The Air National Guard provides an experienced, trained, equipped, and ready force to the nation at a fraction of the cost of the Air Force’s active duty component or other nation’s militaries, says Lt. Gen. Bud Wyatt, ANG director. “The Air National Guard is an extraordinary value,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s personnel panel Wednesday. Indeed, in Fiscal 2009, total Air Guard personnel costs amounted to $4.77 billion. Had this same force been full-time active duty, that figure would have spiked to $7.62 billion, an increase of $2.85 billion, he said. An Air Guardsman costs $76,961 per year to maintain, compared to $128,791 for a member of the French military and $110,787 for someone in the Italian armed forces, Wyatt noted. And the annual cost of each Air Guardsman is less than one-fifth that of an active duty airman, he said. (Wyatt’s prepared remarks)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.