The President’s Fiscal 2014 budget request will be sent to Congress in the next few weeks, but officials here at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., say it’s basically a house of cards. There is still too much uncertainty about the Fiscal 2013 budget, which Air Force Secretary Michael Donley on Friday called a “moving target” because Congress has yet to approve it. The devastating across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which are set to kick in on March 1 unless Congress acts, are now a very real possibility. Sequestration calls for an additional $1.2 trillion of federal spending cuts through Fiscal 2021, of which more than 50 percent would come from defense accounts. Donley said the Fiscal 2014 budget request will not “reflect the likely reality of sequestration.” That makes Fiscal 2015 and future planning numbers “very suspect,” he said during his state of the Air Force address on Feb. 22.
Airmen and Guardians in the Active and Reserve component, as well as civilian employees, in “mission critical and high-risk populations” are now required to receive influenza vaccinations annually to “preserve force readiness,” according to a recent Department of the Air Force memo.