China AI arms race: Here’s what Air Force, Congress must do now to keep US competitive

Over the past three decades, the Air Force has struggled to modernize its fleets of aircraft and missiles. 

As the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the Air Force’s only bomber modernization program, the B-2, was stopped at the existing 20 aircraft. The top-end fighter modernization program, the F-22, was cut in half and ultimately terminated because it was a Cold War weapon with no obvious opponent.

The replacement for the venerable C-141, the C-17, had birthing problems and was initially capped at 40 aircraft. And, finally, the replacement for the F-16 and A-10, the Joint Strike Fighter program, was delayed and has since been further delayed by technical and budget problems. The Air Force’s strategic missile fleet was upgraded, but replacement was postponed.  

And there, matters sat while the Air Force fought the war on terror with its Reagan-era (and earlier) forces.

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In the last decade, however, a strategic adversary has emerged – China – so the Air Force must recapitalize its very old fleets quickly.  

As a former secretary of the U.S. Air Force, I am all too aware that the budget problems I faced at the end of the last century have not abated. Then and for the previous two decades, the leadership of the Air Force has attempted to find budget space to modernize by divesting older, cost-intensive aircraft fleets. 

This strategy has not been as successful as hoped, and Congress’s failure to allow timely divestiture (coupled with its failure to pass budgets on time) has delayed recapitalization programs and increased operating costs to close much of the hoped-for budget space. As a result, today’s Air Force is the smallest and oldest it has ever been and is facing a need to recapitalize across the board with a budget barely sufficient to modernize one mission area at a time.

I am concerned that Congress has not recognized the reality of the Air Force’s current state because it is not equipping the Air Force with enough tools to ensure America can compete with the Chinese in the new, ever-progressing AI-powered battlefield of the present day.  

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This is so even though, in 2021, American security leaders’ collective jaw dropped when China unveiled a model of its new sixth-generation fleet at an air show. Featuring AI-enabled drone wingmen and state-of-the-art aerial technology, these planes have all the bells and whistles needed to blow the Air Force’s decades-old aircraft out of the sky.  

To be sure, there are doubts that the Chinese can actually operate its new equipment effectively, but the U.S. has its own operating problems: Our two-decades-old fleet was only available for operations 51% of the time last year. 

Faced with Chinese modernization (and limited Russian modernization), the Air Force has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to producing its own new stealth bomber and sixth-generation Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. Recognizing the importance of America beating China to the punch and staying ahead of the modernization curve, it put the NGAD on a 2030 completion timeline, five years earlier than Chinese deployment. 

But then Congress passed the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, which imposed a hard cap on the Defense Department’s budget. The Air Force believes this bill and inflation will shrink its fleet by nearly 6%, causing it to dip below 5,000 units for the first time in the Air Force’s history as an independent service. 

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And in very recent days, Air Force leaders have begun to say that it has no choice in the face of budget constraints but to make “difficult choices.” Very recent interviews with Air Force leaders suggest that abandoning NGAD could become one of those difficult choices.

The U.S. government (and to a very limited extent, even the Air Force) can trim many budgetary items in a crunch, but the NGAD – one of the most important measure to protect America’s competitiveness with the Chinese military – should not be one of them.

As the Air Force’s fleet appears poised to shrink, China’s continues growing at lightning-fast speeds. China has boosted its defense spending by at least 7% each year for several years and is now acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than we are. 

So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Department of Defense’s January National Defense Industrial Strategy report unveiled that America is struggling to stay ahead in this high-tech arms race with the People’s Republic. It found the United States’ current industrial base “does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale.” 

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A 2023 Pentagon report also found that China – which already has the world’s largest navy and 230 times our shipbuilding capacity – is on the fast track to surpass the Air Force’s capabilities. 

The whole reason NGAD was started and robustly funded in past years is to reverse this trajectory. It’s what we need to stay ahead. We cannot cede this technology race to Xi Jinping, but that’s what will happen if budget constraints force us to delay or curtail the NGAD program. 

In just a decade, China could be executing sixth-generation AI warfare while we still struggle to get our own fleet of drone wingmen flying with last-generation aircraft. Is that in anyone’s interest?

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And make no mistake: If the Air Force ultimately pumps the breaks on NGAD, it won’t likely ever be able to floor the gas pedal to catch up. As Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told a Senate defense appropriations subpanel in April, “Time is my greatest concern.”  

“We are in a race for military technological superiority with a capable pacing challenge in China,” he continued. “Our cushion is gone. We are out of time.” 

The Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which the body is currently debating and amending, addresses the national security threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party forcefully and vigorously. It even includes the funding needed to keep the NGAD intact. 

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However, Congress must match its authorizations with equivalent budgets. That is not currently the case. Congress as a whole needs to realize how significantly its budgetary caps (which it perceives as moderate spending reductions) impact the Air Force’s ability to operationalize many of the country’s most important programs to deter Chinese aggression. 

Here’s hoping it does soon – and here’s hoping that the Air Force makes wise decisions with the funding that it does receive. There’s too much at stake to do anything else.

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