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Air Force is losing its edge and has to warn the nation against being too
sanguine about the threat, service acquisition chief William LaPlante said March
17. “Don’t assume benign conditions,” LaPlante said. “We have to innovate and
experiment ... we’ve got to catch up and get our margin back ... We are losing
our margin.” USAF, he said, is “not just going around saying the threat is 10
feet tall. Even if you say the threat is eight feet tall—when the intel says
it’s 10 feet tall—we’re still losing our margin.” If a competitor has certain
preliminary capabilities, but those are discussed with comments that “they
haven’t fought [with] it yet, or trained with it ... Maybe. But we’re losing
our margin. Okay? Every year, the briefings get worse,” LaPlante said. When the
US looks at its adversaries, they are doing what the US should be, he said:
“They’re doing shaping and deterring. Make no mistake, they’ve watched us very
carefully over the last 25 years—they’ve watched us fight—and they’ve learned
from it. So we really need to get on with” the third offset of technology
overmatch.
