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Officials: Fighter gap could reach 800 planes

The Air Force will begin facing a shortage of fighter aircraft by 2017, and the shortage will balloon to 800 aircraft by 2024, senior Air Force officials said Wednesday.

That fighter gap could force the Air Force to keep aging F-15s and F-16s flying beyond their anticipated retirement dates by sinking billions into additional service-life extension programs.

The projected gap is the result of the F-22 program being capped far short of the 381 aircraft the Air Force says it needs and Joint Strike Fighters, or F-35s, being purchased at a rate of 48 per year for more than three decades, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, military deputy to the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.

“The size of the F-22 force is certainly a contributor, but the real contributor to [the gap] is ... the Joint Strike Fighter production rate,” Hoffman said. “We still stand by 1,763 as our final number, it’s just when do we get there and how do the legacy aircraft age until that last one is delivered? JSF replaces all our F-16s and all our A-10s, but they may not live long enough until the last JSF comes along.”

Air Force leaders have pushed for more F-22s and larger annual purchases of the JSF, but they appear to have made little headway on either front. Congress and the Pentagon have committed to buy only 187 F-22s so far, and JSF procurement maxes out at 48 aircraft per year beginning in 2013.

The Air Force is looking into how the fighter gap could be filled with legacy aircraft such as F-15s and F-16s, said Lt. Gen. Daniel J. Darnell, deputy chief of staff for air, space and information operations, plans and requirements.

“We’re ... already starting to review what that mix of legacy aircraft might have to be,” Darnell told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee.

He said the Air Force is conducting an F-15 fleet viability study, due in early summer, and will consider a proposal to further extend the life of the jets, the entire fleet of which was grounded late last year after an F-15C broke apart in flight due to massive structural failure. Currently, 177 F-15s are programmed to stay in service until 2024, but that number could go up.

The Air Force is also considering further life extensions to F-16s as well, Hoffman said.