Gen. James Hecker, the commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa, made the remarks at the Chief of the Air Staff's Global Air & Space Chiefs' Conference in London, reported Breaking Defense.

The air force general urged NATO allies to think seriously about their stockpiles.

"I think it's very important that we kind of take stock of where we are in our weapons state across the 32 nations of NATO, and we're getting way down compared to where we were," Gen. Hecker said on a panel with the air chiefs of the United Kingdom and Sweden at the conference, reported the outlet.

"And it's probably not going to get better—well, it's not in the short term—but we've got to make sure in the long term we have the industrial base that can increase what we have," he said at the July 12-13 event, urging all NATO nations to start making deeper investments.

The United States is at "roughly half the number of fighter squadrons" it had compared to when it engaged in Operation Desert Storm, a U.S.-led operation that started in January 1991 as part of a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the general said. He added there's been a similar decrease in fighter squadrons for the UK.

"So we don't have nearly what we had at the heart of the Cold War," he continued.