Misguided USAF/DOD

So yet again, USAF/DOD top leadership is misleading the public.

USAF wants to retire the U-2 but the only argument they have is cost per flying hour; not mission capability.

Read all the statements in this article.

Let us hear from empty suit one and two:

While praising the U-2s, both Hagel and James have said the Air Force can no longer afford to fly the Global Hawk and the U-2, and have chosen to retire the U-2.

The USAF's favored U-2 replacement, the Global Hawk capability is not there yet.

And it takes an Army General (the intel customer) to help tell us that.

The U-2 spy plane currently gives better early warning of a potential attack from North Korea than its proposed Global Hawk drone replacement, the commander of U.S. Forces-Korea said Tuesday.

“In my particular case, the U-2 provides a unique capability that the Global Hawk presently does not provide,” said Army Gen. Curtis M. “Mike” Scaparrotti.

Then:

At a defense forum earlier this month, James and Gen. Larry Spencer, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, said that the U-2 was still “far superior” to the Global Hawk in the intelligence mission.

Finally:

On the Global Hawks, James said that “the sensors at the moment are not quite as good so we’ll be working on that.”

“That will take a few years,” Spencer said.

I will state it since they didn't: needed military capability cannot be retired until there is a valid replacement ready to go.

Some history, USAF tried this a few years ago, it didn't work then. The Global Hawk was too immature and in an Iraq-war support environment, could not be retasked as fast as a U-2 nor deliver the intel product like the U-2.

I don't have a problem with the Global Hawk idea for the USAF, but capability has to be mature, and the intel customer can't be left short with a product that wasn't as good as what they were getting.

If the Global Hawk needed a certain kind of sensor suite to support customers, it should have been done already.