While the Air Force has not gone into great depth for planning what it would do if there is a budgetary sequester of another half-trillion dollars from the defense budget over the next 10 fiscal years, top leaders hope that briefings on the Fiscal 2013 spending request are already illustrating for Congress how damaging a sequester would be. So said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley in a press conference on Feb. 24 at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando Fla. “Congress can see the details of how difficult it was to get to the $487 billion” in cuts, said Donley. (That’s the amount already stripped from the defense budget through Fiscal 2021 under the Budget Control Act.) “We haven’t gone into detail about what’s next,” said Donley, adding that the Air Force would have to go back to the drawing board on the national defense strategy if the sequester does kick in next January.
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.