Need to know, 2016: Air Force budget outlook

The Air Force is expected to submit its fiscal 2017 budget in February, said Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Melissa Milner.

Lawmakers recently reached a bipartisan agreement that set federal spending limits for fiscal 2016 and 2017, but Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has said that the agreement provides $17 billion less than the Defense Department needs in fiscal 2017.

“Over the next month or two we need to, as a team, figure out how we’re going to live with $17 billion less in FY 17, and, of course, whatever we propose for FY 17 needs to follow through appropriately for the rest of the five-year plan,” she said on Dec. 2 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “So it’s difficult, it’s tough, there’s no free lunch, but these are important programs and we have to modernize.”

Because the Air Force will get less money than it expected next fiscal year, and because deep cuts to defense spending may return in fiscal 2018 barring further action by Congress, the Air Force may have to cancel or delay modernization programs, limit investment in critical infrastructure, make cuts to readiness accounts and take other difficult actions, Milner said.

“I will say everything is on the table and you can argue these things any which way, so let me go back to basics,” James said. “We proposed that the A-10 be retired over the course of five years, not because we don’t like the A-10, but rather because we had to choose to retire something. We had to choose to cut something. And given the age of the aircraft — the single purpose nature and so on, it seemed to be the best approach.”

But lawmakers have stopped the Air Force every time the service has tried to retire the A-10 because they argue no other aircraft can provide the type of lifesaving close-air support that the A-10 is famous for.

In November, the head of Air Combat Command indicated that the Air Force may delay retiring the A-10 for several years because the demand for close-air support has skyrocketed.

“I think we would probably move the retirement slightly to the right,” Gen. Hawk Carlisle said at a Nov. 10 Defense Writers Group breakfast. “Eventually we will have to get there. We have to retire airplanes. But I think moving it to the right and starting it a bit later and keeping the airplane a bit longer is something to consider, based on things as they are today and what we see in the future.”

The Air Force declined to comment on whether the service’s fiscal 2017 budget will continue funding the A-10.

“So if not that, then what do we reduce?” she said on Dec. 2. “Particularly with $17 billion less in FY 17, we’re not going to be able to do it all. So these are the end game final decisions that have to be made in the next month or two.”