James J. Lee, AFJ staff Lt. Gen. Donald Hoffman is Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition.

The days of large aircraft fleets are gone and the future for the U.S. Air Force will focus on smaller fleets, more unmanned aerial vehicles, more networked systems and more open architectures, an Air Force acquisition chief said June 1.

Lt. Gen. Donald Hoffman, Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition said the war on terrorism, down-sizing of personnel levels and recapitalization were the new priorities.

Speaking at the Armed Forces Journal Annual Conference, The Powers & Limits of Jointness, in Washington D.C., Hoffman said the Air Force was increasingly taking on nontraditional roles, including driving and guarding convoys in Iraq, prison guard duties and other jobs that “help take the load off the Army and Marines.”

But the Air Force is also performing many air-related tasks vital to operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the week of May 13-18, as a typical example cited by Hoffman, the Air Force flew 433 close air support sorties, 132 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and 1,100 air transportation sorties.

Air medical evacuations are another critical wartime role; the Air Force has to date transported over 34,000 service personnel patients, some 3,000 of them in critical condition.

Among the Air Force’s big-ticket acquisition items, the top three budget eaters will be the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22 and the C-17. But a growing number of billion dollar plus programs are for long-term service contracts to provide such things as training, aircraft maintenance and runway construction and repair.

The Air Force tanker fleet, meanwhile, has an average age of 45 years, the oldest it has ever been. Even with a retirement plan, the Air Force has to put restrictions on the use of many of its transporters because of their age and need to keep them in service. “But Congress tells us each year that you will not retire this aircraft or that aircraft,” Hoffman said.

Some programs, however, have a high priority because of their essential and unique capabilities. The CSAR-X program, to acquire a new, more capable combat search and rescue aircraft, is such a program. Hoffman quoted Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, who told Congress that the need to maintain a capability to rescue downed servicemen anytime, anywhere, was “a moral imperative.”

The Air Force is now considering bids for the CSAR-X program and hopes to make a decision next year in time for deliveries to begin in 2011.

But smaller fleets will be the future, Hoffman said. “The days of large fleets with hundreds of planes are gone. That’s not a bad thing, but it does mean we need to make some adjustments. We like large fleets in the military because it simplifies things; they’re easier to sustain, easier to train for, and you can interchange. Smaller fleets are more complex and so you need inbuilt predictive systems that can report a [maintenance] problem before it happens and say what needs to be done.”

UAVs will also be more prevalent, Hoffman said. Contrary to popular belief, he added, the Air Force is not resistant to unmanned aircraft. “The Air Force fully embraces unmanned when it makes sense,” he said.

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