Gates Versus Gates

Gates Versus Gates: Foreign fi

fth-generation fighters are a lot closer to being operational than has previously been disclosed, based on comments made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates April 7. His statements appear to contradict his own assertions on the previous day about US dominance in airpower that justified his decision to cap F-22 production at 187 aircraft. In a press roundtable discussion April 7, Gates said the intelligence he’s seen indicates that a Russian fifth-generation fighter will reach initial operational capability “about 2016.” China will field its fifth-gen fighter “about 2020,” he added. Assuming that Russia wants to take a few years to test the design and get production ramped up, that means we’ll see the Russian answer to the F-22 ... any day now. Gates’ remarks seem to corroborate comments by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov in January that the first flight of the fifth-gen Sukhoi fighter would take place this year. (See, for example, UPI’s Jan. 26 report.) Western analysts had shrugged off Ivanov’s statement because Russia has made similar claims for 15 years. As for China, the Pentagon’s 2009 annual report on Chinese military power was silent on when the Sino-equivalent of the F-22—dubbed the J-12—will arrive, but previous estimates had broadly forecast it for the mid-2020s, depending on the degree of cooperation with Russia. (April 7 transcript)

—John A. Tirpak

4/10/2009

Verbatim

Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.