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Schwartz, Donley stand by budget request

The Air Force’s two top leaders aren’t wavering in their support of next year’s defense budget that will buy more unmanned aerial vehicles and fewer fighters.

Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Secretary Michael Donley also will have a much smaller wish list of “unfunded” priorities in fiscal 2010, which Schwartz calls “underfunded” — not unfunded. The Air Force expected to deliver its list to lawmakers May 18.

“We’re not talking about new starts and things that are not in the budget, but things that need to be accelerated or robusted for some good cause,” Schwartz told reporters at a Thursday roundtable with Donley.

For example, Schwartz said, the Air Force wants to buy a vehicle-mounted communications system that it is now leasing.

The service deployed the Air Support Operations Center Gateway last year. The system directly connects joint tactical air controllers, ASOC and pilots through satellite connections. A JTAC sends airstrike coordinates digitally to the gateway, which in turn relays the coordinates to ASOC and the pilot.

“This is one of those capabilities that is currently a leased platform,” he said. “We will buy and we will expand by one or two.”

Last year, then-Secretary Michael Wynne and then-Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley fought with Defense Secretary Robert Gates over an $18.7 billion unfunded wish list that included $600 million for four F-22 fighters, which the service received.

Reporters again grilled Schwartz and Donley about many of the programs that their service saw cut when the budget was released May 7.

The men, however, stood firm in their support of Gates’ budget.

“This is a way forward that makes sense for our Air Force,” Donley said.

What Donley and Schwartz touched on:

C-17

Not buying more C-17s after 2010 isn’t a sign the Air Force is turning its back on strategic airlift — fixing more C-5s is just a more affordable alternative, Schwartz and Donley said.

The Air Force will have 205 C-17s after 2010. With 111 C-5s, the service will have 316 large cargo aircraft — 16 more than what a 2005 independent analysis estimated the service needs, Schwartz said.

However, maintenance on these aging aircraft has already become a major problem, especially for the C-5, said retired Gen. John Handy, former head of U.S. Transportation Command.

“Shutting the line down on the C-17 and ending production says you’ve got what you’ve got and now we go into a significant maintenance mode,” Handy said. “That’s going to cost us some money in the near term as well as long term.”

But the Air Force’s leaders said they are confident the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-Engineering Program is stable and will replenish the aircraft’s numbers. The program replaces the C-5’s four engines along with other upgrades at a cost of $145 million per aircraft. A new C-17 costs taxpayers $202 million.

“There are more cost-effective alternatives for the taxpayers than buying more C-17s,” Donley said. “So buying more C-17s to increase strategic airlift capability was about fourth or fifth on the list of things to do.”

Schwartz also said a U.S. Transportation Command study on mobility capability requirements due this fall will show that mobility aircraft demands will shift.

“I would just simply say that too much aluminum is almost as bad as not enough,” he said

F-22 and F-35

By far, the biggest budget change in the Air Force acquisition strategy is capping the F-22 advanced stealth fighter at 187.

Schwartz and Donley penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post stating the Air Force is fine with the cut in the program.

Before Gates’ April announcement capping the program, the Air Force wanted 243 of the fighters.

Schwartz said the 60 additional planes would cost $13 billion. So far, there has been little resistance to the cuts on Capitol Hill.

The Defense Department will buy 2,443 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that will be spread across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. In the next five years, the Air Force plans to get “350 or in that neighborhood,” Schwartz said.

But in the fiscal 2010 budget, the Air Force will get three fewer planes than originally planned. Though the buy for the F-35 went up by a few planes, the Air Force will receive only 10. Eventually, the Defense Department wants maker Lockheed Martin to produce “not less than 80 per year when we hit full-rate production,” Schwartz said.

Donley and Schwartz, though, wouldn’t say where the F-35s would be stationed. The first F-35s will go to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to be tested.

The discussion over the future of the American fighter is far from over, though. Both leaders said Gates asked them to start the pursuit of a sixth-generation fighter.

Joint Cargo Aircraft

The Air Force will take over the C-27 program from the Army in a deal that was worked out between the services, Schwartz said. The services had been set to split 78 — 40 for the Army, 38 for the Air Force. Now, the Air Force will still get 38; funding for the Army’s 40 has been cut.

This year, the Air Force will spend $328.5 million to acquire eight of the cargo planes. The planes will be bound for duty in Afghanistan, where the Army said its heavy-lift helicopters are overburdened.

Also, the gunship variant of the plane planned for Special Operations Command was axed.