Every great civilization is known by some great structure which becomes the trademark its national power. Some symbols had practical applications, like Rome’s roads or China’s Great Wall. Others are religious or cultural, such as Egypt’s Great Pyramids or the statues of Easter Island. What will historians mark as America’s national symbol of power?

Perhaps its will be our capital’s buildings and monuments, or our soaring skyscrapers? Will people in the future associate America her great interstate highways the way we associate ancient Greece with the Parthenon? Maybe posterity will automatically think of Hollywood when a teacher says, “Open your history book to the chapter called The Rise and Fall of America.” I hope not. When historians reflect on America ascendancy, I believe they will primarily associate her with aerospace power.  

Many have called the 20^th Century the ‘American Century’ and aerospace power has been there from the beginning. Aerospace technology stands at the nexus of all things which made America unique and powerful over the last 100 years. Aviation is a direct reflection of the America’s innovation, pioneer spirit, resolve, technical and commercial prowess, and sense of adventure.   The United States forged modern aviation as we know it, sometimes alone, sometimes in direct competition with other great powers. More so than any other nation, aviation is at the heart of our national power and identity. From 1903 to the First Gulf War, America’s rise and her aviation industry share a direct correlation. The Wright Flyer, Spirit of St. Louis, B-17, P-51, X-1, B-52, Apollo, F-4, F-15, 747, Columbia, F-117, etc… these are our “roads and pyramids.”

What is the current status of this uniquely American symbol of power? May it can be best summed up by a conversation I had with a young college student. While discussing the space program this otherwise very intelligent nursing student told me the Apollo moon landings were a hoax. I asked her, with all the evidence to the contrary, how she could believe one of the greatest achievements in human history never happened. Her answer was profound.

“If we can’t do this today, with all our computers and high technology, how could we have done almost 40 years ago?” American aerospace power has stagnated to such a point our youth cannot even imagine a time when we walked on the moon.

More than stagnation, it might be in outright decline. Once we built new, cutting edge aircraft and spacecraft at breakneck speed. The 20 years from the Gemini Program to the Space Shuttle saw incredible leaps in aerospace technology. In the 26 years since then aerospace technologies have barely moved forward (with the notable exceptions of peripheral technologies like avionics, communications, and sensors). Walk through the national Air & Space or Air Force Museums one gets the impression aviation technology slowed tremendously somewhere around 1985.   

Militarily, we’re still stuck in the 1980s. The Air Force’s newest aircraft programs, like the B-2 and F-22, were originally designed in the 1980s. Even the F-35, not even in production yet, is based on a design dating back to the mid-1990s. Otherwise, most of the Air Force was built between the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations. Let’s put it in perspective.

If a P-51 fighter pilot, standing on an Air Force ramp in 1948, was magically transported 30 years into the future he’d see F-4s, F-15s, B-52s, T-38s, C-5s and maybe even an F-16. ‘1948 Man’ might say “Wow, these machines are fantastic! The future is everything I thought it would be!” If you then transported an F-15 pilot from 1978 30 years into the future he’d see the same F-15s, F-16s, B-52s, T-38s, C-5s, and maybe a UAV or F-22. ‘1978 Man’ might say, “Yea, the precision guided bombs are cool, but is this really the best you can do after 30 years?” He would only be more frustrated when someone showed him the computing power at our disposal. He built his Air Force, the one we’re still using, with a slide rule.  

Eventually the ancient Egyptians quit building pyramids. The sons of the great builders simply patched what their ancestors built.  So, too, the Romans eventually quit building roads and busied themselves keeping the ones they had serviceable. Today we find ourselves in their shoes, tinkering at the edges of greatness, merely keeping our symbols of power serviceable. Once Airmen assumed the Air Force would always replace old aircraft with cutting edge technology. It was expected we would always ‘push the envelope.’ Today, we struggle just to keep old jets flying. We are no longer builders, only caretakers.

Here are a few examples. The Air Force is refurbishing its giant C-5 Galaxy airlifters for $83 million apiece. We hope to keep these cargo planes, some almost 40 years ago, flying for another 40 years. The Air Force elected to buy a modified version of the old 1950’s CH-47 as a low-risk alternative to replace the 1970s era HH-60. The B-52 will still be flying in 2050. A new bomber might be on the drawing board. Our only real technological breakthrough is unmanned aircraft, a glorified outgrowth of remote control airplane technology.

Eventually, the descendents of the mighty pyramid builders couldn’t even repair the great stone mountains. The day came when they forgot who built them or why.  In the process they lost much of their national identity. The Romans, too, eventually neglected their symbols of power. Towering aqueducts which once brought sparkling water to thirsty cities simply crumbled away. Paved roads, arteries for legions and trade, were overgrown and forgotten. So goes the symbol, so goes the civilization.

In the 1960s we could design and build a revolutionary gas turbine helicopter, the Huey, when no such helicopter previously existed. Today, just buying a commercial helicopter is monumental task for the Air Force. Not long ago the Air Force built breathtaking aircraft like the SR-71 in a just few years. Now we can’t buy an off-the-shelf tanker in less than a decade.  Our fathers built and launched Apollo and the Space Shuttle in less than a ten years. The new Orion spacecraft, simply a rehash these old technologies, may fly by 2015. Boeing, the last big American passenger jet maker, is playing it safe and mostly improving on established product lines. So goes the symbol, so goes the civilization.

In the twilight of the empire a Roman engineer might have looked down upon a great road and thought, we can’t make a road like this anymore. Worse yet, there was probably a point when ancient Egyptians wondered if gods had fashioned the pyramids. They couldn’t fathom common men, their ancestors, created something so magnificent. Both civilizations took hundreds or thousands of years to reach such a level of decline. It only took some Americans 40 years to not believe we once walked on the moon. 

Unlike that young college student, I know we landed on the moon.  I know there was a day when Americans challenged the heavens. Those were the days when mighty X-15s thundered into space at mach 7.  Those were the days when we built glorious failures like the mach 3 XB-70, the likes of which most nations can’t build to this day.  Those were the days when we met any challenge for the skies with programs like Apollo and the F-15. Today’s Airman know we’re capable of more than just adding new engines or computer chips to planes built when ‘I Love Lucy’ was still in its first run. We still know how to make ‘pyramids and roads.’ Why, then, aren’t we?