The Air Force’s share of the $26 billion “Opportunity, Growth, and Security” initiative—an add-on to the defense budget being proposed with the Fiscal 2015 budget—would be $7 billion “if we get it,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Wednesday. Should the money come through, it would be directed to aircraft modifications, facilities repair, training range improvements, and “other modernization items,” James told attendees at a Bloomberg budget conference in Washington, D.C. It’s iffy, though: USAF only gets the money “if Congress passes offsets” from taxes and other programs to make the funds available, she said. Last week, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told reporters that it was still being decided whether to give Congress an unfunded priorities list. He said if one service did it, “we all will,” or no one will.
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.