Watch, Read: Eight Generals Probe the F-35, E-7 Problem in 2026 Budget

Sixteen retired four-star Air Force generals, including six retired Chiefs of Staff, signed a June 7 letter along with AFA leadership in a plea to Congress to increase investment in F-35 fighter jets and restore funds cut from the fiscal 2026 budget for E-7 Wedgetail.

On July 10, eight of the signatories gathered for a virtual media roundtable and candid conversation on Department of the Air Force needs and requirements, and the 2026 budget.

This transcript was generated with the help of AI and reviewed by our editors. It may contain inaccuracies.

F-35, E-7 Key to Air Superiority

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

And good afternoon. I’m Burt Field, President and CEO of the Air & Space Forces Association. I want to thank everyone for coming today. We really appreciate your participation. A little bit about the Air & Space Forces Association real quick. We’ve been around for a long time, even longer than our Air Force. We were established in 1946 and our founder was General Jimmy Doolittle who most people have heard about. We have a pretty interesting mission and the first part of that mission is to promote dominant air and space forces for a strong national defense. And why is that? Well, it’s because as our founder General Jimmy Doolittle said, “You can’t lose a war if you command the air and you can’t win a war if you don’t.” That’s true today as it was true in 1946 when he said it. And it’s even more true of the space domain and the space that our Space Forces work in above the earth. Since 1946, we have been advocating for a dominant Air Force and a dominant Space Force. In this letter that we’re going to talk about today, we focus on the F-35 and the E-7 because they are the weapon systems that are going to be able to establish their superiority and maintain our superiority. But I’m going to let our group of distinguished leaders talk to you about that and let me introduce them right now.

We have General Ron Fogelman, 15th Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. General Buzz Mosley, 18th Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. General Phil Breedlove, 17th Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the 36th Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. General Mike Loh, 24th Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the first Commander of Air Combat Command. General Hawk Carlisle, the 11th Commander of Air Combat Command. General Kevin Chilton, 7th Commander of U.S. Strategic Command and the 14th Commander of Air Space Command. First off, I want to thank all of you all for coming and participating today. As a side note, I’ve got a previously scheduled appointment so I’m going to slip out of here in about a half hour around two o’clock, but I’m going to leave you in able hands. I’m going to turn this over right now to my partner in crime here, Dave Deptula, who is the Dean of our Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies here. Dave’s going to provide some context and then begin moderating the discussion.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, Burt. Appreciate it and welcome everybody and thanks very much to our guests for showing up. As Burt mentioned, I thought what I’d do is just provide a bit of overarching context for the purpose of the letter and the intent. I think if you’ve been paying attention to what the Chief of Staff, the current Chief of Staff of the Air Force has been saying and much of what we’ve been saying over the last several years, you’ll understand that the Air Force today is the oldest, the smallest, and the least ready it’s ever been in its entire history. In the current programming schedule, it has it getting even smaller as we move into the next five years and quite frankly, there’s insufficient funding in the budget to stop that decline. That’s why raising this to the attention of Congress and the American public is so important. I’ll give you a couple of examples. In the FY25 budget, the request was to cut 250 Air Force aircraft while only buying 91. We just saw the release of the 96 budget, I’m sorry, the 26 budget and it cuts 340 aircraft while buying only 76. So people are going to ask, “Well, why’d you single out the F-35?” Well, because it’s in production now and it’s the only fifth-generation aircraft that’s in production right now that we need to buy in quantity to halt the decline in Air Force combat aircraft. With respect to the E-7, one of the key rationales that have been put forth for terminating the Air Force E-7 plan is to move the mission to space, which ultimately may offer a more secure and persistent solution for airborne moving target indication, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The Air Force needs to be able to fill requirements for air surveillance and battle management on a day-to-day basis. We just saw a great example of that with the E-3 being used to coordinate a complex Midnight Hammer mission that involved over 125 aircraft during the strike on Iran. So cancelling the E-7, quite frankly, would be a costly and strategic blunder right now. The Air Force has already invested over two and a half billion dollars in the program and the proposed five aircraft E-2 unit is simply insufficient to meet multiple combatant command requirements. So the Air Force needs to be allowed to move forward with the E-7 acquisition. So with that bit of background, let’s turn it over to our reporter guests and field any questions that you all might have on this subject. If you can go ahead and raise your hands, I’ll call on you and we’ll proceed. Okay, first hand, John Tirpak, go ahead.

John Tirpak:

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks very much. We’ve had a goal for many years of buying 72 fighters a year, but aircraft get more capable all the time. I’m sure that’s part of the justification for not buying as many this year. Is that 72 number still a good number or does it need to be higher or can we get by with fewer?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Loh.

Gen. John M. Loh, USAF (Ret.):

Well, I don’t know whether 72 is the right number or the wrong number, but what I do know is that quantity counts. And the Air Force, we pay too much attention to the quality of individual aircraft like the F-35 and not enough attention to quantity. The issue, quantity is more virtuous than individual fighter quality. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got four theaters of operation to deal with with fighters. One, we have security and the Pacific, the Middle East and Europe and they can flare up simultaneously, but that requires a lot of fighters and we have desperately few and so 72 might not be the right number, but it’s, in my opinion, a minimum number to build back up the fighter force structure to deal with the threats that we face.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

General Carlisle.

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I agree and the 72 number I think is important, but I would, it may not, may or may not be the right number. I think the big challenge is the Air Force has gone down a path of divest to invest and frankly it hasn’t. We end up divesting. Oftentimes the money doesn’t stay where we intended it to stay and the fact is we end up in the dilemma we’re in today where we’re retiring significantly more airplanes than we’re buying. So I think it’s a combination of we got to get, buy enough new fighters, but we also can’t continue to go down the strategy of divest to invest because today it hasn’t worked and in fact it’s left us a gap and now we’re in this, as I think General Deptula said, we’re into this death spiral where we’re gonna have to do something pretty dramatic to get out of it. So I think the key strategy of divest to invest is one that we can’t sustain anymore. We got to do something different.

John Tirpak:

If I could follow up…

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

John, just to answer the factual question, 72 is required to hold the decline at bay. So, you know, we’re not getting fewer if we buy 72 annually.

John Tirpak:

And I was going to follow up and say what kind of numbers of collaborative combat aircraft would either make up the difference or should be added just to have some margin, some comfortable margin.

Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.):

Well, this is Ron Fogelman. I don’t know the answer to that question, John, but again, it has been pointed out, numbers count and as an old programmer, the divest to invest has never worked and if we truly believe that our pacing threat is in the Pacific, I think that the DOD really needs to be looking at the balance of where money is being spent and where the capability will be that’s going to have to answer that threat. And it’s clearly going to be naval and air forces and the real thing that the Air Force brings to the to the fight is, we’ve already mentioned, is air superiority. And, you know, the do-little quote going all the way back to the Second World War has been reinforced time and time again. If you don’t have air superiority, you’re not going to deter somebody and certainly you’re not going to win a war. And without air superiority, both our naval and our land forces are going to either be a lot less successful or they are going to be, they’re going to pay a very high price to be engaged. And so, when we start to look at numbers, I think fundamentally, we’ve got to understand that the two assets that we’re discussing today, the F-35 and the E-7, are key to air superiority. And the substitute being offered, if you will, to, you know, provide air surveillance and battle management is just simply not up to the task that has to be done. I think that Chilly Chilton’s probably in the best position as a space guy to talk about where we’re coming. When are we going to really be able to have some form of surveillance from space? And what’s the threat going to be to that, vice the threat to an air breathing platform? So, from my perspective, I think the discussion we’re having today and the letter hopefully will have some impact with the people in Congress as they look at this, as they look at this program.

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.):

I’m going to shift gears slightly and then I’ll go cold mic. But the other issue I think we have is we’ve heard about this administration is going to come up with a trillion-dollar defense budget. I think that’s a marvelous thing. But if it’s a trillion-dollar defense budget, that’s salami slice the way it has been in the past, which is in a macro sense, one third, one third, one third, although we know that, you know, the Air Force ends up doing a lot of pass-through on that. It’s simply not going to fix the problem and it’s not going to put us in a position we need to be if we really believe that the pacing threat is in the Western Pacific. We need more money. And we need a redistribution of that money. And I know that it is not stylish in Washington, D.C. to attack your fellow services. But I think that the Navy and the United States Air Force needs to have total obligation authority that comes from, unfortunately, land forces and the land force operation in the Western Pacific is going to be, I think, of minimum deterrent value. And it’s certainly going to be one that is not going to be able to be used in any form until you have both air superiority and naval superiority in that position. So I’m advocating that both of these platforms, the E-7 and the F35, are key to air superiority. But more importantly, we need them in bigger numbers if we’re serious. And so that’s kind of where I’m coming from on these and why I decided that it was time to sign on to something that would go to the Congress. I would hope that we get good support out of the Air Force leadership on this, that they’ll step up and speak for all the Airmen. And I know that that’s a tough thing to do in that joint arena. But nonetheless, it’s key. Air superiority is key to winning wars. I’m going cold.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

General Breedlove?

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, John. I’d like to also offer a little bit of a readiness angle in this. General Deptula sort of alluded to this in his opening remarks. We’ve always had this balance between fight tonight readiness and long term readiness. And the the I know it’s a little bit of a leap, but the only real answer to fight tonight readiness and fighters is one that’s in production now and coming off the line at a rate that could make a difference. And that’s the F35. We have a short term relatively problem with fighter availability for all the things that these senior leaders have already mentioned. And to be able to address our shortfall entails we should look to that fighter that’s coming off the line. And oh, by the way, is performing out there in the hands of our allies and others in eastern and to some degree, western Syria, in Iran, a fighter that is showing that it can make huge impact to conflict already on the ground. So I think in a readiness sense, if we need to fix a problem that has been identified here by three very smart people, the F35 line that’s producing is something we should look to.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, let’s go to Stephen Losey. Stephen.

Stephen Losey:

Okay, I think I’m unmuted now. Gentlemen, thank you very much for doing this. I wanted to kind of hear John’s question and kind of drill down into that a little bit more. In recent years, the Air Force’s total aircraft inventory has been just a little bit more than 5000 tails, which already was historically more for the service. The budget documents for this year show a TAI in 25 of 4832 and potentially dropping to 4600 in 2026. You know, with the cuts to 10s, F15s, F16s, that’s 1700 fighter tails, not even, and that doesn’t take into account the ones that are not mission capable, the ones that are used for training, etc. So can you talk to, just kind of share some thoughts with us about what the potential consequences are from having the number of tails drop to this degree?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, Hawk. By the way, as Hawk’s trying to figure out how to turn his mic on, if those of you have your mics on and not talking, please mute them.

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, thanks. I did. My mute button is working. So, you know, I think I go back to what General Fogelman said, I’m a recovering programmer as well as I know General Chilton is, a couple of us on this. The divest to invest has never worked. So frankly, I think the Air Force probably needs to relook at some of the retirement plans. Some of the Strike Eagles, the 220s, we’ve got to look at the blocks, F16s. And as General Loh said, that, you know, quantity has a quality all its own. At the end of the day, given the demand signal, which has never decreased for the United States Air Force, I mean, you can go back to August of 1990, when we deployed, and since then, in 35 years, there has not been a decrease in the demand signal for United States Air Force aircraft and specifically fighter aircraft. And I frankly, I don’t see that decreasing at all. So I think obviously, the invest in F-35s is critically important. And I think we probably, the Air Force probably needs to rethink some of the retirements, because that those numbers, given the demand signal that exists today for the United States Air Force aircraft, we, the continued decline means that we’re just engendering more and more risk as we move forward.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Breedlove.

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (Ret.):

So I want to go back to something that General Loh said, and I want to agree with it. And that is, you know, we are, we are responsible to and need to be thinking about our ability in multiple theaters. And in the extreme, if we get to the point, we have to take risk in a theater, because of a lack of tails, and tails rotate and deployments rotate. And so we don’t always have everything where we want it. If we get to that extreme, we could end up with pretty dire consequences. And Stephen, I would just point to what Russia has experienced in Ukraine. Russia, supposedly a world superpower Air Force, has been unable to establish air superiority over its own troops, nor over the enemy troops in Ukraine. And so what do we get out of that? We get a World War One linear attritional war going on, that is a horrible step backward in warfare. We don’t want to be there. We want to be able to fight the fight. We want to fight Western maneuver air maneuver warfare, supported by air superiority. And that you just need to look at what the Israelis just did in Iran as to how that works for us, as opposed to how Russia without the ability how that works for them. So we don’t want to end up having to fight a war that is not enabled fully by by our style of Western air power and air superiority.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, Steve Trimble. Steve, are you up? We saw your hand there for a minute and you disappeared.

Steve Trimble:

I’m sorry, is this working now? Sorry.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

You’re on now.

Steve Trimble:

Okay. Okay. Yes. So there’s a two-parter on the E-7 issue, and the transition to space based AMTI. Just what if anybody has any thoughts on the panel about the current effectiveness of airborne AMTI and where that’s going in the future relative to this new advent of space based AMTI technology. And then secondly, the BMC2 function, and especially in the airborne domain. Where do you see that going and how important that is to air superiority now and in the future, knowing that JADC2 is coming along with AI enabled tools for battle management as well.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Chilton.

Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, just and General Fogelman kind of tossed made a lateral to me here a little earlier about space. So I’ll pick up the ball here that I probably should have dove on sooner. General Mosley in an earlier discussion reminded me how years ago we talked about the advantages of moving a lot of things to space, a lot of the things are our terrestrial forces require. It was in an environment where space was not really threatened back in those days. We have to remember that the space domain today is a threatened domain, highly vulnerable domain, in fact, arguably more vulnerable than any of the other domains out there. And then I think another important point is we are moving toward moving a lot of capabilities from a redundancy perspective to space to enable the terrestrial war fight. And there’s kind of three important layers, if you will, there’s the sensor layer, there’s the kill chain layer, or the engagement layer, if you will. And then there’s the communication later for how you’re going to command and control and gather data from all these things. And to date, all we are doing is beginning to experiment with the communication layer. We have visions for ubiquitous, large numbers of satellites doing the reconnaissance mission that’s required for the sensor layer, the missile warning layer, which is today done by a handful of satellites at geosynchronous, we’re talking about thousands of satellites to do reconnaissance missile warning, and not alone that missile tracking for not only ballistic, but hypersonic missiles, and cruise missiles. And add to that we’re doing work today on GMTI, which is yet to be tested in orbit and deployed and operationally proven. And now we’re saying we’re going to throw AMTI into space. Well, maybe we will one day. But the challenges there are quite difficult. You not only have to provide the fighter pilot or the bomber pilot position of the threat, velocity of the threat, direction of the threat, but altitude of the threat. And that’s a lot tougher mission than GMTI, where you’re just tracking movement of vehicles on the ground. And so I’m not saying one that we’re going to quickly feel an AMTI capability that we definitely need for to enhance our ability to gain and maintain air superiority, and to deter an adversary from thinking they can do the same by putting that that capability into space. Another important point is back to the vulnerability piece is the entire low Earth orbit constellations that we’re looking at putting up the architecture is vulnerable to nuclear detonation in space, which is why we’re so concerned if you listen to the threat indications that we’ve heard out of the Congress about a Russian satellite that may be testing to plan to put a nuclear weapon into space. And it’s just not prudent to have all your eggs in one basket. It’s important to have the capability because and to move forward with these capabilities because not all of our engagements as we’ve seen throughout history are against peer competitors, but they’re against lesser case scenarios, which is another argument for why I think both from redundancy and from the reality of warfare that we need the E-7 up there to enable the air superiority that our teams need. And then lastly, I’d say on the space deployments up there, there’s a tension here between deployment of assets that support the terrestrial fight and the real and present need for assets in space that support the space superiority fight. And so there is going to be a there’s a huge demand signal on these low Earth constellations that we want to put up. And, and so I’m a huge proponent of them. But I’m also a huge proponent of an air breathing capability in the air breathing domain to be able to do these same mission sets, whether they be reconnaissance, or GMTI or AMTI.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

General Mosley.

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, Dave, let me let me offer a thought in parallel with what everybody else has talked about. I’m not in disagreement with anything that was said but Chile is hitting right on the head relative to the space. We did a study back now, 20 years ago, Hawk was involved in that Chile was involved in that. Burt and Dave Deptula were involved in that. But it was basically a notion of, I thought, what can we move under orbit? And what can we divest ourselves of air breathing? Can we move JSTARS? Can we move AWACS? Can we move our sensors into orbit? We spent quite a bit of time on that. And I think we, with 100% agreement came back and said that would be a great idea, except for two realities. We don’t have the technology to migrate the air breathing sensors into orbit. And two, the vulnerabilities will eventually become severe. At the time, the vulnerability was not the issue, it was the technology. But when you look at what’s happening now, the assets in orbit or on orbit are extremely vulnerable, from LEO all the way out to GEO. I mean, you’ve probably seen the media reports of the Chinese satellite rendezvous in geosynchronous, which probably could have been likely refueling of an asset. But so it’s not that space is just a free game anymore. It’s a contested combat arena. And so to put a lot of our eggs into orbit with the inability to protect them, or to deter someone from degrading them is a bad operational idea. As an ex-CFAC, I would say I don’t vote for that at all. I’d prefer to have the theater assets under theater control. So I don’t think it’s time. I don’t think we have the capability yet. And back to John’s question about the collaborative combat aircraft. I have the same answer for that. You know, when was the last time your iPhone dropped a call or the last time you had issues getting on a zoom call? Well, for those of us on this call here, the last time we had issues getting on a zoom call was about 45 minutes ago. And so you’re going to put this thing 6 to 9000 feet line abreast of me running at 1.4 through weather and at night, and we’re not sure we can maintain a link with this thing. I’m not in favor of that right now. I’m also confused as to what the ordinance load on these things are going to be because the guys that are building them, we haven’t, the standard line is we haven’t got there yet. Is it internal? Is it external? Is it lock on after launch? Does it have the fuel to run with the fighters? Does it have the capability? We’re not there with that either. So when the technology provides us the opportunity to match that with an existing capability, I think you’ll get a variety of thumbs up. Let me take a slightly different approach to which I was hoping would come up today. And that’s the industrial base. The notion of building the fewest number of fighters is not a good idea relative to capability capacities relative to replacing older aircraft. But it’s also not a good idea for the robustness of the industrial base primary and the secondary providers of this capability. When you’re only producing a limited number of fighters, then the industrial bases is at its minimum. So in my view, I would prefer to build enough fighters to flesh out the aging systems. Halt Carlisle was pretty eloquent about the numbers of airplanes that we have out there. But don’t forget, we’re still operating tankers that were built in the Eisenhower administration. Eisenhower administration. It’s time to let go of this stuff and to let go of this stuff, you’ve got to be able to replace it. General Fogelman taught us all that one of the first rules of wing walking is don’t let go of the strut you’ve got till you get the next one. So we’ve got to get the next strut. We’ve got to get the next system. So I would suggest whether we’re talking F-35A, I’ll come back to that in a minute, or the E-7. This is a capabilities and capacity discussion as well as an industrial base discussion. And if we understand that very clearly, then this becomes easier to sell to the Congress, which is my notion of signing on with this Auguste group is it’s time to red star cluster the headquarters. We need to build airplanes. The major providers need to build airplanes. We need an industrial base along with a shipbuilding base that can provide the depth that we need. We need to get rid of this old stuff. Remember all of us on this screen, all of us on this screen at one time preached that the F-35 and the F-22 are the next generation and the F-35 is going to replace the 117, the F-15E, the F-16, the A-10, etc. And look, here we are 20 years down the road and we still haven’t been able to replace these airplanes. And we still minimally produce the F-35A, which is the gold standard of the MDS. So let me offer one more thought, capability, capacities, industrial base, and there’s one other thought. Look at the allies and the partners that operate the F-35A. That’s the majority of the sales of the F-35A. There are some out there that bought the B model. There’s some considering a C model. But the interoperability with our allies and key players are all F-35A. So why wouldn’t we want to continue to build that airplane, that aircraft in larger numbers? Why wouldn’t we consider modernization of it like a new engine that gives us more power, more range, etc. in cooperation with our allies? Same with the E-7. Australia, the UK, I don’t know whether the Republic of Korea is going to stay or not. But when you look at the allies that operate the systems and the requirement that we have in the world we live in today for interoperability and connectivity with our players, with our allies, that’s kind of where I’m coming down on this. So capacities, capabilities, industrial base, interoperability, why would we not do that? What is wrong with that argument? And then John, back to your CCA question. I think that stuff will happen, but it’s not going to happen right now. It’s not a replacement for an F-35 or an F-22 or the new systems. It’s not a replacement for the manned bomber. These things will come when they come. When we still can’t answer the question of is the ordnance carried internal or external, and when you ask what’s the penalty to carry it external and they can’t answer you relative to RCS, drag, etc., then we’re not there yet. We’re a long way away from that. So Dave, back to you.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I want to, the beauty of this kind of roundtable is we have the opportunity to get into a little bit of detail. One of the things I want to go back to on the E-7, John, and talk about that people tend to overlook is the human capital part of the equation. It’s one thing to have the scientific capability to be able to pass EMT data from space to inside the atmosphere. But here’s the deal. Just passing raw sensor data, whether it’s coming from space or whether it’s coming from a handful of E-2s, doesn’t manifest effective command and control. The actual mission, air battle management, requires highly trained personnel to be able to interpret that data and then correlate it into actionable information and task various mission aircraft in accordance with the operational and tactical objectives. That’s a very highly complex job that takes years of training and realistic practice to execute. Now, future space-based AMTI concepts have yet to define where and how air battle managers integrate into this overarching mission. And thus far, the effort’s been solely focused on technical solutions. And what I want to emphasize is that’s only half of the equation, because the mission requires trained air battle managers, who, like I said earlier, can translate that data into actionable information. And right now, that part of the equation is not even been thought about in the context of AMTI from space. And the same challenge, frankly, exists for the E-2 option that’s been posited, given that it has a much smaller mission crew capacity. So I just thought I’d offer that up to your answer as well. Okay. We had another question up there from Steve Wilson. Steve?

Steve Wilson:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the E-7 is not survivable in a modern battlefield, but the E-2 that would supposedly replace the E-3 has a shorter range, fewer operator stations, and a much less powerful radar. Is there any case that can be made that replacing the E-3 with the E-2 in a possible yet not fielded space-based system would be a retrograde step for US air power?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Loh.

Gen. John M. Loh, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. You mentioned the vulnerability of unstealthy large aircraft, as what Secretary Hegseth said was a reason to do away with E-7, E-3, and so on. So I’d like to address a subject that we haven’t talked about enough, and that is the vulnerability of large unstealthy aircraft in air operations. This whole argument about deleting AWACS and joint stars from the force structure started with Will Roper back about seven years ago when he said, “These aircraft are not survivable, and we can do all the missions that they perform from space.” And that’s been just a false assumption, but the Air Force seems to have taken up the fact that if an aircraft can’t operate in contested airspace, it can’t contribute to the battle. And that’s just dead wrong, but it’s what’s leading to Hegseth’s argument and others that say, “Well, gee, you know, things are too vulnerable out there. We’ve got to go stealthier, go standoff.” And I’d point out that we can sanitize areas of operation. We’ve done it in every war. We’ll do it in every war. We can operate in contested airspace. We can clear it out when we have an air operation like we’ve done very well in Desert Storm. We did it in Midnight Hammer. We did it in every campaign we’ve been involved in. We can operate in that airspace with defense suppression, with overwhelming force, and with smart tactics. And we’ve done it all the time, so we shouldn’t be afraid of contested airspace. The attrition modelers are always wrong. They’ve been wrong in every war we’ve been involved in. In Desert Storm, they predicted an attrition rate of over 20%. You know, we’ve got to bring 6,000 body bags over because everybody’s going to die. Hell, the attrition rate wasn’t 20%. It was about 0.1% because guys like Chuck Horner and others were able to construct tactics and operations where we could operate even in contested airspace. The same is true in every operation. So this whole notion that we can’t operate unstealthy aircraft in contested airspace is very wrong, but I think the Air Force has become bit by it because, you know, they wanted to do away with the E-7, for example. So an argument for the E-7, in addition to the fact that it can operate as an AMTI and maybe even GMTI, but at least AMTI and provide ABMS, battle management, is that we’ve done it before and we can do it now. And they ought to find arguments on why we can operate an E-7 in contested airspace instead of taking the assumption that we just can’t do it and we have to do it in airspace. Over.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

General Loh, it’s General Deptula again. Let me just let me pile on with a little first to reinforce the fact that, yeah, it’s called offensive countererror, and you build those pieces of the campaign plan into being able to operate in a contested environment. But all that being said, it’s important to recognize that 99.999% of the time, the United States military is not involved in a peer level conflict, but we are involved in day to day operations that require the kinds of airborne warning control and battle management that the E-7 provides. So, you know, this notion that you can’t buy anything unless it can drive to downtown Beijing in the middle of a war is a fallacious one. The other point that I’ll make is just to set the record here, this was an OSD proposal. The Air Force had a full up plan to acquire the E-7. So those of us who’ve operated inside the President’s budget kind of environment understand where that came from.

Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.):

Dave, Ron Fogelman. Let me just pick up a little bit on all those arguments that have just been made. So the whole rationale for getting this group together is that we signed a letter that was going to go to the Congress. We know that the rationale in that letter will be attacked. And so I would really encourage you guys back there, and to the extent that you can work with the Air Force leadership, we really need to build the counter arguments to these assumptions that were made by people who don’t really understand, you know, the value of air superiority and the contribution of these two weapon systems to it. If we’re not prepared, and unfortunately, you know, AFA carries a lot of that on their back in Washington, if we’re not prepared to go speak and follow up on that letter, it’s just going to be another piece of correspondence that went to the Hill, in my view. So we need to understand the arguments that were made from DOD or whoever it came from, and why the Air Force arguments did not prevail in the budgeting process, so that we can take some ammunition to the people who really count over on the Hill, and hopefully get this stuff turned around. Just an observation. It’s easy to make these observations when you’re an old veteran living on the western slope of Colorado. And you get your defense news out of the early bird every morning. But some things never change in Washington, in terms of the dynamics. And so God bless you as we send you into the fight, Dave.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, we’ll continue to do that. I’ll just offer too that there are former E-2 drivers that populate Cape, and I’ll just leave it at that. General Carlisle, you had a comment?

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I was just going to bring up too, and I couldn’t agree more with everything everybody said, you know, if the argument that came out of OSD is, it’s not self that we don’t buy it, then we would only buy four things. We’d buy B-21s, F-35s, F-47s, and submarines, and we’d empty the rest of the budget out and not buy anything else. And it, you know, it’s the concept that you brought up, it’s tactics, techniques, procedures, it’s combat power pulses that rely on a variety of different weapon systems and space capability, subsurface capability, service capability you bring together. And the combination of all the attributes of the different systems in the different environment that you operate in, allows you to execute and create effects on the enemy. So, and the E-7 is a critical part of that from both the sensor suite, as well as the command and control suite. And so, the argument that it’s not stealth if we don’t buy it, it just falls flat when you look at everything that we do and how we bring capability together from a variety of different systems to create an effect that the enemy can’t stand. So, I think that the argument really is hollow.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, Stephen Losey, back to you.

Stephen Losey:

Hi, thanks for, thanks for giving me another question. I wanted to follow up on a comment that was made earlier about the Air Force, you know, I believe it might have been General Carlisle said the Air Force should reconsider some of the retirements. Do you all have any thoughts about the plans to completely divest the A-10 fleet in 2026? Should that be extended? Should there be kind of, do you think like a core of a handful of A-10s should be retained? What’s your thoughts on that?

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Hey, I’ll jump in here having more scar tissue than probably most other people on this call about the A-10 from LL to A-35 to ACC. I lived with this, you know, I think that’s, that is not one of the platforms in my humble opinion that we need to relook at. I think some of the Strike Eagles, some of the F-16s and Vipers, the A-10 and what it was designed for is not congruent to large extent with the environments that we operate in today, and the mission set and how it’s employed and the vulnerability that the platform has plus what it would take to keep those airplanes going, wings and engines. So, you know, that is one in my, again, I get a lot of scar tissue from a variety of members of Congress about why we shouldn’t retire the A-10. But I think if you look at the context of, you know, keeping a later model Strike Eagle, or you keep more blocks of the F-16 in comparison to keeping an A-10, the argument to keep A-10s is not, is not valid. I think it’s really more in airplanes that were designed for more closely aligned mission sets that we have today.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

John Tirpak. Go ahead, General Mosley.

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, Dave, let me let me agree with Hawk. I also have a little scar tissue on me from LNL Vice Chief and Chief Tom on this A-10 thing. We wouldn’t be having this discussion about the A-10 if we had optimized the deliveries of the F-35A. The F-35A was designed to replace the 117, the A-10, the E-model F-16s. But we truncated the buy of the of the aircraft to now we have to, we have to make decisions on heritage inventory. So it’s, it’s kind of a self-defeating circular argument, you know, you can’t buy more of them, but you can’t, that forces you to keep the older ones, but you can’t get rid of the older ones because you’re not buying enough of the new ones. So we ought to freeze the stick on this. It’s like a PIO, just freeze the stick, go back and figure out what’s the delivery schedule that we need to be able to backfill these aircraft and buy them. Remember, the F-35A is the only of the variants that have a gun. It’s the only of the variants that’s 9G capable. The B-model does not have a gun, you can carry a pod, but anybody that’s ever shot 20 millimeter off of a gun pod knows that after about four or five rounds, you have no idea where the rest of them are going. Kind of makes it tough to fly close air support. The C-model doesn’t have a gun and the B and the C are 7 minus G’s, you know, instead of 9. So my thought would be, we’re in this predicament because we haven’t bought the inventory that we needed. We’ve been precluded because of budget decisions. Gerald Fogelman is 1000% correct on the distribution of TOA. It would be an interesting study to go back to 2001 at the beginning of the global war on terrorism and see what the distribution of TOA for inventory expenditures from Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, Department of the Air Force, what that looks like. What’s been the real buying power that the Air Force has had to roll into its investment accounts? And what’s been the disadvantage and where has the money gone? But back to the A-10. I think when we made a decision a while back to re-engine the A-10, Hawk was a part of that as the L&L guy, when we took the first two or three airplanes apart, they were all different. We found out the wings were broke, the landing gear was broke, the gun mounts were broke. We didn’t, we couldn’t spend the money on the engines because we had to rebuild the airplanes and they were all different. They were just like they were built with people from different walks of life with rubber hammers. So while we get this A-10, let’s not forget that the reason, one of the biggest reasons we’re in this predicament is because we didn’t buy enough F-35As. Let’s buy enough F-35As so we can walk away from these legacy systems. Makes no sense to me to keep something around that’s A, not survivable, and is way past its operational life because of the emotionalism of it. That doesn’t count when you’re a CFAC and you’re sending people in harm’s way. So I’m in agreement with Hawk. More F-35As is an answer to a lot of this because it’s a capacity, it’s a capability enhancement, and it’s also technology. You get a baseline that’s much beyond these old airplanes. Remember A-10, F-16, F-15 first flew in 1972. ’72. So F-35As is a good answer.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, John, before we go to you, I, you know, General Mosley just made a point that went back to something that General Fogelman said, and I want to provide some evidence for why his recommendation to shift resources inside the Department of Defense isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality that has happened before. If you go back and you look at post-9/11 shifting in spending among the services, the 20 years post-9/11, the United States Army received $1.3 trillion more than the Air Force, and the Navy received one, about almost a trillion dollars more than the Air Force. Now the reason I say that, if you do the average just from the Army alone, that’s an average of $65 billion a year more than the Air Force that was shifted to a large degree out of the Air Force to fund land forces because of the exigencies of the conflicts that we were in in Iraq and Afghanistan. So nobody begrudges the Army the shift in TOA because they were the preponderance of forces in those conflicts. But guess what? We’re no longer in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the Air Force today is the smallest, oldest, and least ready in part because it had those monies shifted out of it in the early 2000s to go to other fights. So now it’s time to come back and recapitalize the Air Force. So those kinds of large budget shifts are not anomalies. There’s something that actually happened in recent history, and now we need to reallocate those monies inside the Department of Defense if we’re not going to get increased TOA. All right, back to you, John Tirpak.

John Tirpak:

Yes, thank you. The administration has decided to postpone at least the Navy’s FAXX, the counterpart to the Air Force’s NGAD. In the context of your letter, what does that mean? Does that mean the Air Force is going to have to bear more air superiority burden? Does it heighten things, or it doesn’t really affect the Air Force’s requirements?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Hawk, go ahead.

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, so I think the FAXX, you know, obviously the Navy needs it, but I think you have to look at it. We go back to capacity. Even where we’re at in the Air Force today, for theater air superiority, it’s the United States Air Force. It’s nobody else, and it always has been. I mean, you can go back to 1991 to 2001. You can look at air war over Serbia. You can look at any of them. The preponderance of capability and the preponderance of assets that are used to gain and maintain air superiority and conduct precision ground attack by a vast number is United States Air Force. You know, the FAXX and why it was canceled, you know, I think that’s a Navy discussion. The Navy has a challenge of shipbuilding and everything else. Kind of, frankly, it comes second in the United States Navy. But when you talk about theater air power capability, theater air superiority, theater ground precision attack, theater C2, theater ISR, it’s the United States Air Force that really does that, always has been. That’s our core mission set, and that’s what we have to do. So it exacerbates the capacity problem across the joint force by not having that. But again, the theater level core missions, United States Air Force, have always been conducted, and that’s what we need the numbers for that we’re talking about.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, let me just put an exclamation point on that and say it a little bit different way. Each of the service components, each of the services, except the Space Force, have their own aircraft. Okay. But all of those services have air arms. The aircraft that the Navy possesses, the Marine Corps possesses, and that the Army possesses are there to enhance their core functions. Okay, it’s called organic support. But the nation only has one United States Air Force, who doesn’t have unique target sets. What the United States Air Force brings to combatant commander is theater-wide air power for the use of the joint force commander. Go ahead, General Breedlove.

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (Ret.):

I just wanted, first of all, I agree with you, too. I’m in violent agreement with what Hawk, or excuse me, General Carlisle just said. And I would add to his magnificent list, SEAD, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. Again, what we’ve seen fail in the Russian effort is SEAD. And what we saw excel in the Israeli effort was SEAD. And we are the force that brings SEAD to our nation.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, real quick, Stephen Losey, you’ve got the last question. We got three minutes.

Stephen Losey:

Thank you very much. I’m going to ask a question that this is something that I asked Hawk a couple of days ago. But I want to ask some of the other people here. Like, this is, there’s a lot of firepower, a lot of experience in this room, the letter, even more so. It’s fairly rare, at least for the Air Force, if not unprecedented, for so many chiefs, generals to kind of speak up on something like this and disagree publicly with where the service is headed. Did any of you have qualms or concerns about adding your names to a letter like this and sharing your thoughts like this? And what made you decide that like, this is the time to speak up in this way right now?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Before the others answer, let me just qualify the point that this falls right in line with what the Air Force leadership has been articulating. So there’s not any disagreement with what the Air Force leadership has been saying that in fact, the Air Force is too small and too old. And then it requires more funding. The issue is the overarching allocation of resources that has come down from on high.

Stephen Losey:

True, I misspoke on that.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Mosley.

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, Steve, and I would say I agreed to put my name on that for probably a dozen reasons. One, these are programs of record, the F-35A and the E-7. These aren’t items that are out in the parking lot somewhere. These are items that have been on the books. The Air Force has done the work on the F-35A. It is in production, it is in delivery. We’re just not getting them fast enough. We’re not fleshing the squadrons out fast enough. So therefore, we’re operating old equipment. This circular discussion about retiring old systems before you get new systems is really an issue of not getting the new systems faster. The notion of the E-7 is a program that the Air Force has looked at for quite some time. The Air Force has been quite successful with airborne warning systems with our overhead systems via GMTI or being airborne air superiority. We know how to do this. And so to backfill the aging E-3 and to look at opportunities what the JSTARS used to do, this is not something new. The Air Force has been on record of saying we need to recapitalize, we need to modernize. Hawk was right, August 1990 should be a benchmark for everybody. Unless my math is wrong, that is 35 years of continual combat, combat deployments, burning up engines, burning up systems. 35 years, the preponderance that’s been US Air Force. So, you know, it would be a welcome notion for all of you guys in Washington to kind of pick up this guide on, we’re not building airplanes fast enough, we’re not building them in numbers that we need, and we need to move out on this. The Air Force is a theater effort. Remember, it’s not just the United States Air Force does theater things and the Navy does Navy things. Those Navy aircraft are designed to operate off of a deck. They’re not designed to operate off of an expeditionary airfield where you generate four, five, six, seven sorties a day. It’s a matter of sortie generation and presence. The guys on the line here that have been theater commanders and CFACs know this is about taking the air battle into the opponent’s airspace and keeping it there and pounding them. Whether it’s big week in February of ’44 or whether it is Desert Shield, Desert Storm, whether it’s Iraqi freedom, you take the fight into their airspace. To do that, you need the systems we’re talking about today. So was there hesitation, at least on my part, to sign that letter when General Deptula sent it? There was zero hesitation. These are Air Force record programs of record. This is Air Force activity, and we should be moving out on this. There should be no hesitation to get the numbers of F-35As up. None. And to move out with the E-7. If the current configuration of the E-7 is the concern, then go back to the baseline of the A model that the Australians and UK fly. We know how to do this. So, no, there was no hesitation on my part to sign it.

Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.):

I think that was very well articulated, Mike, in terms of the rationale that I know in my case, and I think in most cases, really drove us to do something that’s been quite extraordinary for our Air Force, to have a group of people come up with this. And I hate to keep putting the onus on Dave and the AFA guys and the Washington crowd, but, you know, we need to follow up and make sure that folks are available to go talk to the people on the Hill. Credible folks, and several of my compatriots on this call are very credible in terms of how they articulate this. And I would encourage you to continue to work with them and employ them as you can, Dave. So…

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, Kevin. General Chilton.

Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Sure. At the risk of making comments when we got two excellent Air Force historians on here, and Chief Fogelman and Chief Mosley, but, you know, I want to point out that, you know, the reason Adolf Hitler did not cross the English Channel with overwhelming force with an amphibious operation in World War II is because he was unable to gain air superiority over the English Channel. And conversely, the reason we were able to successfully pull off the Normandy invasion is because we did have air superiority over the English Channel and most of France by the time we came in across. I would like… I’m a deterrence guy. I don’t… and I know none of the folks on this call love warfare. They want to prevent warfare from happening. They know that we have to do that from a position of strength. And we’re talking around this a bit, but I want Xi to wake up every morning and feel like he cannot gain air superiority over the Taiwan Straits or over a blockade to prevent resources to flow into Taiwan. I don’t want him to believe he can ever do that. And we seem to be, again, trapped, as already mentioned, in this divvy up the TOA equally amongst, or the way we’ve always deal… divvy them up between the services, when, as was already stated, it is clear, this will be a naval and air battle. And to convince him that it would be futile to do this, and he would fail in crossing the straits, we need to have a credible air superiority capability. And my fear is that we are just marking time as opposed to moving out in the direction we need to do to actually deter this threat to Taiwan. Over. Oh, one final thing. It’s not just a shift to the air domain. We need a shift to the Department of the Air Force and Space Forces to ensure we have not only air superiority, but space superiority. That will be the key to deterring conflict in the Taiwan Straits. Over.

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (Ret.):

And to General Chilton’s point, for Mr. Xi, he just watched the F-35 march into Iran, a long way from Israel, and establish air superiority over the enemy’s battlefield, his nation. And he, and the F-35 did that, fighting against some of the best Russian kits shared outside of Russia today. So I think to General Chilton’s point, this is an inflection point for Xi and others that American airpower or American equipment employed in a Western airpower sense can give him just the pause that General Chilton was talking about.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Go ahead, General Mosley.

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, let me pile on with what General Chilton said. You start, you start, if we were teaching a seminar at National War College, you would start with the notion of what does it take to dissuade bad activity? And if you can’t dissuade the bad activity, I’m sorry, what does it take to persuade good activity and that failing? How do you dissuade bad activity? And then you get into the deterrent model. Right now, my fear is that we’re on the backside of that power curve. We need to reindustrialize, we need to modernize, we need to recapitalize to be able to do the things that General Chilton said. Because if you’ve got the equipment you need, if you’ve got the organization, the training and the equipment you need, then you won’t have to fight, you’ll be able to deter. My fear is we’ve got ourselves on the backside of this curve, and we’re not buying the equipment fast enough, we’re not getting it to the kids fast enough, we’re not being able to generate the training hours, etc., etc., etc. So, let me quit banging my spoon on my hot chair here just for a little bit and say this to me, this is a capacity and a capabilities issue relative to new equipment and divestiture of old, but it’s also the industrial base issue. We have to have an aerospace industrial base issue that is adaptive and can build things faster. For instance, a new engine on the F-35A, for instance, new sensors on the F-35A, more range, more power, more cooling, etc., etc., etc. This is a ball of activity, the synergies of this create the environment for the national leadership to persuade, dissuade and deter. And I think that is the investment in time. It’s also like an insurance payment on security for the country. So, Dave, thanks for the invitation to participate in this, but let me get off the stage screaming industrial base.

Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.):

Hey, Dave, let me take a slightly different approach to this in the sense that the absence of the things that Mike has just talked about and others around, the absence of that gives your enemy a sanctuary. And sanctuaries, they have cost us dearly in the past when either self-imposed, we saw it done for political reasons in Vietnam, there will always be political sanctuaries. You can’t do anything about that. But if you don’t have the capability to take the sanctuaries away from the other guy in conflict, and I think the Iranian thing that we just saw was the kind of penultimate thing there. The Israelis went in there, we went in there, the Israelis went in and took out their, basically, their total air defense capability. And there was no sanctuary that they had. They were laid bare. We have that same kind of challenge when we start to look anywhere in the world where there may be conflict. But again, and particularly in the Western Pacific, if some guy is sitting there with the largest piece of Asian landmass and feels that he will not be touched because we don’t have the capability to touch him, he will be more encouraged, in my view, to do evil and dumb things. So there’s an issue of this that says, you got to have the capability that the other guy knows that he’s gonna get touched. There are no sanctuaries.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Amen, Chief. President Xi needs to understand that we can do to Beijing what was done to Tehran. Okay, this discussion is unique, and I don’t see anybody leaving, and I see John Tirpak’s hand up. So instead of cutting this off, we’ll just keep going until you all have to leave. So, John Tirpak, back to you.

John Tirpak:

Thanks very much. Is there another way to go about E-7, though? There have been a lot of suggestions that maybe we can disaggregate that on a lot of smaller aircraft, perhaps CCA. Is it just better to go with what we have, or is there a more survivable route by going in a disaggregated approach?

Gen. John M. Loh, USAF (Ret.):

Well, I think we’ve talked about this for a long time, since we said we’re gonna do away with Joint Stars, JSTARS, and AWACS, and we’re going to disaggregate it by having a lot of platforms out there that are sensor collectors, fighters, bombers. People have talked even about tankers and others that can collect data and integrate it in the network. But the whole ABMS thing has been a disaster for the last seven or eight years because nobody has taken it apart and tried to figure out how to do it piece by piece. So disaggregation is a good idea, but there’s nothing better than having a single platform like the E-7 or AWACS out there to be the battle manager, and with the back end filled with people that can direct the air battle and the ground battle, there’s no substitute for that. So disaggregation, I don’t know, it seems to be a pipe dream. Go ahead, General Carlisle.

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I think the discussion, and I go back to what General Mosley said, E-7’s a program of record. There’s people out there flying them. There’s the early blocks, there’s the late blocks, and getting that right will take a little bit of work. But at the end of the day, it’s a program of record and the E3s are falling off the cliff. So there may be deaggregation in the future, but again, we’re talking about something that we need to do today, and it’s every theater, it’s Golden Dome, it’s everywhere we’re at, it’s that sensor, early warning sensor capability, it’s that command and control ABMS, air battle managers on board, and that human capital that’s involved with that. So like General Loh said, we’ve talked about disaggregation, but nothing’s out there. There’s nothing there right now, and we need capability now to fill gaps that are growing ever bigger and greater risks that we’re taking every day with the E3 falling off the cliff and finding a backup, the new platform to fill that role. Plus, I go back to, there will be some disaggregation, but there’s also gonna be, it goes back to the TTPs and the force packaging and the combat power pulses and how you bring everything together, and E-7 is a critical part of that as well. Again, deaggregation, CCA may happen, but as General Mosley said, it’s not here now, and we need something now.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t see any more questions. I’d like to thank our panelists for extending your time and really appreciate you being here today. And all of us are open to follow ups if any of the reporters would like to do that. So with that, have a great air and space power kind of day and appreciate.