Pete Hegseth vowed to review plans for the future of the Air Force during a contentious three-and-half-hour confirmation hearing Jan. 14 on his nomination to serve as the next Secretary of Defense.
“That’s a very important conversation, one that I’ve been looking at a great deal,” Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee when asked about the future composition of the Air Force by Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.).
Much of the hearing was marked by partisan clashes about whether the former Fox News host and Army National Guard officer is qualified to serve as the head of a sprawling department that spends more than $830 billion a year and controls the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Hegseth has faced allegations of personal misconduct, which he has denied, and financial mismanagement at nonprofits he previously ran.
Hegseth acknowledged he did not have the same experience as the retired generals, veteran policymakers, and academics who have previously run the Pentagon. But he argued that would give him a fresh perspective since he had no preexisting loyalties to weapon programs.
“I don’t have a special interest in any particular system or any particular company or any particular narrative,” he said. “I want to know what works, what defeats our enemies, what keeps us safe, what deters them, what keeps our enemies up at night—whatever it is, I want more of it, and I want to invest in it. I know that’s the view of President Trump as well.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Hegesth had refused to meet with him before the hearing and that he intended to press him on policy issues soon. One of Kaine’s concerns, he said in response to a question from Air & Space Forces Magazine, is “whether somebody who had, at most, maybe managed 100 persons at a time in organizations that had annual budgets in the $10 million range is up to the task.”
Perhaps the most significant Air Force decision Hegseth will face, if he is confirmed by the Senate, will be the future of the Air Force’s crewed penetrating counter-air Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter.
The Biden administration, under current Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, left a decision on whether to proceed with the costly program to the incoming Trump administration.
Hegseth did not indicate how he was leaning, noting “precisely the cost and capabilities, including the capabilities of enemy systems” are classified. But he echoed Kendall’s long-standing view about the imperative of countering China’s military buildup. The Trump administration has yet to name a nominee for Secretary of the Air Force.
“You’ve already seen a prototype, at least from the Chinese, that’s a dangerous development—at least concerning the publicly understood condition of NGAD,” Hegseth said, referring to the recent unveiling by China of what he called a “potential sixth-generation” aircraft.
NGAD was organizationally envisioned as an F-22 Raptor replacement that would cost multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. The Air Force ordered a review of the program last summer in light of its considerable cost and budget pressures, which have been aggravated by the Sentinel intercontinental missile program. A blue-ribbon panel assembled by the Air Force recommended proceeding with a crewed NGAD platform with only minor tweaks.
But some in Trump’s orbit, such as Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs SpaceX and Tesla, have said the Air Force should ditch manned fighters such as the F-35 Lightning II, which the Air Force currently plans to operate late into the 21st century, including to control new semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
Hegseth promised to “look under the hood” of the NGAD program but provided few clues on how he might come out in the debate over how much to rely on manned fighters or drones.
“In the Indo-Pacific, say, interoperability, range could matter because it’s such a large battle space,” Hegseth said. “Unmanned will be a very important part of the way future wars are fought—just the idea of survivability for a human being drives cost and time in a way unmanned systems do not.”
He also called for maintaining a substantial level of defense spending despite the concerns of budget hawks.
“Going under 3 percent … is very dangerous,” Hegseth said when asked by SASC Chairman Roger Wicker (R.-Miss.) about the percentage of U.S. Gross Domestic Product that should be spent on national defense.
Hegseth also strongly endorsed the Pentagon’s nuclear modernization efforts, citing the “existential” importance of programs such as Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber, the Sentinel ICBM, and the ballistic-missile carrying Columbia-class submarine.
“Ultimately, our deterrence, our survival, is reliant upon the capability, the perception, and the reality of the capability of our nuclear triad; we have to invest in its modernization for the defense of our nation,” Hegseth said.
Much of the hearing focused on Hegseth’s previously expressed views that women should not serve in combat, a view the nominee has modified by insisting that women can make important contributions to the military if standards are maintained.
The hearing is likely to boost Hegseth’s chances of being confirmed by the Senate. Many Democrats, who highlight allegations that Hegseth sexually assaulted women and abused alcohol, pledged to vote against his nomination. But Hegseth rejected those accusations as smears, and he appears to have support among Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the Senate.
The future of the Air Force also figured in Hegseth’s written testimony that was submitted to the committee before the hearing.
Though Hegseth did not explicitly endorse a higher Air Force budget, he said that current Air Force plans would leave the service with fewer than half of the fighters and bombers, roughly two-thirds of the tankers, and three-fourths of the airlift assets it had the “last time the United States was prepared to fight a near-peer competitor.”
“The Air Force did not grow larger during the post 9-11 buildup. Instead, it grew smaller as the acquisition of new aircraft failed to offset programmed retirements of older aircraft,” Hegseth wrote. “Over the last 30 years, the Air Force fighter aircraft inventory has shrunk. This development threatens the ability of the Air Force to achieve air superiority in a near-peer competitor conflict.”
Hegseth indicated he supported a larger Air Force—at least in terms of its fleet of fighter jets.
“The Air Force needs a mix of fourth and fifth generation aircraft balancing advanced capabilities and affordability to increase our fighter inventory, as called for in the 2018 ‘The Air Force We Need’ plan rolled out during President Trump’s first administration,” referring to a plan that at the time envisioned 386 operational squadrons. That plan never came to fruition.
Hegseth also wrote that he would direct a review of the Air Force’s tanker plans, including whether to procure more KC-46s and pursue the Next Generation Air-refueling System (NGAS), as the “KC-135 fleet is aging fast.”