Having worked with Gary Payton before, he is a very bright guy who knows what he is talking about. One thing to remember, however, is that the DoD has spent a lot of time on Lean Six Sigma, TQM, etc which creates hesitation to change processes. Once a process has gone thru the very bureaucratic Lean Six Sigma (or one of its many predecessors) mixer, it becomes hard to change. Even improvements are hard to implement. None of those "programs" actually improves anything - they merely document them. What we need are improvements.

As always, Byron is poorly informed and makes decisions based on what he reads in People magazine. Of course all of the A-10s were NOT "dumped" into the ANG, the Active force has about 200 right now and the Reserves have not quite a hundred. And, as a proud veteran of 10 years in the Tx ANG - aircraft in the Guard actually are used effectively! Many aircraft have been delivered to the ANG directly from the production line - shows that the ANG has some priority. The ANG has more aircraft, generally, than the Reserves since they are larger. Do they have a hundred A-10s? The AF certainly prefers the pointy-nosed aircraft but they have put the A-10 to excellent use.

Byron - if we want you back we'll send you an email.

I know, that was mean. Usually below my standards but today I'll feeling crabby.

The availability of the F-35 is a bit debatable regardless of the status of the F-18. We can spend billions on high speed rail, Murtha's airport, etc etc etc but not on airframes and vehicles that our folks need today? We are getting MRAPs, etc but an F-18 today is better than maybe an F-35 in five years.

Yes, the AF has been trying to get rid of the A-10 for a while, I recall seeing a line of "A-16s" on the field at Fort Hood several years ago. They were painted in a camo to make them more palatable to the Army. And the Congress kept adding A-10s above what the AF asked for (of course the AF knew that would happen and asked for fewer A-10s). Still, the lovable A-10 has been a reliable airframe for quite a while now.
And the Army will not let go of their assets - the attack helicopter. They know that they need to control some of their own air support.

The AF has had a COIN aircraft for a while - the A-10.

Byron should note that it flies considerably under 10K feet and has a titanium bathtub for the pilot, so they can survive ground fire.

But no one ever had an aircraft RE-named after themselves, and no one ever made General by marginally improving an existing system. You make General by ramming a new program thru the bureaucracy and competing interests of DC. Therefore, many people will feel we need a new aircraft!!

In the meantime, the new COIN aircraft has already arrived, and Byron will be glad to note its name - the Predator. Our UAVs do the COIN job pretty well and they are arriving in quantity. They just aren't as sexy as those pointy-nosed, high flying, cool planes.

We should be glad to see them buying new F-18s, they will almost certainly appear when promised. The F-35 is still too subject to cancellation, stretch out, development problems, etc.

The policy is quite disappointing since it gives us vague goals - sort of like Apple Computer who wanted to sell innovative computers. Apple has been beat up often by Microsoft/Intel who just wanted to dominate the market. We might see Russia setting the standards for future space interfaces and everyone building spacecraft that match their standards. The US might have neat, innovative space craft that are not compatible with the rest of the world - as we have ATV which docks with the Russian side of the ISS!
We must remember that the commercial launch industry is well established - launching communications satellites, etc. When they stick to their proven base they do well. This extends their base to lifting capsules with people in them.
We must also remember that the Challenger and Columbia crews were lost NOT due to hardware failure, not due to their error, etc. They were lost due to the NASA management which disregarded available warnings. Commercial companies may do better than NASA!

Forgive me if I am totally not understanding this... but I think that NASA will use the money they were spending on developing Ares to buy commercial boosters. So the budget in the near term cannot change that much. But it does buy us a nearly-existing booster with more flight experience, and will (hopefully) save money over time since the commercial boosters will serve several markets. Ares 1 was gonna be used for only Orion (according to most plans that I saw).
So the NASA budget is not gonna (short term) be freed up.
That said, I agree with zmas that NASA's job is to open new markets - as it did by pioneering the geosych comm sats that now are totally commercial. Now we have the chance to have commercial flights that will take paying passengers (this is more Falcon/Dragon) and we will have a more efficient booster production which will save money in the medium-to-long term.

It is still amazing to me that the Russian and Chinese programs still allow spent rocket stages to impact on (lightly) inhabited landmasses. At least if they fall in the water, there is less chance of hitting some small village of unsuspecting people.