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Chairman Weldon, Chairman Hunter, and Members of the Subcommittees, I am delighted to be here today. At the request of Chairman Weldon and Congressman Spratt, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has undertaken a study of our nation's tactical air power. We expect to provide the Committee with the results later this year. Today, I would like to focus on plans to modernize tactical air forces.

The Department of Defense (DoD) plans to acquire three new tactical fighter and attack aircraft for the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. The three planes are the F-22 fighter for the Air Force, the F/A-18E/F for the Navy, and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)--a multipurpose plane being developed for all three services. DoD expects all three planes to be more capable than the planes they replace.

However, they will also be expensive. DoD plans to buy a total of about 4,400 planes of those three types. CBO estimates that the total cost to develop and acquire them amounts to more than $350 billion, even without factoring in inflation. Over the 1997-2001 period, DoD says, about $34 billion (in 1997 dollars; about $36 billion in current dollars) will be spent for those planes, representing about 9 percent of DoD's planned acquisition spending for the period.

In my testimony, after providing background on these fighter and attack aircraft, I would like to discuss four main points that have emerged from our analysis:

• U.S. fighter fleets outmatch the fighter fleets of any potential adversary; and
  
  
• DoD plans to purchase enough tactical aircraft to meet the inventory requirements of its fleets
  
  
• The plans assume that tactical aircraft will operate for long periods, and as a result U.S. tactical aircraft fleets will reach unprecedented ages; and finally, but not least,
  
  
• DoD's planned aircraft purchases for fighter fleets may prove to be unaffordable.

I will wrap up my remarks with a brief discussion of several policy alternatives that the Congress may wish to consider in addressing those last two points.

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