Post by Admin on Feb 6, 2020 19:20:21 GMT -5
the motivations behind the move and its feasibility are far from clear.
Posturing to cut 'sacred cow' strategic capabilities seems to be a new tactic by the armed services to make the case that they need more money to keep those capabilities viable. We saw a similar set of circumstances with the Navy's bizarre move to retire a middle-aged supercarrier because there wasn't enough money—a highly subjective idea from the get-go—to put it through its scheduled complex overhaul. In the end, Congress said absolutely not and even President Trump himself, whose administration's own budget included the early retirement of the carrier, baulked at the idea outright.
Just as we predicted, the USS Harry S. Truman is getting its overhaul.
There is also the questionable idea that cutting what is already a small and hard to support fleet down to even less airframes won't result in diminishing returns over the long haul. In the short term, the 17 retired B-1Bs could be used as spare parts bins. As such, they would help bolster the remaining fleet, but the relevancy of an even smaller B-1B force would likely spiral quickly downward after a period of time, which will likely hasten the retirement of the rest of the bombers outright.
Posturing to cut 'sacred cow' strategic capabilities seems to be a new tactic by the armed services to make the case that they need more money to keep those capabilities viable. We saw a similar set of circumstances with the Navy's bizarre move to retire a middle-aged supercarrier because there wasn't enough money—a highly subjective idea from the get-go—to put it through its scheduled complex overhaul. In the end, Congress said absolutely not and even President Trump himself, whose administration's own budget included the early retirement of the carrier, baulked at the idea outright.
Just as we predicted, the USS Harry S. Truman is getting its overhaul.
There is also the questionable idea that cutting what is already a small and hard to support fleet down to even less airframes won't result in diminishing returns over the long haul. In the short term, the 17 retired B-1Bs could be used as spare parts bins. As such, they would help bolster the remaining fleet, but the relevancy of an even smaller B-1B force would likely spiral quickly downward after a period of time, which will likely hasten the retirement of the rest of the bombers outright.