Rob Bishop: “in the year 1938 domestic needs were great in this country. The New Deal programs that FDR had actually failed, and the…”

“in the year 1938 domestic needs were great in this country. The New Deal programs that FDR had actually failed, and the Depression had deepened during his second term to the point that the P-51 fighter plane was considered so insignificant and so costly it was not funded that year. When World War II started, the bombing runs that we took as a country produced 20 percent casualties for us to the point that we suspended bombing runs until we could build enough P-51 fighters to accompany them. It was not until the winter of 1943 that we were able to have superiority over the sky in Europe. The technology of today has made this world so much smaller and so much faster that we cannot afford to make the same mistake this country did in 1938. We cannot predict the type of future combat we will be called upon to participate in. We must be prepared for that future. Decisions we make today, because basically it takes 8 years from design to construction of a plane, decisions we make today have the impact of what kind of options we have both in the military and diplomatic sphere 10 and 15 years from now. This country has controlled the skies since the Korean War, and we take it for granted. We have forgotten that we have flown a military sortie every day of every year for the past 16 years, and we have done so with the oldest fleet in the history of this country. Our newest plane, the F-16, is 30 years old. It is older than the pilots who fly it.”