An Aircraft Investment Plan through 2040 reportedly submitted to Congress along with the Fiscal 2011 budget is not meant to be a definitive schedule, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. In an interview with the Daily Report Wednesday, Schwartz explained: “I think it is a plan for the department. It is not a contract. But I think it gives the Hill a sense of what the general themes are.” Schwartz specifically corrected one aspect of the plan, which asserts that an F-22 air superiority replacement would be required around 2025, versus a new bomber that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday will be along in “the late 2020s.” Schwartz said, “I think the Long Range Strike platform will certainly precede an F-22 replacement, in my view.” (Aircraft Investment Plan)
Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii is trialing novel energy technology to provide electrical power and hydrogen fuel in the kind of isolated and austere outposts the Air Force will need in the Pacific theater for its new Agile Combat Employment way of warfare.