NationStates Jolt Archive

Following a general reorganization of the Imperial Armed Forces, a substantial sum of money has be freed up to expand the Imperial Aerospace Force. Currently the IAF operates fifteen air forces, or one air force per Duchy/Protectorate. Given the rapid influx of conflicts the Imperium has been involved in lately the size of the IAF has been judged to be inadequate to the task. Therefor the Joint Strategic Command has brought forth and won approval from Her Imperial Highness and the Imperial Senate to place the contracts for the aircraft and has thus been granted money to pay for the orders once a contract or contracts have been granted.

The force breakdown is as follows:

Projected Force (+/- from current force level including reserve airframes)
F-125G: 16,200 (+5,400)
F-125H: 16,200 (+5,400)
F-120B: 21,600 (+7,200)
F-102C: 10,800 (+3,600)
B-106A: 10,800 (+3,600)
B-101D: 8,640 (+1,440)
B-108B: 6,480 (-720)
B-110A: 4,320 (+2,880)
C-115: 8,640 (-5,760)
C-117: 6,480 (-720)
C-116: 4,320 (-2,880)
KC-117: 21,600 (+20,160)
E-128A: 2,160 (+720)
E-128G: 2,160 (+720)
RF-125D: 4,320 (+3,312)

The single largest area of expansion is in the refuelers. The JSC feels that having less than a 1:1 ratio of refuelers to bombers is asking for trouble in the event of a major conflict, due simply to the vulnerability of said aircraft. The only consistent downturn of airframes is in the area of transport aircraft, which is mainly due to the fact that the Imperial Army has just cut its manpower by three million soldiers. Overall the IAF will expand to 135,072 aircraft at a cost of 16.51 trillion USD.

[What, no comments or crits?]

[OOC: You mean we're actually "allowed" to maintain airforces of that size? I was always under the impression that air forces were quite a bit smaller than that.... ok, I may be a n00b, but I always assumed a large airforce to be approximately 10,000-20,000 combat planes and maybe 30,000 support planes based on RL numbers (that would be reasonable for a nation with 7 times the USA's budget, along with the exponentially larger navies and armies). Learn something new every day, I suppose.]

[There are a lot of nations with 100,000+ aircraft, they're just all my size. Keep in mind that my budget is sitting at 26.422 trillion dollars pre-expansion and even post-expansion the Aerospace Force is only going to take 14% of my defense spending. If I didn't have such a large army, I could easily double the IAF.]