The Air Force’s plan to add roughly 4,000 active-duty airmen next fiscal year could be nixed or even reversed if Congress passes a yearlong stop-gap spending bill, said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James.
The service's active-duty end strength currently stands at 308,016, according to the Air Force Personnel Center's website. Since fiscal 2006, the Air Force has shed 53,000 airmen, of whom 44,000 were active-duty airmen.
James and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh have acknowledged that the end-strength cuts have left the Air Force too small, and that is why the service's proposed fiscal 2016 budget would increase active-duty end strength from this year's planned level of 312,980 to 317,000.
But that plan is in jeopardy because Congress is considering passing a continuing resolution, which would fund the government at fiscal 2015 current spending levels for all of fiscal 2016. Meanwhile, Congress has not lifted the sequestration cuts to defense spending that went into effect in 2013.
"A full-year CR [continuing resolution] would provide for our Air Force, really for our military, even less money than the sequestration-level budget would provide," James told reporters on Monday.
Congress had granted the military services a temporary relief from sequestration, but those budget cuts are slated to return next fiscal year unless lawmakers take action. In February, the Air Force warned that it may have to cut a total of 10,000 active-duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve airmen under sequestration spending levels.
"Further reductions would leave us with a team that has an incomplete roster, that is too small to meet a demanding schedule, and allows little time to practice and provides no down time," Maj. Gen. James Martin, Air Force deputy assistant secretary for budget, said at a Feb. 2 news briefing. "Our airmen deserve better than that."
Asked at Monday's briefing if the Air Force would have to cut end strength if Congress passes a yearlong continuing resolution, James said, "I don't believe so," but she could not rule it out entirely.
"We would be stressing the importance of not taking this out of our people," James said. "But ... as I mentioned, we'd be significantly down in terms of our dollars of where we need to be, and so everything would have to be looked at. I, for one, would argue against end-strength reductions, but we certainly wouldn't get the increases."
Personnel cuts have left the Air Force vastly undermanned, with airmen frequently having to work more than 12-hour days to keep pace with the workload. Congress has refused to approve the Defense Department's request to close unused military bases, preventing the Air Force from being able to consolidate the small force that it has.
Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass appropriations bills a National Defense Authorization Act for next fiscal year. When Congress returns from recess next month, other issues, such as efforts to de-fund Planned Parenthood and a possible government shutdown, are expected to drown out any legislation related to defense spending.
Under a yearlong continuing resolution, the Air Force would be "stuck in many, many ways," James said.
"Which is why, once again, we are calling upon Congress to lift sequestration and get us these bills as quickly as possible," she said.
Air Force active-duty end-strength fluctuations since its inception in 1947:
1947: 305,827
1955: 959,946
2006: 352,620
2015: 312,980 planned
2016: 317,000 requested
