Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, said on Tuesday the service is confident it can get to a Fiscal 2015 program objective memorandum that is “within potential reductions, if necessary,” should the budget sequester remain in effect. The challenge, however, is that the Air Force is getting squeezed on both ends, he told AFA’s Nation’s Capital Chapter during a speech in Arlington, Va., on May 14. Because of unfunded gaps in Fiscal 2013, the service now has a bill it will try to pay with a reprogramming—more than $1 billion in obligations, he said. At the same time, it has no visibility into what the budget topline will be for Fiscal 2014, he said. “The big thing for us is we need time going forward,” he said. In addition to ongoing consultation on force structure matters between the Active Duty, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve, Bolton said everything the Air Force does is going to be “racked and stacked” against service core missions and tasks—and what is affordable.
RTX’s Raytheon unit was able to “significantly” extend the range of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile using mostly software changes in experimental tests last year, expanding the reach and lethality of the standard U.S. dogfighting weapon, company officials said Sept. 15.
