United States Air Force in Crisis Essay

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Christopher W. Gallaher
United States Air Force in Crisis
Everglades University
AVM4914

Abstract
Just like any new project, there will be mishaps and bumps in the road along the way. The United States fifth-generation jet fighter program has been no different. Current fighter jets and even future fighters are built and will be built using what the United States Air Force calls “spiral technology.” In this system aircraft are built and developed over a long period of time, normally twenty years or so. Therefore when it is finally released for testing and or deemed ready and mission capable, the technology for it is technically already twenty or so years old. To combat this aging technology, the manufacturers of these aircraft have given the aircraft the ability to learn. This program has proven to be tricky, sometimes ineffective and very costly. Defending this country has never been a cheap task. With trillions of dollars spent on our military and various other government agencies responsible for defending our country over the years, The United States has put itself in a large deficit. Since the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001 our country has been at war, a Global War on Terror with no real end in sight. This war has cost us billions and will continue to. With a large portion of funding being used to for the Global War on Terror, the United States Air Force is being put into a state of crisis and urgency to keep up with the development of our rivals due to limited funding.

In 1947 the Army Air Corps became the newest branch of military service when then President Harry S. Truman designated them the title of, the United States Air Force. During and after World War II it was utterly obvious that war has shifted from land and sea to the skies. A strong and dominant military air force was essential to ensure the safety of America’s people, and ensure this great country continued to grow and flourish as a global super power. No longer was war strictly fought on land and sea, now the almost infinite skies would be the latest and largest battleground. These days not even the skies above us are the limit, now that the time of space travel and exploration has dawned on us, so has the need to defend this country against all possible threats to our nation not only on land, sea and sky… but now also in space. I joined the United States Air Force in 2007 and have been blessed to have a job I love. I am an aircraft armament systems specialist. I basically load bombs and missiles on aircraft and maintain the weapons system, which is basically the whole aircraft since it is a flying weapon. I’ve worked on F-15 Strike Eagles, F-16 Falcons, and F-22 Raptors, though I can work on any military plan that is weapons capable. The F-22 Raptor along with the F-35 Lightning or Joint Strike Fighter are the newest or fifth-generation of United States fighter jets. These fighter jets are the best of the best the United States has to offer at this current point in time, which is ironic because both these aircraft were not built using current technology. Current fighter jets and even future fighters are built and will be built using what the United States Air Force calls “spiral technology.” In this system aircraft are built and developed over a long period of time, normally twenty years or so. Therefore when it is finally released for testing and or deemed ready and mission capable, the technology for it is technically already twenty or so years old. To combat this aging technology, the manufacturers of these aircraft have given the aircraft the ability to learn, so to speak. Just like a computer allows the user to perform a software update, so do these fifth and future sixth-generation fighter jets. But just like a computer, these updates cause more issues then they resolve some times.
The exact description of a fifth-generation jet fighter according to Lockheed
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