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Congress and the Defense Department might benefit from making the Congressionally mandated 30-year aircraft procurement plan less frequent, less far reaching in scope, and better timed, said Vice Adm. Stephen Stanley, principal deputy director of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, Wednesday. Stanley, whose office plays a big role in preparing the APP, told members of the House Armed Services Committee’s oversight panel that he favors the plan coming out only once every four years vice annually, being tied more closely to the Quadrennial Defense Review, and only looking 20 years into the future. “It’s not clear to me that the last 10 years do either you or me much good,” he noted. He also sees merit in having the APP timed to appear one year after the QDR, so that a new Administration has had time to formulate its national security strategy. Stanley said these same suggestions apply to the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, which, as of this year, already is a quadrennial document. (2011 Aircraft Procurement Plan)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…