Schwartz: ‘Additional tough calls’ coming - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Schwartz: ‘Additional tough calls’ coming

ORLANDO, Fla. — Already forced to cut personnel and aircraft, the Air Force will face more “tough calls” in the future as war funding goes away, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said.

The service also expects to face not one but two rounds of the Base Realignment and Closure process to cut spending on excess infrastructure, Schwartz said Thursday at the Air Fore Association’s annual air warfare symposium.

Schwartz explained that the supplemental funding that the Air Force gets for war operations is expected to go away in fiscal 2014 or shortly thereafter.

The service requested about $14.3 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funding for fiscal 2013 compared with the roughly $16.8 billion in OCO funding appropriated for this fiscal year.

The Air Force will face “significant resourcing challenges” unless “billions of dollars” of that war funding can become part of the service’s base budget, Schwartz said.

“We are in the process of determining which of those functions that were funded by OCO will endure, and therefore whose funding will need to be migrated back at an appropriate level back into the baseline budget,” he said.

As part of a wider Defense Department effort to cut about $500 billion in spending over the next decade, the Air Force plans to cut 9,900 airmen and more than 200 aircraft next fiscal year.

Schwartz called the personnel reductions painful, but necessary. However, he indicated there could be more pain to come.

“These past several years have been fraught with numerous challenges, and with the trajectory that has been set by the Air Force budget, excluding contingency funding. ... We fully expect that we will be making additional tough calls,” he said.

As part of cost savings efforts, the Air Force wants to close bases in 2013 and 2015, Schwartz said.

Congress would need to approve any new closures.

During the last round of base closures in 2005, it was estimated that the Air Force had 20 percent in excess infrastructure. That figure has grown since then.

“We certainly do not need to expend resources, ladies and gentlemen, on infrastructure that is excess to our requirements,” Schwartz said. “If we do that, it means fewer flying hours. It means fewer child care hours. It means pressures on our investment programs that we have to sustain to deal with the fleet aging that we are all so aware of.”

Schwartz was asked if the Air Force fared worse than the other services in getting funding for fiscal 2013.

“I don’t think anyone can deny the fact that the new defense strategic guidance is air and space and cyber power friendly,” he replied. “We just have to posture ourselves in an economic, in an efficient way to fulfill those requirements.”