Share Facebook

Twitter

Stumbleupon

LinkedIn

Pinterest

At the 2019 Defense News Conference on September 4, acting United States Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Donovan announced a number of “controversial changes” would be taking place within his military branch’s “future budgets.”

“We need to shift funding and allegiance from legacy programs we can no longer afford due to their incompatibility with future battlefields and into the capabilities and systems that the nation requires for victory. There’s no way around it,” the USAF official asserted.

According to Donovan, rethinking the amount of money poured into one aircraft is a possible avenue the USAF can take to ease up on the purse strings.

“We are investing in advanced standoff weapons; low-cost, single-use aircraft; and technologies such as directed energy and hypersonic,” he said during the conference on Wednesday.

However, the acting secretary did not provide further insight as to what this may mean or whether the aircraft would be manned, leaving attendees and the public to make their own determinations.

Steve Trimble, a defense editor for Aviation Week, took to Twitter following Wednesday’s conference to give insight on what Donovan’s language may mean for the future of the USAF.

Trimble first explained that a single-use aircraft, unlike a cruise missile, has to be capable of changing speed and direction while it’s airborne. While the USAF has previously discussed the use and development of “attritable,” or unmanned and disposable, aircraft, its language has evolved recently.

In the last several months, USAF officials have stopped using the word “attritable.” Now you hear them talk about “reusable” and “disposable.” A single-use implies something beyond disposable. It is simply “disposed.” (4) — Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) September 4, 2019

Over the past decade, the Air Force has famously attempted to divest legacy aircraft like the A-10 and U-2 —often with politically disastrous results. In its FY14 budget, the service announced plans to retire the RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone to pay for other modernization priorities. When Congress rebuffed that plan, the Air Force called for the retirement of the U-2 and A-10, further enraging lawmakers.

The battle over the fate of the aircraft persisted until the release of the FY18 budget request, when the service announced it had no fixed retirement plans for the U-2 or A-10.