At Last: After 23 Years, F-35 Enters Full-Rate Production

March 12, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Nearly 23 years after Lockheed Martin won the contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 has been cleared to enter full-rate production, the Pentagon announced March 12.

Although the designation is in some ways moot—the F-35 production enterprise is already operating at a rate close to its capacity—the designation means the Joint Program Office can now negotiate multiyear contracts for the fighter.

Pentagon acquisition executive William LaPlante signed an acquisition decision memorandum approving Milestone C, or full-rate production, after a March 7 meeting of the Defense Acquisition Board, which he chairs. He made the call “after considering the results” from F-35 operational test and evaluation, live-fire testing, the System Development and Demonstration exit criteria, applicable laws, and future production strategy, the Defense Department said in a press release.

Proceeding to full-rate “requires control of the manufacturing process, acceptable performance and reliability, and the establishment of adequate sustainment and support systems,” the release noted.

For the last four years, the full-rate decision was stymied by difficulty integrating the F-35 with the Joint Simulation Environment, a wargaming system that helps decision-makers find the right mix of platforms and weapons for given war scenarios. That hurdle was cleared in September 2023, the Pentagon said.

Lockheed executive vice president for aeronautics Greg Ulmer recently forecast that the F-35 program will have a stable production rate goal of about 156 aircraft per year for at least the next five years.

The F-35A has been operational with the Air Force since 2016. The service continues to pursue a planned fleet of 1,763 aircraft.

Negotiations between the JPO and Lockheed Martin for production Lots 18 and 19 have been underway since last fall; Lot 20 is expected to be the first contract under which multiyear status can play a role. Under a multiyear contract, contractors can be assured of a longer run of production and make economic order quantities of materiel, reducing their costs and the cost to the government.

In a press release, LaPlante called the milestone “a major achievement for the F-35 program,” highlighting for the military services, international partners, and FMS customers that “the F-35 is stable and agile, and that all statutory and regulatory requirements have been appropriately addressed.”

He called the fighter the “premiere system that drives interoperability with our allies and partners” while contributing to integrated deterrence and the precepts of the National Defense Strategy.

The F-35’s status means it’s now “well-positioned to efficiently produce and deliver,” LaPlante said. He praised the efforts of program director Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt and the Joint Program Office, saying the program has made “significant improvements over the last decade, and we will always be driven to continuously improve sustainability, interoperability and lethality” of the fighter. The program can now “focus on the future of the F-35, instead of the past.”

There are still some ongoing issues with the F-35, according to Raymond O’Toole, acting director of operational test and evaluation, which greenlighted the jet’s Milestone B.

“The program is working to address” some of those issues, which include a need for improved test infrastructure for developmental support, and to ensure “readiness to test of the upcoming Block 4 capabilities,” O’Toole said in the announcement release.

The F-35 program has delivered more than 990 aircraft to the U.S. military services, partners, and FMS customers, the Pentagon said.

Ironically, the full-rate announcement comes as F-35 deliveries are on hold pending testing of the Tech Refresh 3 hardware and software, on which the Block 4 upgrade depends. Lockheed is storing about 70 completed F-35s until that testing concludes—expected in mid-to-late summer—but production continues.

To Help Explain Re-Optimization Changes, DAF Has Senior Leaders ‘Going Out’ to the Force

March 12, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of the Air Force is undertaking its biggest overhaul since the Cold War, with new commands, ranks, units, and training.

Now, the Air Force and Space Force must sell the changes to nearly 700,000 Airmen and Guardians, the DAF’s top civilian in charge of personnel noted March 12.

“One of the biggest challenges is having our force understand why these changes are coming,” Alex Wagner, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, said at an AFA Warfighters in Action Event.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall concluded in the fall of 2023 that the service was not sufficiently prepared to confront China’s rising military might and ordered a sweeping “re-optimization” unveiled in February at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“The Secretary challenged all of us and said, ‘What do we need to do to put ourselves in a position to meet the growing threats and the competition, particularly from the People’s Republic of China?’ and talent plays an outsized role in that,” Wagner added.

A number of initiatives are underway. Air Education and Training Command will become Airmen Development Command, offering more modernized and holistic training. The services will be deployed in new ways, with the Air Force creating Air Task Forces and Combat Wings as “units of action” to replace the current, more ad-hoc model. Large-scale training exercises and no-notice readiness events are also in the offing. Then, there is the introduction of the much-ballyhooed warrant officer track for the cyber and IT career fields.

“I think, in general, people are skeptical of change but receptive to leadership,” Wagner said of how the service will explain the alterations to service members.

Top leaders have already visited bases to discuss the changes. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin’s stops have included Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., and he has also addressed students, faculty, and staff from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

The newly installed Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, David Flosi, who took over on March 8, says he is prepared to move out to sell re-optimization to Airmen. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna are expected to conduct their own sales pitch.

“When you see the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Chief of Space Operations, and the Secretary of the Air Force all operating from exactly the same page, it says this isn’t an initiative that’s going to last one year or two, but it’s going to last throughout their terms,” Wagner said.

Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force; Kristyn E. Jones, Performing the Duties of Under Secretary of the Air Force; Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations; Gen. David W. Allvin, Chief of Staff of the Air Force during a Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition: A Senior Leaders Discussion panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo. Feb. 12, 2024. Photo by Jud McCrehin/Staff

The Air Force has plastered QR codes with more information on re-optimization changes in prominent places and conducted a sustained campaign to promote the changes on its social media pages. Wagner said more outreach is planned.

“We always undervalue the degree to which we communicate,” Wagner said. “I want to ensure that the force understands the strategy, understands the threat, and understands why we’re taking the steps that we’re taking. Our two best messengers are, in the Air Force, the Chief of Staff for the Air Force and the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. In the Space Force, the Chief of Space Operations and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. They are in the process of going out and speaking to the force.”

Allvin has noted some of the changes may take his entire four-year tenure as Chief to materialize. Kendall has said he is confident the changes will live on even if he departs his position. Wagner said that the acceptance of the changes would also be a process.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Wagner said. “Because it’s complex, and change is going to be hard. But we’ve got a unified team focused not only on making these changes, but helping people understand what it means for them and their families.”

NORAD Boss: Chinese Aircraft Could Start Operating Near US This Year

March 12, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, the new head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, warned lawmakers March 12 that Chinese warplanes could begin operating near the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) as soon as this year.

“Fortunately, we haven’t seen Chinese aircraft operate near our air defense identification zones yet, but I think that that’s coming as early as this year,” Guillot told the House Armed Services Committee in his first congressional testimony since swearing in as NORAD and NORTHCOM commander in February. “That shows an overall concern I have about the growing capability of China not only with aircraft, but also with ships and even submarines being able to range further from China and closer to our shores.”

Air Defense Identification Zones are buffer regions that extend beyond territorial boundaries, covering airspace hundreds of miles from the coastline that nations use to track approaching aircraft. NORAD tracks aircraft using a network of satellites, ground-based and airborne radars, and fighter aircraft, and all aircraft entering or exiting U.S. airspace from abroad must be identified beforehand.

Russian fighters and bombers enter the U.S. ADIZ on a regular basis without entering U.S. or Canadian airspace. Occasionally, NORAD will scramble fighters to intercept those aircraft and escort them out of the ADIZ. In February, NORAD reported three instances of Russian aircraft operating in the Alaskan ADIZ.

Chinese aircraft entering the U.S. ADIZ, however, would mark an expansion of the People’s Liberation Army’s reach. In recent years, the PLA has entered the ADIZ around the island of Taiwan hundreds of times, sometimes sending dozens of planes in one day, in moves that observers warn could be probing Taiwanese defenses or lulling them into a sense of complacency.

U.S. and Chinese aircraft have dealt with each other in the Indo-Pacific—the Pentagon revealed in 2023 that Chinese aircraft conducted over 180 risky intercepts of U.S. planes in the past two years, surpassing the total incidents from the previous decade, heightening concerns about China’s unpredictable and increasingly provocative behavior.

At the same time, Chinese surveillance balloons have entered U.S. airspace five times in recent years, with the Pentagon missing several at the time they occurred before one traversed the entire continental U.S. in January 2023, eventually being shot down after a few days.

Guillot told lawmakers that NORAD has taken steps to better identifying objects like spy balloons that may have gone unnoticed in the past, closing the “domain awareness gap” highlighted by his predecessor, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck.

“First and foremost, my predecessor … directed the radar sensitivities to be adjusted, which would allow better detection of low radar cross section slow moving and high altitude objects,” Guillot said, adding that the system however introduces some clutter due to receiving more data.

“Second, when our operators see intermittent hits that in the past would be passed off to most usually weather or other phenomena that would cause an inconsistent hit, they’re now continuing to track those more carefully and more consistently to ensure that it is not a balloon or some other phenomena,” Guillot said.

“And third is better Domain Awareness between the other combatant commands. As we get JADC2 … the ability to share data from one combatant command to another, instead of stopping at a black line on a map that divides the regions, now we can seamlessly share that information electronically to increase our awareness further away from our shores.”

Still, Guillot said NORAD and NORTHCOM’s surveillance systems need further investment, calling over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) and the Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) his “top priorities.”

The Missile Defense Agency said in January a LRDR missile defense system in Alaska is mostly complete and will begin operations late this year. Both the U.S. and Canadian militaries have invested in OTHR, with the U.S. Air Force planning to build four OTHRs for NORAD and NORTHCOM. Guillot added that Alaska will have one OTHR. As the process is still in its early stages, he stressed that keeping the program on track is pivotal.

“That would give us capability against cruise missiles, traditional air tracks, as well as the hypersonics,” Guillot said. “Keeping that program on track is the number one priority of from NORTHCOM, because of that great capability that it would bring.”

Guillot added that hypersonic weapons pose a greater threat than Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) due to their ability to fly at lower altitudes and their maneuverability.

“Hypersonics are probably the most destabilizing weapon that we face now,” Guillot said. “They shorten detection time and the fact that they don’t follow a traditional ballistic track means they’re very unpredictable and the area of uncertainty is huge, based on their speed and their maneuverability. That’s what makes them such a challenge to not only detect, but to track and eventually defeat.”

Air Force Promotes Largest Number of Senior Master Sergeants Since 1991

March 12, 2024 | By David Roza

Out of 15,151 eligible candidates, the Air Force selected 1,734 master sergeants for promotion to senior master sergeant this year, the highest total since 1991, when 2,208 master sergeants were selected for promotion, according to a spokesperson for the Air Force Personnel Center.

This year’s selection rate was 11.44 percent. The full 24E8 promotion list will be available on the Air Force Personnel Center public website on March 14 at 8 a.m. central time, AFPC wrote in a press release March 11.

This year marks the latest in a five-year climb for senior master sergeant promotions, growing from 1,184 (7.62 percent) in 2020 to 1,629 (10.16 percent) in 2023. Airmen in other grades may not be so lucky: Air Force officials have warned of lower promotion rates for some noncommissioned officer ranks as the service tries to rebalance its NCO corps.

Last year saw the smallest number of new staff sergeants (9,000) since 1992, and the lowest selection rate (17.4 percent) since 1997. Airmen also faced long odds when applying for the rank of tech sergeant, but the selection rate for master sergeant went up a small amount between 2022 and 2023.

Senior Master Sergeant Promotion Statistics

Year	Selected	Eligible	Promotion Rate
2024	1,734	15,151	11.44%
2023	1,629	16,031	10.16%
2022	1,443	17,419	8.28%
2021	1,194	17,107	6.98%
2020	1,184	15,544	7.62%
2019	1,434	13,316	10.77%
2018	1,549	13,054	11.87%
2017	1,391	11,788	11.80%
2016	1,467	11,904	12.32%
2015	1,257	14,362	8.75%
2014	999	14,823	6.74%
2013	1,367	12,834	10.65%
2012	1,702	12,351	13.78%
2011	1,274	12,378	10.29%
2010	1,269	13,741	9.24%

Space Force Rolls Out New PT Gear, While Airmen Have to Wait a Little Longer

March 12, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force officially started rolling out its new physical training uniform on March 8, giving Guardians their first ever finalized service-specific uniform.

Airmen, meanwhile, will have to wait one more month before the Air Force starts distributing its new PT gear.

The Space Force uniform—black shorts, a dark gray T-shirt, black sweatpants, and a black windbreaker, with a patterned “USSF” on the sleeves of the shirt and jacket, “Space Force” on the back of the shirt, and the Space Force’s Delta logo on the left side of each item—was first distributed to new Guardians at Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

Over the next several months, the service will deliver the gear to Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) locations with Space Force personnel, including Peterson, Schriever, Buckley, Vandenberg, and Patrick Space Force Bases, Los Angeles Air Force Base, and the Pentagon, according to a service release.

Officials are asking Guardians to only buy one uniform set to start, as supplies will be limited.

“The PT uniform cost will be calculated into the Guardian uniform replacement allowance beginning April 2024,” the release noted.

The Space Force first unveiled its PT uniform for wear-testing in September 2021 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference—2nd Lt. Mahala Norris, an NCAA track star at the Air Force Academy, sported the gear in a promotional video. In April 2023, the service said it would roll out the uniform in early 2024.

It’s been a slightly longer process for the Air Force’s new PT uniform, the design of which was first released in March 2021, with the plan to release it to Airmen in October 2022. Supply chain issues delayed that process multiple times, and a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the service now expects to roll out the gear in April, also to BMT trainees.

The latest delay of about a month was “due to a previous fabric shortage and pending resolution of an ongoing color match concern for the running and all-purpose short,” the spokesperson said.

There is no timeline for AAFES locations to start stocking the uniform, the spokesperson added.

The Air Force PT uniform consists of a jacket, pants, and two types of shorts—all in dark blue with a gray stripe and the Air Force logo—as well as a gray T-shirt with the Air Force logo on the upper left chest and a patterned “Air Force” across the back. The gear is significantly less bulky than the current uniform, which was first introduced in the early 2000s and is notorious for its “noisy” fabric.

Air Force Uniform Office members 1st Lt. Avery Thompson and 2nd Lt. Maverick Wilhite put updated versions of the Air Force PT uniform through their paces at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Feb. 25, 2021. Air Force photo by Jim Varhegyi.

Both the Air Force and Space Force PT uniforms are being crafted with soft, quick drying, antimicrobial “performance” fabrics to wick moisture and control odors. Both services are also making men’s and women’s sizes, instead of unisex, for better fit.

The PT uniform marks another step as the Space Force establishes its identity as an independent military branch. Another major step is its service dress, where USSF is testing a distinctive look with a dark blue coat—almost black—that has an upturned collar and closes with a diagonal row of six buttons, as well as dark gray pants and a lighter gray shirt. In September, more than 100 Guardians across the globe started wearing the prototype at least three times per week as part of “wear testing,” the final stage before the uniform is produced and rolled out to Guardians everywhere in 2025.

For day-to-day wear, the Space Force still uses the same Operational Camouflage Pattern uniform worn by the Army and the Air Force, but with service-specific blue nametape.

Air Force’s 2025 Budget Lags Inflation But Is ‘Acceptable’ Within New Constraints

March 11, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget request is adequate and defensible but doesn’t provide the speed with which senior leaders would like to bring on new systems to compete with the likes of China, they said in rolling out the new spending plan.

All told, the Department of the Air Force is requesting a budget of $262.6 billion for 2025. That total includes $188.1 billion for the Air Force, $29.4 billion for the Space Force, and $45.1 billion in “pass through” funding that the Air Force does not control.

The Air Force request marks 1.6 percent growth, or $3 billion over the fiscal 2024 budget request, while the Space Force request marks a decline of $600 million, or 2 percent. All figures are in constant dollars, not adjusted for inflation, indicating both services would actually see a decline in buying power.

“We are not quite keeping up with inflation,” acting Air Force undersecretary Krysten Jones told reporters.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall hinted as much March 7 at the McAleese defense programs conference when he told attendees there was “no real growth” in the budget.

However, Kendall told reporters ahead of the budget rollout that “I consider this to be an acceptable budget. I can defend it.” The spending plan is “moving forward on the things that we prioritize. Again, I’d like to be able to move faster, but you know, we do have constraints.”

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, passed by Congress last summer—but after the Department of the Air Force had already largely built a budget—required DAF leaders to “make some hard choices to fit within those boundaries,” Kendall said.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter told the McAleese defense conference on March 7 that the service had to cut around 2 percent from its budget topline due to the FRA. Though that percentage “sounds small,” Hunter said, the service could not touch personnel accounts, so the cuts fell disproportionately on modernization and readiness.

Air Force budget director Maj. Gen. Michael A. Greiner said the FRA reductions amounted to just over $2 billion.

However, those cuts will not have a dramatic effect on the Department of the Air Force’s recently-announced restructuring plans, Kendall said. Though new organizations will be created, “they’re going to be created out of pieces we already have,” he said, “so we’re not talking about big manpower increases, and we’re going to minimize, to the extent we can, the movement of people and the acquisition of real estate and so on.”

The “Re-Optimization for Great Power Competition” effort will not be “zero cost,” Kendall added, but he expected the chief expenses will come in the form of adding capabilities and resources to deployable wings. That cost won’t be known for a while as the service classifies wings and takes stock of what it needs.

In general, the Air Force’s budget outlook beyond 2025 appears challenging.

“We’ve got some tough choices … when we get to [FY] ’26, which we’re building now,” Kendall said. Among the challenges in that budget will be accommodating a nearly $40 billion overrun on the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, although the Air Force is looking for economies and that bill doesn’t have to be paid in a single year.

In making choices, Kendall said his priority “is to get to a next generation of capabilities” to offset China’s military advances. As a result, the budget seeks to “protect” Kendall’s seven Operational Imperatives—the key modernization investments he first outlined in 2022. Consequently, there was “a tradeoff” between what he called “the mid-term force”—things that are already developed and which the Air Force is buying—and research and development of “the longer-term force.”

“What we’re doing, essentially … is buying options for people to procure things in the future. So all that research and development essentially doesn’t give you anything immediately, it gives you an option to then exercise for production later,” he said.

As an example of leadership’s thinking, the budget reduces buying in-production F-35 and F-15EX fighters, but preserves previously-planned developmental funding for the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The Air Force buy of F-35s drops from 48 in 2024 to 42 in 2025, and the buy of F-15EXs will drop from 24 to 18.

That will also reduce the program of record for the F-15EX from 104 to 98, with production ending in 2025, said Greiner. At one time, the Air Force expected to buy upwards of 180 F-15EXs.

Funding of NGAD and CCA development amounts to $3.3 billion in 2025, up $815 million and $165 million, respectively, from FY’24 requested levels. But for both programs, “life gets a lot harder after ’25,” Kendall said, without elaborating.

Jones said it will cost about $1 billion extra to achieve the same levels of readiness and flying hours in fiscal ’25 as it did in ’24. This drove “difficult decisions” in munitions, for example, where “we are buying, in some cases, slightly fewer munitions for the same price” as in fiscal 2024, she said.

Kendall said the Air Force is “trying to continue what we hope will be multiyear” contracts for the AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile, the AGM-158 JASSM-ER stealth ground-attack missile, and its variant, the LRASM anti-ship missile.

Absent congressional authority to do multiyear procurement—which allows buying in bigger lots and economic order quantities for materials—”the funding that we have laid in there [previously] will not be able to buy the items that we had planned for,” Greiner said.

“But either way, we have money in there, we’re going to continue to procure those munitions that we know are critical,” he said.

Strategic Funding

Developmental funding for the Sentinel ICBM stayed flat at $3.7 billion from fiscal 2024 to 2025. That’s in addition to $700 million in military construction costs.

Research, development, test, and evaluation funding for the B-21 bomber will decline from $3 billion to $2.7 billion. The budget also includes money for B-21 low-rate initial production procurement, but the number of aircraft and the amount of funding is classified.

B-52 engine, radar, and other upgrade development stays flat at $1 billion. The Long-Range Stand-Off missile (LRSO), the nuclear cruise missile that will equip the B-52 and later, the B-21, was funded at $623 million to continue design, development, and test.

Pilot Training

Asked about the ongoing pilot shortage, Kendall noted that flying hours tick up slightly in the ’25 budget, from 9 hours per month to 9.2 per pilot, for a total of 1.1 million flying hours, which officials hope will help retention and readiness. Kendall said he promised Air Force pilots that “we would not cut flying hours,” and former Chief of Staff—now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs—Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. told Kendall there would be increased risk if flying hours were reduced any further.

But Kendall also argued that the term “pilot shortage” is a misnomer. The Air Force can fill its cockpits, he said. Rather it has “a shortage of staff officers who were supposed to be pilots.”

There’s also no shortage of people who want to be pilots, Kendall added.

“The problem is the pipeline to produce,” he said, “And the biggest impediment in that is the T-38, and its reliability.” The T-38 is old, its engines are getting hard to repair, and the Air Force is “waiting for the T-7 to come online and replace it.”

The Air Force is in flight test with the T-7A, and the 2025 budget includes $233 million for seven airplanes. But the T-7 has been delayed and its initial operating capability, initially planned for this calendar year, will be deferred several years, forcing extended reliance on the T-38.

‘Right Direction’

Overall “we’re very, very fixated on being competitive with the pacing challenge” of China, Kendall said of the 2025 budget.

‘I think the budget that we’ve submitted moves us forward; not quite as fast as we would like to, but it moves us forward, in the right direction, while maintaining the current capabilities that are essential to the nation. So, I’m pretty comfortable with what we’re asking for, given the constraints that we have,” he said.

Space Force Faces First Ever Budget Cut in 2025, Driven in Part by Fewer Launches

March 11, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Space Force budget could be headed for its first ever dip in fiscal year 2025, as the service unveiled a $29.4 billion request March 11, a 2 percent drop compared to its 2024 budget request.

In its first four budget cycles, the Space Force saw explosive growth as the new service established itself and brought in new personnel and missions.

Space Force Budget Requests By Year

Year	Amount	Year-over-Year Growth
2021	$15.4 billion	N/A
2022	$18.05 billion	17.21%
2023	$26.1 billion	44.60%
2024	$30 billion	14.94%
2025	$29.4 billion	-2.00%

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and other leaders highlighted fewer planned satellite launches as a key reason for the smaller budget. In a briefing with reporters, Kendall pointed out that “payloads have not been ready,” leading to delays in launches and resulting in a smaller number of launches than initially planned for the fiscal year.

“Last year, we had planned 15 total space launches, and that’ll be 11 in the ’25 budget plan.” Maj. Gen. Michael A. Greiner, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for budget, said on March 8. “That was not necessarily due to [spending] caps or having to make tough choices, that’s really just how we look through the long-range strategic satellite launch manifest. These are the capabilities in the launches that we need, in order to get the satellites on orbit that we need as well and those that are ready to go.”

Of the 11 launches planned within the National Security Space Launch program, four will be designated for deploying satellites in low-Earth orbit for the Space Development Agency’s constellation. FY25 will mark the first year of NSSL Phase 3 procurement, which is meant to increase competition and open the door to smaller launch providers through a so-called “dual-lane” approach.

Kendall also noted that under the spending caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act and with the readiness demands of the current force, there was only so much he could do to protect the Space Force’s budget, which is skewed heavily toward future capabilities.

“Sixty-three percent, I think, of the Space Force budget is R&D,” Kendall said. “We’re not moving as fast there as we would like to, but we didn’t have any place to make any adjustments. And I have some ability to move money between the Space Force and the Air Force, but I didn’t see any trades here that we had already done that we hadn’t already done or had talked about, did we want to make.”

Accordingly, the Space Force’s research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) and procurement budgets saw a decline from the fiscal 2024 request, while operations and management (O&M) and personnel funds went up slightly.

Account	Fiscal 2024 Request	Fiscal 2025 Request
Operations & Maintenance	$4.9 billion	$5.2 billion
Military Personnel	$1.2 billion	$1.2 billion
RDT&E	$19.2 billion	$18.7 billion
Procurement	$4.7 billion	$4.3 billion
TOTAL	$30 billion	$29.4 billion

With the Space Force trimming $500 million from its research and development budget in FY25, the service is prioritizing the modernization of existing infrastructure to enhance defense and surveillance capabilities.

In particular, the branch plans to invest heavily its missile warning and tracking (MW/MT) capabilities, to the tune of $4.7 billion. That includes $2.1 billion for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) constellation, as well as $2.7 billion for other programs like the Space Development Agency’s Tracking Layer for its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in low-Earth orbit. The Space Force’s budget documents indicated they are interested in medium-Earth orbit capabilities as well.

Satellite communications will also receive significant investment. In particular, the service wants to invest a little more than $1 billion in the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communication network, for nuclear command, control, and communications, and almost $600 million for Protected Tactical Services (PTS), a jam-resistant system.

The service plans to expand its total workforce by 4 percent to 15,084, combining military and civilian personnel. That will include 9,800 uniformed Guardians, an increase of 400 over last year. That jump will come primarily through inter-service transfers. That, combined with raises in pay, Basic Allowance for Housing, and Basic Allowance for Subsistence, contributed to the Military Personnel account inching up $50 million from 2024, to a total of $1.2 billion.

The O&M budget request also went up marginally—$300 million—to a total of $5.2 billion. This budget will support the operations, sustainment, and maintenance of crucial assets, including satellites and ground-based systems, as well as a 2 percent civilian pay raise.

While the overall budget is slightly down, Kendall did note that the “pass-through”—a section of the budget not controlled by the Air Force that goes to classified intelligence programs—does have funds that will enhance the capabilities of the Space Force.

“We’re working very closely with the intelligence community, particularly with NRO,” he said, referring to the National Reconnaissance Office. “And there are dual-use capabilities that can be fielded in space that are valuable both for intelligence and military applications. And that’s why I’m saying that some of the things that are in the pass-through are beneficial to the Space Force.”

Kendall declined to elaborate, however, on whether the Space Force’s budget reduction was directly related to the pass-through increase.

Air Force Plans to Divest 250 Aircraft in 2025, Shrinking Fleet to New Low

March 11, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force plans to shrink its total aircraft inventory in fiscal 2025, cutting its plans for new airframes while continuing to retire old platforms, the service revealed in its budget request, released on March 11. The Air Force plans to divest 250 aircraft in FY25, dropping its total aircraft inventory below 5,000, an unprecedentedly small number.

“We’re protecting the current force’s capabilities at what we think is an acceptable level of risk,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told reporters ahead of the budget’s official release.

The 2025 budget predicts a total aircraft inventory of 4,903 aircraft, according to a service accounting of total aircraft inventory.

Fiscal Year 2025 Divestments

Aircraft	Number of Airframes
F-22	32
HH-60G	12
F-15C/D	65
A-10	56
F-15E	26
F-16C/D	11
C-130H	6
EC-130H	1
CV-22	2
E-11	1
KC-135	16
T-1	22
TOTAL	250

The Air Force is heavily focused on modernization, so protecting research and development comes at the cost of new aircraft purchases in the latest budget, according to top service officials. The aircraft divestment plan is worth over $2 billion in savings, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for budget Maj. Gen. Mike A. Greiner said.

“For the most part, our divestments were planned because we need to start moving the funding into the modernization programs,” Kristyn E. Jones, the acting undersecretary of the Air Force told reporters March 11.

The Air Force wants to purchase 42 F-35As and 18 F-15EXs—a total of 60 new fighters. That will not meet the service’s stated long-term goal of at least 72 new fighters annually. The Air Force is moving towards awarding the first contracts for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), semi-autonomous aircraft that will accompany the manned fighter fleet. CCAs will “rethink our definition” of the USAF fighter fleet, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said on March 7.

Fiscal Year 2025 Procurements

Aircraft	Number of Airframes
F-35A	42
F-15EX	18
KC-46	15
MH-139	8
T-7A	7
C-40	1
TOTAL	91

“The numbers are going down in the near term,” said Jones. However, she said CCAs could change that calculus in the long term. “We are ramping that program up as much as we can—if we have [fiscal] ’24 appropriation, even faster—to try to get that affordable mass capability to mainly offset those divestments of our old fleet,” she said.

Jones said on March 11 that the decrease in the planned F-35 buy was due to budgetary constraints and delays in the fighter’s planned F-35 Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3), a significant but lagging software upgrade. However, the change does not mean the service is less committed to the F-35 in the long term, she said.

“Given the fiscal constraints this year, as well as the delays in getting the capabilities that we need, we re-phased the program, but we haven’t cut off the total numbers,” Jones said.

The service is seeking to ditch 65 aging F-15C/Ds, some of which are barely airworthy, and divest 56 A-10 Warthog aircraft, which the USAF wants to retire from the force entirely by 2029. The service also wants to get rid of 26 F-15E Strike Eagles with less powerful Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-220 engines but upgrade the portion of the fleet with more powerful engines with the Eagle Passive Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS), which provides “an advanced digital electronic warfare system capable of defeating modern threat systems in contested airspace,” the service’s budget documents state.

Some of the Air Force’s retirement plans are controversial: leaders are once more trying to retire 32 of their oldest F-22s, which they argue are no longer viable in combat. Instead, they want to fund “investments in F-22 sensor enhancements to more closely track and stay ahead of potential adversaries,” according to the Department of the Air Force’s budget request.

“Block 20 airframes lack many of the enhanced capabilities of the Block 30/35 jets,” an Air Force spokesperson said of the rationale. “Upgrading them to Block 30/35 is not feasible due to cost and time constraints.”

Congress has long balked at the prospect of retiring any models of what many see as the world’s best air superiority fighter and passed legislation prohibiting any such retirements until fiscal 2028. However, the Air Force has held firm in its desire to retire the old Block 20 aircraft—reducing the F-22 fleet from 185 to 153 aircraft—for several years.

“We’ll comply with the law, obviously, but we’re putting those F-22s back on the table in order to fit in the other things we think are higher priority,” Kendall said

That includes the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform, the replacement for the F-22, service officials say.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Casillas, 325th Maintenance Squadron crew chief, conducts pre-flight procedures prior to launching an F-22 Raptor at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, March 29, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Tiffany Del Oso

The F-15EX, a modernized version of the venerable fourth-generation fighter, has been in a state of flux for several years now. The service initially planned to purchase 144 as an advanced fourth-generation replacement for the old F-15C/Ds. But now the service says it will buy 18 more in 2025 then end production, capping the fleet at 98.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, a 2023 law that capped the defense budget at a 1 percent rise, limited the service’s resources. The Department of Defense is also enacting a 4.5 percent pay raise for service members and a 2 percent pay raise for civilians, in addition to other benefits increases.

“We’re modernizing to the extent we can under the caps as the Federal Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Kendall said. “We’ve made some adjustments in procurement and we’re going to fund some additional modernization, research, and development, so that’s the overarching picture.”

A low-rate initial production of seven T-7A Red Hawk trainers is funded, which will help alleviate the aging T-38 fleet, which has been increasingly hard to maintain to keep training flying hours up, though the T-7 has faced significant delays. The Air Force also plans to procure 15 KC-46 Pegasus tankers to replace 16 1950s-era KC-135s it plans to divest in 2025. The service continues to move forward with its long-term plan to bring in the Next Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS), with investments in the program office to develop the future tanker. “We will work to define and finalize an acquisition strategy this year,” for NGAS, Greiner told reporters.

After Recruiting Shortfall, USAF Cuts End Strength Goal, Boosts Bonus Funds in ’25

March 11, 2024 | By David Roza

The Air Force is trimming its end strength goal by 8,000 Airmen in fiscal year 2025 after the service could not meet its previous recruiting goals, while upping the Space Force by 400 Guardians, according to budget documents released March 11.

The budget proposal would cut the end strengths from last year’s request by:

4,700 Airmen from the Active-Duty Air Force, to an end strength of 320,000

700 Airmen from the Air National Guard for an end strength of 107,700

2,600 Airmen from the Air Force Reserves for an end strength of 67,000.

Meanwhile, the Space Force would increase by 400 Guardians to an end strength of 9,800. The 400 additional Guardians are “largely driven by inter-service transfers,” according to budget documents.

According to budget documents, the shrinking end strength “is driven by a net reduction in legacy force structure requirements along with an increase in future force structure requirements.” Specifically, the Air Force seeks to retire sizable numbers of A-10 attack jets, F-15, F-16, and F-22 fighters, and KC-135 refueling tankers. But an Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine the drop has more to do with recent recruiting challenges.

The fiscal 2024 budget request called for 324,700 Active-Duty Airmen, 108,400 Air National Guardsmen, and 69,600 Air Force Reservists. But as the service struggled to attract new Airmen and failed to reach those numbers, Congress responded by trimming the authorized end strengths in its 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, closer to where the service actually was.

“The FY25 end strength funding request will provide funding for the number of Airmen we realistically believe we can bring into the Air Force this year,” Maj. Kaitlin Holmes said.

The Air Force’s overall military personnel (MILPERS) request for fiscal 2025 will go up roughly 2 percent, to $41.7 billion. The Space Force MILPERS request is about $1.2 billion, roughly $49 million more than last year’s request.

One notable part of that MILPERS account is the request for $1.1 billion in Air Force bonuses and retention programs for 118,000 critical positions. Both figures are major increases over last year’s request, when the service sought $648 million for 65,000 critical positions.

The $1.1 billion includes $327 million for aviation and $21 million for cyber retention programs. It also funds $91 million in initial enlistment recruitment bonuses and $10 million in enlisted college loan repayment program, which brought in more than 200 new Airmen from March to September last year.

On the Space Force side, the budget would fund $25 million in selective retention bonuses and initial enlistment bonus, plus another $5.7 million for assignment incentive pay. All of those numbers are marked increases over the 2024 request.

The MILPERS budgets also have proposed raises of 4.5 percent for pay, 4.2 percent for Basic Allowance for Housing, and 3.4 percent for Basic Allowance for Subsistence. Such increases would mark smaller jumps than the previous few years, when inflation led to historic jumps in pay, BAH, and BAS. More recently, inflation has cooled somewhat. In June, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that inflation in the personal consumption expenditures price index would fall from 3.3 percent in 2023 to 2.6 percent in 2024, and 2.2 percent in 2025.

The MILPERS budget increases also include an additional $40 million for the Basic Needs Allowance, targeted toward junior troops struggling with food insecurity. The increase will allow officials to expand eligibility for the program, to troops with income that is 200 percent or less of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, compared to the prior cutoff of 150 percent.

Department of the Air Force documents say the budget “prioritizes $1.3 billion to support our greatest asset, our people, through increased pay and benefits,” but it could come at a cost if the government cannot pass a full budget by April 30—a failure to do so would trigger automatic cuts under the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“We will continue to take care of our people by ensuring military manpower accounts are protected from further reductions under sequestration, but this will exert tremendous pressure on procurement and readiness accounts to absorb the indiscriminate, across-the-board spending cut required under sequestration,” the Department of Defense wrote in its overall budget summary.

Indeed, MILPERS accounts for about 22 percent of the Air Force’s budget in FY24 and FY25, much of which is driven by pay raises mandated by Congress. Even so, the Air Force sometimes comes up short, as it did last summer when inflation, higher-than-expected PCS costs, and retention resulted in the service running out of funding for bonuses and PCS moves, leaving many Airmen and their families in limbo.

“This is a crippling problem,” researchers with the RAND Corporation wrote in a 2023 report. “The workforce is the foundation for readiness, yet the [Department of the Air Force] … must maintain fiscal flexibility to meet other immediate and future needs.”

Better data on the impact of past bonuses and incentive pays, better integration between Air Force policy planners, and “whole of Air Force” policy games for department officials could result in more efficient policies that are less likely to result in a shortfall, RAND senior operations researcher and retired Air Force veteran Lisa Harrington told Air & Space Forces Magazine in January.

“In our reports, we call for bringing those people responsible for human capital policies together to talk about this in one big group, because there are second order effects across all of these policy changes,” she said.