Rollover-Plus

The shrinking defense budget and the ill-defined threats of the post-cold war world, have given rise to alternative acquisition strategies. These strategies seek to maintain America's technological and qualitative fighter aircraft superiority, while simultaneously saving the cost of large-scale procurement. This paper compares two of these strategies. On the one hand, Rollover-plus purports to maintain US superiority by building technology-advancing prototypes. The technology would then roll over into a production fighter at some later date, as dictated by the threat or the current aircraft's obsolescence. On the other hand, Silver Bullet proposes building a small number of operational aircraft and integrating them into the existing fighter force structure. By examining the contributions operational F-15 flying made to developing the Advanced Tactical Fighter, this paper demonstrates that Silver Bullet should be the Air Force's future acquisition strategy.