- The US Air Force's fleet is continuing to shrink and age with newer fighters delayed or still in development.
- A new Mitchell Institute report examines decades-old challenges facing the service.
- US military leaders are concerned about potential airpower challenges in a near-peer conflict.
The US Air Force's fleet of aircraft is steadily shrinking and aging, raising concerns as pressure mounts for American airpower to be ready for future wars.
Budget cuts, decades of heavy combat use, aircraft losses to retirement, and slow or stalled modernization programs have left the Air Force with a fleet that is smaller and older than it once was. These are problems leaders acknowledge as they confront China's expanding military and the possibility of conflict.
A new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, authored by retired Air Force Col. John Venable and analyst Joshua Baker, traces how decades of changes have shrunk the Air Force's fleet from its Cold War strength, while also warning that the US now faces a tougher threat environment from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea with growing gaps in readiness.
"While capacity, capability, and readiness deficiencies exist in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force," the authors note, "shortfalls are particularly acute in the US Air Force, which is now the smallest, arguably the oldest, and unquestionably the least ready in its history."
A smaller, older fleet
Since the end of the Cold War, the number of fighter jets and other aircraft ready to fly has decreased severely. In 1987, the US had around 4,253 fighters, 393 bombers, and 309 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft. There were 1,941 combat-ready fighters in 81 active-duty squadrons either based in the European theater or capable of rapidly deploying there were a fight ever to break out.
As of 2024, those numbers are just a fraction of Cold War sizes. Over three decades, the Air Force's inventory has dropped to 2,026 fighters, 140 bombers, and 297 ISR platforms.
This sharp decline has come even as Air Force leaders argue its mission sets have expanded. "While these missions have been growing, our Air Force has been getting smaller," said Gen. Dave Goldfein, then-Air Force Chief of Staff, in February 2017. "We're actually the smallest Air Force we've ever been."
Decades of wars have worn down the Air Force's aircraft, and pilots today get fewer flight hours than before, even as their training increasingly focuses on a possible fight with China.
"The bottom line," the authors of the Mitchell Institute report wrote, "is that the Air Force has sustained a high level of operational demand with fewer aircraft and crews to carry the load for decades, pushing the force ever closer to burnout."
Making matters worse, "modernization programs to backfill aging aircraft were delayed, truncated, or canceled. Older aircraft with extended service lives break more frequently, costing more to sustain," they said, adding that "this reduces their availability and further stresses the force."
Last year, the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, said that continuous deployments over the previous two decades had notably reduced Air Force readiness, personnel, equipment, and aircraft.
And, at a think tank event last February, Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs for the Air Force, addressed how these problems affect service efforts to shift focus to great-power competition and conflict after decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fights.
"As we come out of counterinsurgency warfare and look to pivot towards peer competition or peer conflict with a very different adversary," he said, "we have not 4,000 fighters but 2,000. They average not 8 years old but 28 years old. Our pilots are flying not 18 to 20 hours a month but six to eight hours a month. And we're ready not for great-power competition but for counterinsurgency warfare."
Problems building a bigger, newer fleet
After the Cold War, US defense budgets fell, with Air Force procurement funding dropping 52% between 1989 and 2001. Cuts to the fleet meant to sustain remaining aircraft instead fueled what the report's authors call a "capacity death spiral."
Some aircraft programs ultimately delivered far fewer planes than initially planned. The B-2 stealth bomber dropped from 132 to 21, while the F-22 fighter was cut from 750 to just 187 amid rising costs, economic pressures, and other priorities.
With the newer F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, deliveries are falling behind amid reductions in purchases caused by delayed upgrades. These challenges come amid soaring sustainment costs, even as aircraft are flying less with insufficient mission readiness rates.
In its 2026 budget, the Air Force plans to buy just 24 F-35s — half the original target — while retiring the entire A-10 Warthog fleet two years early. Production of the new B-21 stealth bomber is ramping up, but overall fleet numbers are still headed down.
The strain isn't limited to fighters and bombers. The Air Force's tanker, airlift, and intelligence fleets are also aging, with recapitalization programs facing similar delays and cost pressures.
The Air Force expects its aircraft fleet to keep shrinking amid budget uncertainty; however, leaders argue that new stealth, strike, and electronic warfare capabilities could partly make up for fewer planes.
China's air force on the rise
US air power problems come as rival China's air force is expanding rapidly, building new aircraft, modernizing its fleet, and investing heavily in uncrewed systems.
According to the Pentagon's 2024 report on China's military, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and Navy together field about 2,400 combat aircraft, including fighters and bombers. Most are fourth-generation planes, like the US, but Beijing is also fielding fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighters, upgrading them, and developing at least two sixth-generation designs expected in the early 2030s. The US is, likewise, pursuing a sixth-gen fighter on top of efforts to upgrade its advanced fifth-gen jets. There's a clear capability race underway.
The growing numbers and capabilities of China's air force have long troubled US military leaders.
In April Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress that China is making fighters at a rate of 1.2 to 1 over the US. He also gave China "high marks" in its ability to prevent the US from achieving air superiority within the first island chain, a strategic arc of territory stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines.
In a conflict, neither side would likely be able to dominate the skies completely. Experts and former Air Force leaders have said that future fights are more likely to be defined by short windows of air control, with space, cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations playing a decisive role, a far cry from the uncontested air dominance the US once enjoyed.
