The American heterodox economist James K. Galbraith asks a very good question near the end of his book The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth, which was published last year and details the history of the US economy from the New Deal to the crash of 2008. The question: "Why exactly does the United States need an air force?" This is one of those questions that at first thought appears to have no other value than that of provocation. But on second thought, it begins to make more sense. What deeper thought on the matter reveals, and what Galbraith points out, is that, in our age, the combat or defense operations of an air force in the traditional mode (bombers or fighter planes flown by pilots) can easily be done with far less expense and greater efficiency by remote control (drones and cruise missiles). And yet the US military is still developing futuristic fighter planes that are incredibly expensive to make and maintain (the air force claims almost 25 percent of the military budget). For example:

Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history, nearly crash-landed a few years ago under the weight of repeated delays and cost overruns. Despite its history, the troubled program is getting a boost in the just-released defense budget...

One MQ-9 Reaper (a drone) costs only $16 million. What one sees upon a closer and closer look at the air force as it is today is that much of it has become as redundant and useless to the American public as the horse cavalry. It's maintained in its current form for purely political reasons, and often GOP votes. Remove the politics, and our flyboys will go the way of horses.