would be prohibitively expensive to replace the F-16s even at a 1.5 to 1 ratio with F-35s. At least Gen. Wyatt seems to leave the door open that there may be cost-effective options that give the ANG modernized F-16s and possibly F-15s for the fraction of the cost that replacing them with F-35s would entail.

Then there is the cost of not doing anything- letting the ANG decline with having to share aircraft with the active duty force as associate units and letting a significant portion of our national security, and military readiness slowly wither on the vine.