Introduction

Despite more than a century of costly failed experiments, airpower proponents persist in their efforts to convince politicians that wars can be won by dropping bombs on a few carefully selected targets. One such proponent is retired Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula, who now serves as the dean of the aerospace industry-funded Mitchell Institute. In a January 2020 column unsubtly titled “War With Iran Could Be Sharp & Short With Fifth Gen Aircraft,” he opined that the United States could defeat Iran by dropping a few bombs. He conclusively stated that Iran’s oil refining and distribution networks and the country’s power grid can all be rendered ineffective with bomb and cyber strikes “in short order without any U.S. boots on the ground.”¹David Deptula, “War With Iran Could Be Sharp & Short With Fifth Gen Aircraft: Deptula,” Breaking Defense, January 23, 2020, https://breakingdefense.com/2020/01/war-with-iran-can-be-sharp-short-with-fifth-gen-aircraft/.

As of this writing, bombs have been falling on Iran for a full month with little sign of a decisive military conclusion to the conflict. Thus far, the Iran War has been anything other than “sharp & short.” The president ordered two battalions of Marines and the Army’s 82^nd Airborne Division into the region after the bombing campaign began.²David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager, “Trump Faces a Decision on Whether to Start a Ground War in Iran,” New York Times, March 31, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-iran-ground-war.html The moderate size of the task force suggests only a limited ground campaign if these troops are ordered to actually land in Iran, but it would still be a significant escalation to the conflict.

American defense policymakers are pushing full steam ahead with their plans to build an Air Force for the 21^st century with futuristic stealth bombers and sophisticated multi-role strike fighters. The pilots flying the bombers and fighters will be digitally connected to swarms of uncrewed aircraft that will act as radar decoys and additional shooters.

The airpower futurists proposing such plans envision an interesting blend of both traditional methods and promised technology. But these plans, especially with regard to traditional methods, ignore hard-earned historical lessons. In some cases, proposals are based on historical myths and imagined outcomes. The force that will result from the current plans, even if the contractors manage to deliver aircraft that perform as promised, will not meet the nation’s security needs because the assumptions about warfare on which the plans are based are fundamentally wrong.

Policymakers in Washington need to reflect on what military aviation really does before a factory line worker bends another flange or secures another rivet on any new American fighter or bomber. Only then will they be able to craft an effective aviation policy that will meet the nation’s realistic security needs. History provides conclusive proof that vast fleets of manned bombers fail to deliver results commensurate with the resources invested in them. An even closer look at the record shows the limits of destroying targets far behind enemy lines.

Based on this understanding, it is possible to build an air force that leverages available technology to provide the right mix of capabilities to support the joint force.

Origins of Airpower Theory

When the Wright Brothers successfully demonstrated their flying machine, they understood the first market for their invention was the world’s militaries.³Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 10. They first offered their invention to the U.S. Army, but American soldiers were initially skeptical of the flying claims made by two obscure bicycle manufacturers from Ohio. They found much more initial success in Europe, especially in France, where Wilbur made a series of spectacular demonstration flights, securing the brother’s places in history.⁴David McCullough, The Wright Brothers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 203-206. News of the Wrights’ European success spurred American military officials to act.

The U.S. Army awarded the Wrights with a $25,000 contract for their “heavier-than-air flying machine” in 1908. Soldiers recognized the airplane as a tool for reconnaissance and communications. Army leaders thus duly assigned the airplane to the relevant branch that already handled those basic military functions, the Signal Corps.⁵Michael Merrell, “The contract that started it all,” Air Combat Command, January 13, 2015, https://www.acc.af.mil/News/Commentaries/Display/Article/661822/the-contract-that-started-it-all/#:~:text=After%20receiving%20many%20bids%2C%20the,Army%20to%20the%20Wright%20brothers. Predictably, people quickly found new uses for the airplane. Wars especially tend to inspire people to innovate new ways to kill others. Within weeks of the beginning of World War I, pilots began mounting machine guns in their airplanes to shoot down enemy observation planes.⁶Tony Reichhardt, “The First Aerial Combat Victory: Airplane vs. Airplane Over France in 1914,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 4, 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/first-aerial-combat-victory-180952933/ Purpose-built fighter and bomber aircraft appeared over the battlefields and even capital cities soon afterwards.⁷William E. Burrows, Richthofen: A True History of the Red Baron (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), 10.

World War I inspired several aviators to imagine a future with the airplane as the primary war-winning weapon. In 1920, Giulio Douhet, an Italian soldier, published a book titled “The Command of the Air” in which he argued that military aviation be given independent offensive missions with the traditional Army and Navy serving in an auxiliary role. He proposed building fleets of “battleplanes” that would strike the enemy’s cities and civilian populations. He wrote that air power “makes it possible not only to make high-explosive bombing raids over any sector of the enemy’s territory, but also to ravage his whole country by chemical and bacteriological warfare.”⁸Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (Washington: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 6-7. Douhet’s ideas amounted to little more than a terror campaign against the enemy’s civilian population.

In the United States, an ambitious soldier from the Signal Corps, Billy Mitchell, recognized a chance for personal advancement with the airplane. As the most senior Army aviator, Mitchell saw an opportunity not just to rise through the ranks of the Army, but to be the first leader of his own military branch devoted to aviation. To promote such an idea, Mitchell wrote his own book, “Winged Defense,” in 1925 in which he defined “Air power” as “the ability to do something in or through the air, and, as the air covers the whole world, aircraft are able to go anywhere on the planet.”⁹William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power Economic and Military (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2006), 3-4.

Mitchell never got the chance to realize his dream of leading his air force, but those he inspired inside the Army’s flying fraternity focused their attention on developing an independent role for aviation they believed would convince Washington policymakers to create a separate Air Force. The Army’s Air Corps Tactical School effectively became a think tank of sorts for flyers. There they developed what became known as the Industrial Web Theory. This idea held that the enemy’s ability to wage war would be crippled by bombing factories that produced critical military components.¹⁰Hugh G. Severs, “The Controversy Behind the Air Corps Tactical School’s Strategic Bombardment Theory: An Analysis of the Bombardment Versus Pursuit Aviation Data Between 1930-1939,” (Research Paper, Air Command and Staff College, 1997), 5, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA392909.pdf The theory hinged on the assumption that four-engine, self-defending bombers flying in formation at high altitude would always be able to push through the enemy’s defenses and strike their targets.¹¹Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (Washington: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 20.

Airpower’s Limits in Practice

American aviators used World War II as a proving ground for their pet theories in a series of campaigns that they expected would make the bureaucratic case for an independent air force. Allied leaders decided at the 1943 Casablanca Conference to conduct a sustained bombing campaign to destroy German military, industrial, and economic targets meant to degrade Germany’s ability to wage war as well as to demoralize and defeat the German public.¹²“Eaker Plan,” G. Blume Historian, May 25, 1943, http://www.gblume.com/timeline-of-strategic-aviation/appendix/eaker-plan/ American aviators employed their precision daylight bombing techniques against selected industrial targets while the British Royal Air Force opted to continue area bombing missions against German cities at night in a straightforward terror campaign. Combined, the two forces dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs by the end of the war at a cost of 79,265 airmen and 18,000 aircraft.¹³The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Montgomery: Air University Press, 1987), 5-6, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0020_SPANGRUD_STRATEGIC_BOMBING_SURVEYS.pdf

When the Iraqi Army invaded Kuwait in 1990, American airmen found another chance to experiment with a new theory. An Air Force officer named John Warden published a book in 1988 titled “The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat,” which proved to be a warmed-over version of the old Air Corps Tactical School theory where wars “can theoretically be won from the air.”¹⁴John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1988), 39. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA259303.pdf Warden called for an operational level campaign targeting, in descending order of importance, the enemy’s leadership, its organic essentials (electrical grid or other facilities central to the society), infrastructure (such as transportation systems), population, and finally, fielded military forces. This concept later became known as the “Five Rings Model.”¹⁵John A. Warden III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal 9, no. 1 (Spring 1995), 48, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-09_Issue-1-Se/1995_Vol9_No1.pdf Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Dugan was so confident in the theory that he made numerous public and private statements that “air power is the only answer that’s available to our country,” essentially saying the Air Force alone would defeat the Iraqis.¹⁶Rick Atkinson, “U.S. to Rely on Air Strikes if War Erupts,” The Washington Post, September 16, 1990. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/09/16/us-to-rely-on-air-strikes-if-war-erupts/6d3110ea-8425-468a-9546-10c911c90acd/ Dugan’s comments angered Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney enough that he fired him on September 17, 1990. Still, Cheney approved the Desert Storm air campaign, which flowed directly from contemporary airpower thinking.

Both of these much-touted examples of airpower failed completely. Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. General Schwartzkopf resorted to ordering his forces to execute the famous “Left Hook” that ended the Gulf War after 100 hours of fighting on the ground. If either of these bombing campaigns worked as their designers intended, the enemy would have surrendered before any ground troops began to move.

The Japanese surrender at the end of World War II is frequently touted as an airpower victory, but the record tells a very different story. For one thing, any claim of airpower success hinges on the effectiveness of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should go without saying that nuclear weapons destroying entire cities is much different than the systemic destruction of the enemy’s warmaking machine that airpower advocates claimed was all it would take to win the war.¹⁷Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, and Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1960 (Montgomery: Air University Press, 1989), 170. Such claims also dismiss the four year-long naval campaign that relentlessly pushed back the Japanese to their home islands. Several of Japan’s leaders were already searching for a way to end the war before the first B-29s appeared over their heads.

These claims also completely ignore the effect of the Soviet Union’s declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria. Japan’s leaders sought to negotiate their surrender through the Soviets who had, prior to August 1945, remained at peace with Tokyo. The Soviet entry into the war closed off the final diplomatic option left to the Japanese. The Japanese were similarly terrified by the Russians. They watched from a distance as Russian troops flattened Berlin and then brutalized the population. Japanese leaders worried also about the potential retribution the Russians might mete out to the country that had humiliated them during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.¹⁸Paul Ham, Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), 354-355. The combination of the American-led Pacific naval campaign and the Soviet Union’s week-long Manchurian ground campaign did far more than the American bombers did over Japan to bring about the end of the war.¹⁹Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan’s Decision to Surrender?” The Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 8 (August 1, 2007): 27, https://apjjf.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501/article.pdf.

Interestingly enough, the only time American airpower alone produced a decisive strategic victory, no bombs were dropped. During the occupation of Germany after the end of World War II, Soviet and East German leaders attempted to force the other allies out of Berlin by cutting off the highway and rail links to the city from West Germany. Lucius Clay, the military governor of the U.S. occupation zone, ordered what quickly became known as the Berlin Airlift to fly in all the food, fuel, and supplies necessary to sustain the citizens of West Berlin. For nearly a year, 277,500 flights delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies before the Soviet leaders capitulated and ended the blockade.²⁰Barry Turner, The Berlin Airlift: The Relief Operation that Defined the Cold War (London: Icon Books Ltd., 2017), 1. In an ironic historical twist, this indisputably successful strategic airpower campaign was ordered and led by an Army general.

Munitions

A major challenge involved in developing and implementing the right policies regarding military aviation is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem that needs to be solved. This is especially true when it comes to striking distant targets. For generations, the idea that led such discussions was that of getting an aircraft over the target and then how to accurately drop a munition on it. This made sense when the only way to deliver a munition to a target beyond 15 miles of the front line was with a manned aircraft.

Today, there are many ways to deliver munitions to any point on the globe. With the advent of long-range rocket artillery, cruise and ballistic missiles, and uncrewed aircraft, the centrality and even relevance of manned strike fighters and bombers diminish by the day. But outmoded thinking is difficult to dislodge, especially when there are bureaucratic and economic motives not to.

In this case, the munition is the star of the show, not the delivery platform or its operator.

Something interesting happens when the primary focus shifts from delivery platform to the munition. That focus reveals a simple truth: Military aviation loses a great deal of its mystique. That is because a munition is a rather simple device. Within the context of military aviation, a munition is most commonly a guided high-explosive bomb. The United States military employs many varieties from a Mark 82 500-pound general purpose bomb to a 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb.

As a device, everything, from a hand grenade to a giant bunker-busting bomb is functionally the exact same. They are munitions that are deployed by a launch platform, impact a target, and explode. In official military parlance, weapons of this kind are categorized as fires. The Army defines fires as one of six warfighting functions used to “create and converge effects in all domains against the threat to enable actions across the range of military operations.”²¹Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-0: Operations (Washington, Government Printing Office, 2025), 26, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43326-FM_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf. Munitions, like cyber and information operations, are supporting arms used to shape the battlefield to gain an advantage for the maneuver forces to close with and defeat the enemy.

In addition to remembering that munitions, like bombs and missiles, fall within the fires categorization, it is even more important to remember the true value of fires. Soldiers and Marines employ fires to support ground maneuver. In this case, artillery is used to create a combined arms dilemma for the enemy soldiers. To survive an artillery barrage, soldiers need to keep their heads down. Doing so allows the other side’s maneuver elements to close the distance for the close fight. The artillery barrage will clearly cause some damage, but that is not the real purpose of artillery. The value-add for fires is the disruption to the enemy’s operations it causes. But that disruption only has value if it can be exploited on the ground by the maneuver forces. If artillery alone is employed, it will cause some damage and destruction, but as soon as the firing stops, the survivors will start to take stock of what’s left as soon as their ears stop ringing. The same happens when bombers strike a target. The bombs will cause damage, but unless friendly soldiers arrive on scene before the survivors start cleaning up the site, the long-term effects will be limited.

Fires of all types generally only have value if the effects can be exploited on the ground. This is the real reason air campaigns alone fail.

Bombers

The B-21 “Raider” began in earnest more than a decade ago when the then-Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James and Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh announced Northrup Grumman as the winner of the Long Range Strike Bomber program in October 2015.²²“Air Force awards LRS-B contract,” Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs, October 27, 2015, https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/626131/air-force-awards-lrs-b-contract/ Seven years later, Pentagon leaders dramatically revealed the jet to the world in a ceremony at the Northrup Grumman plant in Palmdale, California on December 2, 2022.²³C. Todd Lopez, “World Gets First Look at B-21 Raider,” DOD News, December 3, 2022, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3235326/world-gets-first-look-at-b-21-raider/

Missing from the flowery speeches that night were any questions regarding the rationale for a manned bomber in the 21^st century.

Manned bombers long ago lost their relevance, a fact plain to see when the matter is considered at the most fundamental level. A bomber represents the ultimate inversion of the platform to munition equation. The main purpose of a bomber is to fly over a target and drop gravity bombs to destroy it. So, in this case, an exquisite, and very expensive, crewed launch platform is sent directly into the dangerous area to place a relatively simple and inexpensive munition on a target.

That is 20^th century thinking at its worst.

The bomber is nothing more than a delivery vehicle. Strip away the glossy brochures, sleek designs, and flashy airshow displays, all that remains is a munition and a delivery vehicle. In 2025, there are plenty of ways to deliver a munition to a distant target that do not involve sending people inside an expensive and exquisite machine. The services can employ cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles to deliver munitions. They have armed unmanned systems that can spot and engage targets. The Army and Marine Corps both have long-range artillery to deliver munitions. The Air Force has long-range standoff weapons that can be launched beyond the enemy’s defended airspace from non-stealthy aircraft. For example, the Air Force today has the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile that has a range of 500 miles and costs $1.5 million.²⁴“Eyeing the Pacific, Lockheed unveils low-cost $150,000 cruise missile,” Reuters, March 3, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/eyeing-pacific-lockheed-unveils-low-cost-150000-cruise-missile-2025-03-03.

With those alternatives in mind, the idea of sending two human beings flying a $700 million B-21 into the heart of the enemy’s heavily defended airspace to drop a $25,000 bomb makes little sense.

Most countries around the world retired their dedicated bomber fleets decades ago. French leaders sent their last bombers to the scrapyard in 1996.²⁵“French air force phases out its Mirage IVP nuclear bombers,” Flight International, January 10, 1996, https://web.archive.org/web/20140417101636/http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/french-air-force-phases-out-its-mirage-ivp-nuclear-bombers-19109/ The British retired the last of their “V” bombers in 1984.²⁶“Avro Vulcan B2,” Royal Air Force Museum, accessed February 24, 2026, https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/collections/avro-vulcan-b2/. Only the United States, Russia, and China operate dedicated bombers today, but the actual number of aircraft suggests that no country truly believes its bomber forces are the key to its defense. In 2026, the United States Air Force operates a mixed bomber fleet of B-1 Lancers, B-2 Spirits, and B-52 Stratofortresses, with a total of 158.²⁷“US Air Force Aircraft Factsheets,” United States Air Force, accessed February 24, 2026, https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Aircraft-Factsheets/

It is unclear exactly how many bombers the Russians currently have. The Russian Air Force maintained a mixed fleet of approximately 134 bombers. These included TU-60 Blackjack and the Tu-22M bombers that are both swing-wing supersonic bombers, roughly equivalent to the American B-1. The rest are older, propeller-driven Tu-95 Bear bombers.²⁸Illia Kabachynskyi, “Russia’s Nuclear-Capable Bomber Jet Fleet Just Took a Massive Hit. What’s Left of It Now?” United 24 Media, June 3, 2025, https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/russias-nuclear-capable-bomber-jet-fleet-just-took-a-massive-hit-whats-left-of-it-now-8853 The Ukrainian military successfully denuded the Russian bomber fleet with the audacious Operation Spiderweb drone attack on June 1, 2025. Some reports say the Ukrainians left the Russians with only 80 serviceable bombers after sneaking hundreds of attack drones inside standardized containers close to Russian airbases.²⁹David Axe, “Russia Had 120 Bombers, Then Drones Struck,” Trench Art, June 1, 2025, https://www.trenchart.us/p/on-saturday-russia-had-the-worlds. The simple fact that a country without bombers found a way to deliver munitions that crippled a significant portion of another country’s bombers is a clear demonstration that the age of the bomber has long since passed.

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force may have up to 200 H-6 Badger bombers. These are non-stealth jet aircraft of limited range that could be used for anti-ship operations or as a launch platform for standoff munitions. Chinese engineers are reportedly developing the H-20 bomber that is expected to be in service by 2035. The H-20 will reportedly be a long-range, nuclear-capable, stealth bomber to rival the American B-21.³⁰Joseph Trevithick and Howard Altma, “China ‘Just Not There Yet’ On H-20 Stealth Bomber: Global Strike Command’s Top General,” The War Zone, February 10, 2026, https://www.twz.com/air/china-just-not-there-yet-on-h-20-stealth-bomber-global-strike-commands-top-general. While the basic characteristics of China’s bomber are known, what is less certain is how serious an effort the program is. Chinese engineers have been at work for decades developing aircraft carriers, but have yet to demonstrate an effective, modern flattop ship. At the same time, Chinese policymakers have invested heavily in anti-ship missile technology, to include the DF-21 “carrier killer” missile.³¹Peter Suciu, “China’s ‘Carrier Killers’: How DF-21D and DF-26B Missiles Threaten U.S. Navy,” The National Interest, September 21, 2024, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-carrier-killers-how-df-21d-and-df-26b-missiles-threaten-us-navy-207372. When considered together, the half-hearted effort to build aircraft carriers looks more like an information operation campaign to convince American military planners to invest more in aircraft carrier construction so the Chinese would have more targets for their various anti-ship missiles.

As drone and missile technology continues to develop, the B-21 increasingly looks more and more like a vanity project to bolster the self-image of the United States Air Force. Policymakers need to carefully consider the capabilities the military actually needs. With the B-21, taxpayers are being burdened by paying not only for obsolete technology, but also an obsolete idea. The resources being poured into the next generation bomber could be put to much better use in developing militarily relevant capabilities.

Fighters

Unlike a manned bomber, fighter jets do still retain military utility, but not in the way they have traditionally. Many capabilities performed by fighters are now also being supplanted by unmanned systems. With that in mind, it is difficult for the national security establishment to justify four new fighter jet programs.

The Air Force developed the F-22 to be the world’s most dominant air superiority fighter. The program’s original plans would have seen at least 648 jets produced.³²Michael E. O’Hanlo, “The Plane Truth: Fewer F-22s Mean a Stronger National Defense,” The Brookings Institute, September 1, 1999, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-plane-truth-fewer-f-22s-mean-a-stronger-national-defense/ But as development costs rose, Pentagon budgeteers attempted to control costs by cutting the planned buy. Production figures shrank repeatedly until the Air Force ended up with 187 F-22s. When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates halted F-22 production in 2009, the cost of each aircraft averaged $350 million.³³R. Jeffrey Smith, “Senate Votes to End Production of Controversial F-22 Fighter,” The Washington Post, Jully 22, 2009, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072100135.html The jets today have a very low readiness rate of 40%.³⁴John A. Tirpak, “Air Force Mission Capability Rates Reach Lowest Levels in Years,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, February 18, 2025, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-mission-capable-rates-fiscal-2024/ They saw very limited action during the War on Terror despite becoming operational in 2005.

The F-35 program has been a boondoggle almost from the beginning. It officially began on October 26, 2001. At the time, each jet was expected to cost between $40-$50 million.³⁵James Dao and Laura M. Holson, “Lockheed Wins $200 Billion Deal for Fighter Jet,” The New York Times, October 27, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/us/lockheed-wins-200-billion-deal-for-fighter-jet.html Nearly a quarter of a century later, that is just one promise about the program that has failed to materialize. Costs for the program have more than doubled since then, but the jets can still not perform many of the missions assigned to them. Even if the technology of the F-35 matched the rhetoric used to sell the program, the jets themselves are highly unreliable. The full mission capable rates for all three variants of the F-35 remain far below even the minimum standards.³⁶U.S. Government Accountability Office, F-35 Sustainment: Costs Continue to Rise While Planned Use and Availability Have Decreased, GAO-24-106703 (Washington, DC, 2024), 10, accessed April 1, 2026, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106703. President Trump’s suggestion of building a twin-engine version of the jet to be called the F-55 may improve the performance in some areas, but it will do little to control costs. Adding a second engine would necessitate a complete redesign of the center fuselage of the jet, which would cost both time and money. The engines themselves would also likely have to be redesigned, which would increase costs even further.

Little is yet known publicly about the F-47, once known as the Next Generation Air Dominance program. It is intended to be the successor to the F-22 in the air dominance role. Pentagon officials have been reluctant to reveal anything about the program other than that it will have a longer range, be stealthier, and, according to their claims,  be more reliable than the F-22 and F-35.³⁷John A. Tirpak, “Air Force Chief: How the New F-47 Will Improve on the F-22,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, March 21, 2025, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/new-f-47-f-22-allvin/ Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall got official Washington’s attention in 2022 when he testified before Congress that he expected the jets to cost “multiple hundreds of millions” per copy.³⁸Stephen Losey, “Future NGAD fighter jets could cost ‘hundreds of millions’ apiece,” Defense News, April 26, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/04/28/future-ngad-fighter-jets-could-cost-hundreds-of-millions-apiece/ Air Force officials originally said they expected the F-47 to be operational as soon as 2025, which was difficult to believe considering the Pentagon’s recent history of yearslong delivery delays.³⁹Audrey Decker, “F-47 will have 70% better combat radius than F-22, Air Force says,” Defense One, May 13, 2025, https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/05/f-47-will-almost-double-f-22s-combat-radius-air-force-says/405309/

Navy leaders are planning on their own sixth-generation fighter jet to equivalent to the F-47, which is currently known as the F/A-XX program. Even less is known about the Navy’s planned jet because a contract has yet to be awarded. About the only thing anyone can be certain about the program at this point is that it will be expensive.

This is not to suggest there is no need for manned fighter aircraft anymore. As long as soldiers and Marines fight on the ground, they will need air support. That means the services need dedicated attack pilots flying highly effective ground attack aircraft. While Air Force leaders, both civilian and uniformed, pour resources into bombers, fighters, and uncrewed systems, they are loath to invest anything in the ground attack role. Instead, they have devoted great energy into discarding a role they have traditionally found burdensome.⁴⁰Peter A. Costello, “A Matter of Trust: Close Air Support Apportionment and Allocation for Operational Level Effects,” (Thesis, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1997), 17, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA334351.pdf Air Force leaders have worked for years to convince Congress to authorize the retirement of the A-10 Warthog despite its proven combat record and demonstrated ongoing relevance. A-10 pilots flew in support of the Iran operation even as A-10s continue to be sent to the boneyard without a dedicated replacement in the pipeline.⁴¹Kai Greet, “APKWS-Equipped A-10 Thunderbolt IIs are Flying Missions in Support of Operation Epic Fury,” The Aviationist, March 16, 2026, https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/16/a-10-thunderbolt-iis-operation-epic-fury/#deny. The A-10 community proved crucial to rescuing airmen shot down over Iran.⁴²Michael Scanlon, “The rescue mission that brought 2 F-15E Strike Eagle crew members home,” Military Times, April 7, 2026, https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/04/08/the-rescue-mission-that-brought-2-f-15e-strike-eagle-crew-members-home/.

Attack pilots and aircraft will need equally effective fighter pilots and jets to protect them. The ability to control the air over the battlefield will remain a critical capability for the military. Fighter jets are also still needed to defend the homeland. But because these fighters would be flying over friendly territory, they don’t need to be as sophisticated and stealthy as fighters designed to penetrate deep into enemy territory. They need to be reliable workhorses that can be counted on to perform when needed. A future adversary can certainly not be expected to time its operations according to the F-35’s extremely limited availability.

Stealth Technology

Considering the dangers posed by the much more sophisticated air defenses available today, defense policymakers spend generational wealth to develop stealth aircraft in the hopes of staying one step ahead of the adversary’s capabilities. It is why the services expect to spend more than $2 trillion to develop, build, and operate a fleet of F-35s.⁴³“The F-35 Will Now Exceed $2 Trillion As the Military Plans to Fly It Less,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, May 16, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/blog/f-35-will-now-exceed-2-trillion-military-plans-fly-it-less It is also why the American people will now be on the hook for the F-47 and potentially the F-55.

One of the main drivers of costs for modern military aircraft is the desire to make these aircraft difficult for a potential adversary to detect and target. Adding stealth capabilities like radar-absorbing coatings and sophisticated electronic warfare systems dramatically increases the cost to develop, build, and maintain aircraft. But the effectiveness of stealth — and more importantly, the essential rationale behind it — deserves scrutiny.

U.S. military officials understand the challenge of dealing with an adversary’s air defenses. They learned a hard lesson in 1999 when Serbian forces shot down an F-117 stealth attack jet with an anti-aircraft system designed in the 1950s.⁴⁴Dario Leone, “An In-Depth Analysis of how Serbs Were Able to Shoot Down An F-117 Stealth Fighter during Operation Allied Force,” The Aviation Geek, March 26, 2020, https://theaviationgeekclub.com/an-in-depth-analysis-of-how-serbs-were-able-to-shoot-down-an-f-117-stealth-fighter-during-operation-allied-force/ In May 2025, a pilot flying an F-35 over Yemen had to take evasive actions when Houthi rebels targeted the jet and fired at least one missile at it.⁴⁵Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway, “How The Houthis’ Rickety Air Defenses Threaten Even The F-35,” The War Zone, May 14, 2025, https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses-can-threaten-the-stealthy-f-35#:~:text=F%2D35%20Had%20To%20Maneuver,To%2DAir%20Missile:%20U.S.%20Official

Reiterating an earlier point, there are plenty of ways to strike a target inside an enemy’s heavily defended airspace without requiring a pilot to fly directly over it. With that thought in mind, the U.S. military can also save a great deal of money by foregoing programs like the F-47 and potentially the F-55 because the military only needs localized air superiority around friendly forces to contend with enemy fighters. The Pentagon needs just a fraction of the resources that would have been spent building exquisite fighter jets to develop and operate highly sophisticated air defenses to contend with potential enemy air attacks.

With the myriad options available to deliver munitions to targets deep in enemy territory, the need to fly manned aircraft into defended airspace to destroy targets has evaporated. A commander can order a cruise missile strike to carry out the same mission a bomber or strike fighter would have in past generations. In the 21^st century, there is no need for fleets of bombers to be escorted by swarms of fighters to fly over the enemy’s capital. Put another way, there is no longer a need to establish general theater air superiority. The American people should no longer be paying for vast fleets of highly sophisticated and stealthy fighter jets.

Drones

As has been obvious for years, the focus of military aviation will increasingly shift towards uncrewed systems. Drone technology has developed rapidly since the turn of the century. In fact, the development of uncrewed systems generally paralleled the same trajectory that manned aviation followed a century earlier. The first Wright Flyers purchased for the U.S. Army were used for reconnaissance in the same way the first drones were. Later drones were armed with Hellfire missiles and used as remote strike platforms. Now, people are working on developing drones that can ferry supplies to small ground units in high-threat areas.

It might seem as though drones will be the answer to all future military aviation needs, but such a policy would be a mistake. Several aviation roles should likely never be performed by autonomous or remotely controlled systems. Transport aircraft should always have a flight crew, to take one example, especially when passengers are on board. Such aircraft should have autopilot features and will eventually control the aircraft all the way through the flight, but a qualified flight crew should be ready to instantly take the controls in case of an emergency or to simply deal with the unexpected. Machines are still not very good at adapting to unforeseen situations. It is also preferrable to have a flight crew on board feeling exactly what the passengers feel. The computer processor at the core of an uncrewed system will probably not be greatly affected by turbulence or G-forces in the same way the soldiers packed into the back of the aircraft would.

The attack role is another combat aviation mission that should not be replaced with uncrewed systems. Attack aviation encompasses several roles related to the tactical support of ground operations, including armed reconnaissance and air interdiction of enemy forces before they come into direct contact with friendly ground forces. It also includes close air support, which is attacking enemy forces after they come into contact with friendly ground forces. It is military aviation’s most delicate combat role that requires cultivated expertise and detailed coordination between ground forces and the supporting pilots. While some close air support missions are pre-planned and could potentially be performed by uncrewed systems, the unplanned, emergency missions require a level of adaptability and the ability to respond instantly in a chaotic environment. The responsiveness of an uncrewed aerial vehicle remotely controlled by an operator on the other side of the planet will be affected by the inevitable signal lag. In situations where inches and milliseconds count, a delayed response time of even a fraction of a second could prove deadly. These communications links are also fragile and could be disrupted by an adversary whose survival depends on identifying any possible advantage. A human pilot flying directly overhead can respond to signals like mirror flashes and follow a friendly unit’s tracer rounds even if direct voice communications are disrupted.

Civilian and military leaders around the globe have watched the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia to glean whatever clues they can regarding the future of drone warfare. Both sides in that conflict deploy an estimated 10,000 drones a day in an attempt to get the upper hand.⁴⁶Tsiporah Fried, “The Impact of Drones on the Battlefield: Lessons of the Russia-Ukraine War from a French Perspective,” Hudson Institute, November 13, 2025, https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/impact-drones-battlefield-lessons-russian-ukraine-war-french-perspective-tsiporah-fried#:~:text=An%20estimated%2010%2C000%20drones%20per%20day%20are,use%20of%20drones%20on%20a%20high%2Dintensity%20battlefield. The drones used in that conflict range from the $300,000 Russian Merlin-VR reconnaissance drone to $500 Ukrainian first-person view attack drones. The Ukrainians executed a stunning attack against Russia’s strategic bombers when swarms of attack drones launched from modified shipping trucks struck airbases across Russia at the same time in June 2025.⁴⁷Laura Gozzi, “How Ukraine carried out daring ‘Spider Web’ attack on Russian bombers,” BBC, June 2, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq69qnvj6nlo Ukrainian officials estimate drones inflict about 70% of all battlefield casualties.⁴⁸Marc Santora et al, “A Thousand Snipers in the Sky” the New War in Ukraine,” New York Times, March 3, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html

While drones of this kind will likely be a permanent battlefield feature for the foreseeable future, it is important that people don’t get too carried away with the idea of battlefield drones. Plenty of people claim drones have fundamentally transformed warfare forever, but history urges caution. Military history provides plenty of examples of new technology debuting with dramatic results only to be quickly driven into obsolescence as people develop counters. For every tank, someone invents an anti-tank missile. Modern scholarship has shown that cavalry dominated battlefields for centuries not because mounted soldiers were more effective, but because the infantry forces of the day were so meager. Societies of the Middle Ages did not have the resources or institutional capacity to arm, train, and logistically support sufficient infantry forces. They could sustain a small number of mounted soldiers, especially when many such soldiers were self-financed.⁴⁹Antonio Salinas and Jason P. Levay, “Is the Age of Drones Really the Age of Poor Maneuver?” War on the Rocks, February 6, 2026, https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/is-the-age-of-drones-really-the-age-of-poor-maneuver/ Once state capacity increased, countries were able to field effective infantry forces again, and cavalry lost its dominance.

Drones face a similar fate. There are already several companies developing counter-drone technology. Drones can be destroyed or disrupted in multiple ways. A first-person view drone can be disrupted through a radio frequency jammer that masks the signal from the controller. Their targeting ability can be confused with GPS spoofing devices. Their hardware can be damaged through high power microwave devices that shoot an electromagnetic pulse at the drone or with lasers. Drones can also be defeated through lower tech means like nets.⁵⁰“10 Types of Counter-drone Technology To Detect And Stop Drones Today,” Robin Radar Systems, accessed March 19, 2026, https://www.robinradar.com/resources/10-counter-drone-technologies-to-detect-and-stop-drones-today As counter-drone technology develops, militaries around the world will adopt the new devices, and drones will become just another weapon in the arsenal like the rifle, hand grenade, and tank.

But to achieve even that level of effectiveness in the United States military, the national security establishment must first get out of its own way. Defense policymakers appear to be following traditional patterns for drone acquisition. That is not to say that the problem is a bureaucratic one requiring new acquisition pathways. What is needed is a fundamental mindset shift regarding technology. The services don’t need all their drones to be exquisite and therefore expensive. The proper balance must be sought between function and cost. There is a need for long-range surveillance drones like the $200 million-plus RQ-4A Global Hawk, but the vast majority of uncrewed systems should have costs in the hundreds, not millions. But with defense budgets calculated in the trillions, it is easy for service leaders and their future defense industry colleagues to take advantage of the situation by pushing excessively complex and expensive systems on the troops. The U.S. military is in the process of fielding the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System drone, which is a reverse-engineered version of the Iranian Shahed-136 drone. Each drone costs $35,000 and represents a positive step forward, but this remains the exception.⁵¹Howard Altman, “LUCAS Kamikaze Drones Lauded As “Indispensable” By U.S. Admiral In Charge Of Iran War,” The War Zone, March 5, 2026, https://www.twz.com/news-features/lucas-kamikaze-drones-lauded-as-indispensable-by-u-s-admiral-in-charge-of-iran-war The U.S. Army is fielding the Black Hornet, a miniature surveillance drone, with infantry squads. Each of these drones costs $195,000.⁵²Michael Ouellette, “The Incredible Engineering of the Black Hornet Nano Drone,” Engineering.com, July 24, 2023, https://www.engineering.com/the-incredible-engineering-of-the-black-hornet-nano-drone/

Costs matter because the Department of Defense is betting big on drones. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has prioritized drone procurement. The FY-25 budget included 214 separate program lines related to drones and counter-drone technology.⁵³Jason Sherman, “DOD drone spending surges across 214 budget lines as Hegseth orders mass fielding,” Inside Defense, July 11, 2025, https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/dod-drone-spending-surges-across-214-budget-lines-hegseth-orders-mass-fielding The technology provides great promise, but that promise can only be realized if the National Security Establishment can find a way to prioritize military effectiveness design considerations above political and economic concerns.

The Inherent Danger of Airpower

“Airpower” offers an insidiously seductive option for politicians. When confronted with an international crisis that may be rectified through military means, the idea of ordering only airstrikes to accomplish the purpose rather than sending in thousands of young Americans on the ground will seem rather appealing for elected officials who must face the voters.

The possibility of even a single soldier or Marine on the ground in Iran highlights the inherent danger of airpower. The airstrike option lowers the threshold for war initiation, but it does not deliver war conclusion.⁵⁴Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain, “The Danger of War without Sacrifice,” The National Interest, August 22, 2016, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/the-danger-war-without-sacrifice-17430 This creates a potential dilemma for a politician. If the airstrikes fail to deliver the promised results, an all-too-common occurrence, the politician then must decide to admit defeat or escalate the situation with other military means. Escalation may include deploying ground troops to achieve a political goal that was not originally deemed worthy of such a sacrifice. All politicians with the authority to decide matters of war and peace need to understand the very real limits of strategic airpower and to treat with great skepticism anyone who claims to offer any sort of quick or easy military campaign.

The decision to employ any military force should be evaluated against the “Normandy Threshold.”⁵⁵Christopher Preble and Dan Grazier, “The Normandy Threshold,” The Stimson Center, February 4, 2026, https://www.stimson.org/2026/the-normandy-threshold/. The standard for initiating a conflict should be that if the president would not be willing to commit to ground troops in pursuit of a desired political goal, then no military action at all should be taken. Ideally, all situations requiring military interventions could be conducted like the January 2026 Operation Absolute Resolve that captured Nicolás Maduro. Lesser means should almost always be attempted first, but the expectation should be that a full ground invasion will be necessary. Otherwise, a nineteen-year-old infantryman may be fighting for his life in pursuit of a political outcome that wasn’t originally deemed worthy to such a sacrifice.

Conclusion

The Trump administration should undertake a fundamental reappraisal of the military aviation needs of the country rather than giving the greenlight to a slew of new programs. Just because the services have traditionally employed large fleets of bombers and fighters doesn’t mean that is what is needed in the future. A fundamental shift from the traditional model would be difficult considering the various political, financial, and bureaucratic interests at play. The military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 has metastasized into today’s National Security Establishment. Politicians, military leaders, and defense industry executives will put up a fight to preserve their professional and financial interests.

But success in future wars depends on implementing the right policies now. If that means a retired general doesn’t get a cushy sinecure on the board of a major aerospace contractor, so be it. The security of the United States and the lives of the men and women on the front lines are far more important.