Foundation Forum
The Honorable F. Whitten Peters
Acting Secretary of the Air Force
AFA Air Warfare Symposium (Orlando, FL)
February 5, 1999
"Today’s
Challenges — Tomorrow’s Vision: Positioning the EAF For the 21st
Century"
It's really great to be down in Florida. Now let me say, at the
beginning, how much we in the Air Force appreciate what Congressman
Cliff Stearns and the Air Force Caucus are doing. They are really true
friends, and I think it's very, very important that we have this caucus,
and I really applaud what he is doing to help us.
So today I want to talk about budget, but before that I want to talk
about kind of the setting in which we find ourselves. Let me tell you a
little bit about what I have learned this year.
I've learned that AFA is a wonderful organization that does great
work for our Air Force, and through the Aerospace Education Foundation
for our young men and women and their families. I cannot say thank you
often enough for these contributions to the Air Force.
I have also been on the road for well over the TDY standard that we
try to keep in the Air Force and have had a chance to look first-hand at
our forces, our facilities, and, most importantly of all, at our people.
And let me assure you that although our planes may be old and some of
our facilities are in need of repair, the talent, dedication, patriotism
and spirit of our people every day transforms those forces and
facilities into the most competent and powerful aerospace force the
world has ever known.
From Korea, to Guam, to the Continental United States, to Bosnia, to
Southwest Asia, and every point in between, the determination, skill and
pride of our people in their daily jobs and in our Air Force makes all
the difference.
As Secretary Cohen told the House just earlier this week, "In
support of our strategy, America's armed forces continue to excel in the
multitude of missions given them. From Desert Storm to Desert Fox, our
forces have performed with skill and precision. Around the globe our
uniformed men and women are operating with high effectiveness, training
hard, keeping our weapons and systems in good order, and mastering all
the other essentials of our defense strategy."
In the speeches I've given over the last year, I've often recounted
the story of how General George Marshall, when asked the secret of how
America's armed forces won World War II, answered, "Darn good
kids," and I am happy to report that the secret that won World War
II remains alive and well today in every corner of the Air Force.
Like many of you, I consider myself very fortunate to serve alongside
so many outstanding young men and women in uniform, and because of that
privilege, I believe it is my highest obligation to make the Air Force
the kind of institution that can attract and retain darn good kids
today, tomorrow, and throughout the 21st century.
For this reason, I'd like to focus on what your Air Force and DoD
leadership is trying to do on behalf of today's generation of darn good
kids, and for the generations that will inherit the decisions we are
making today.
Today we stand on the threshold of the first sustained long-term
increase in defense spending in 14 years. This increase reflects
extraordinary work by the President, by Secretary Cohen, General
Shelton, General Ryan, and the other chiefs-of-staff. The budget we have
submitted for fiscal year 2000 will permit real gains for our people,
for readiness, and for modernization.
We did not get all we wanted, and we did not get all we needed, but
we got a fair share of what was available within the balanced budget
caps. There is no question that the glass is more than half full, not
half empty.
In a few minutes I will walk you through some of the budget details,
focusing on what we did with the increase in defense spending. But
before enumerating that good news, I want to discuss with you the
difficulties and challenges that lie ahead for the Air Force.
Let me start with some facts of life. Later this year we will
commemorate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Obviously, our national security environment has changed
dramatically since the end of the Cold War. Global containment has
yielded to global engagement. As the world's only super power, our
reward from winning the Cold War has been accepting the sometimes lonely
mantle of leadership with a force capable of projecting power and
bringing hope to regional hot spots throughout countless peace-keeping,
humanitarian, and disaster relief missions.
During the first quarter of the 21st century our children
and grandchildren will inherit a world characterized in the extremes by
exponential changes in technology in the industrial and
information-oriented societies and a rising tide of unmet economic and
political expectations from the so-called Third World.
Now the Director of Central Intelligence recently captured this
dichotomy. Earlier this week, on the Hill, he testified that,
"Today, we must still deal with terrorists, insurgents, and others
who have hundreds of years of history fueling their causes, but chances
are they will be using laptop computers, sophisticated encryption, and
weaponry their predecessors could not even have imagined."
This fundamental demographic tension will be the backdrop against
which a wide array of threats emerge. In the future we must anticipate
regional powers threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction, as
well as trans-national amorphous threats posed by religious and ethnic
disputes, illegal drugs, terrorism, cyber-warfare, and a host of other
possibilities. As we look ahead, the only certainty is that future
threats will be uncertain, unpredictable and unconventional.
To complete this witch's brew, there will be human catastrophes, some
caused by man and some caused by nature, but all calling out through
instantaneous and pervasive global communications for our attention and
charitable response.
But while bipolar tensions have receded, we are still using many of
the weapons systems and force structures designed to win the cold war,
some designed, in our case, over half a century ago. And we're using
these to meet the current small scale contingency operations that have
been a hallmark of the peace we have had since the Berlin Wall fell.
While day-to-day life in the Air Force is marked by responding to
contingencies short of major theater war, and to varied humanitarian
crises, we have, until recently, shaped our forces in size, composition
and geographic location to meet two major theater wars, even though it
has become increasingly apparent that the demands of peace are, in many
ways, more stressing than the demands of two major theater wars.
Just as no one could have predicted the end of the Cold War, we
cannot predict the future with any degree of certainty. There are,
however, some data points that we need to chart our way.
First, as General Ryan mentioned yesterday, we now have in our
inventory more than 75 percent of all aircraft that we will use for the
next 25 to 40 years. This includes all of our strategic lifters, all of
our tankers, and all of our bombers. Therefore aging aircraft will
continue to be a significant planning, technical and budget challenge.
The same can be said for our strategic missile forces, which we are
upgrading to last well into the next century.
In doing this, we must avoid what Jaque Gansler has called "a
death spiral in modernization," as the cost of operating older
systems siphons away the very funds we need to modernize our systems to
avoid those very same rising costs.
Second, for as far as the eye can see, today's global engagement has
created chronic shortages of Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance (ISR) assets, strategic airlift and tankers, and
satellite communications. Our existing assets are much more satisfactory
for executing two major theater wars where there is a massing of forces
in two locations than for executing small scale contingency missions or
humanitarian operations in several theaters all at the same time.
Yet while we acknowledge the likelihood that contingency operations
will continue well into the next century, we do not yet have a
compelling road map for solving these shortages, nor, indeed, the funds
that would allow us to do so.
In particular, we are just now coming to grips with new space systems
and unmanned aerial vehicles that may be the way ahead for global
surveillance, and with commercial space-based communications that may
solve band width shortages. We are also just now exploring, through the
Discoverer II Program, the possibility of moving airborne systems like
the JSTARS to space so that theater coverage can be expanded to
full-time, real-time global surveillance everywhere on the earth.
At the same time, we have funded one additional JSTARS aircraft in
our FY 2000 program, bringing the total to 14. Whether 14 or 19 is the
ultimate size of the JSTARS fleet, it is already apparent that no
affordable fleet size will provide JSTARS capability everywhere our
CINCs would like to operate this asset. If we tried to meet CINC
demands, the OPTEMPO imposed on JSTARS’ crews and their families would
be merciless and unsustainable.
Third, our current operating tempo, while required by our national
security strategy of global engagement, is not sustainable in the long
run without dramatic changes in the way we organize for peacetime
missions. When we poll airmen leaving our Service, the volume and
unpredictability of temporary duty assignments always ranks at the top
of the reasons for leaving the Air Force.
EAF, which I hope by now has been fully explained to everyone's
satisfaction, should fix this for those forces assigned to EAFs. But as
good as the EAF plan is -- and I think it is truly an extraordinarily
good plan -- it is a journey and a vision, not an end state that we will
complete on January 1 of 2000. Nor will EAF solve all of our OPTEMPO
problems, since it does not cover our critical low density, high demand
assets, like the AWACS and U-2, or our strategic lift assets. And
indeed, at the moment, one of our most stressed systems is the C-17, our
newest airlifter.
Today, a combination of noncompetitive pay, redux retirement, high
OPTEMPO, and a robust civilian economy is draining away many of our most
talented first, second, and indeed career enlisted airmen. We think EAF
bonuses and our pay triad will reverse this trend, but it is much too
early to tell.
Fourth, we have a chronic and growing shortage of pilots, as well as
skilled enlisted airmen. In FY 2000, we will not have enough pilots to
simultaneously man our staffs at minimal required levels, fill our
cockpits at required levels, and produce 1,100 experienced pilots per
year.
We now see that we must reduce the demand for pilots at the same time
as we increase supply to 1,100 pilots per year in the year 2000. And
later this spring we will have a worldwide conference to try to sort out
how we can do this. But even in the best case, it is now clear we will
be operating with fewer pilots and with less experience for much of the
next decade.
I tell you these things not to depress you, but to impress you with
the seriousness of this moment in Air Force history. For 14 years, we
have done more with less because the spirit and patriotism of our people
have allowed us this luxury, but we now have reached the point where
spirit and patriotism can no longer conquer fatigue, family separation,
and noncompetitive pay and benefits. We have reached the point where
dramatic steps must be taken to fix what is broken and we are talking
those steps: first, in the creation of the EAF, and, second, in the
improvements made in the fiscal year 2000 budget.
You have heard much about EAF, and I would only add that
fundamentally the EAF makes sense because it allows us to size, shape
and equip the force for long-term sustained peacetime operations across
the spectrum of warfare even though we cannot know today precisely what
those operations will be.
With that, let me turn to some of the specifics of the budget,
focusing on what we did with the additional budget authority.
I will try to cover how DoD fared in the budget; what the Air Force
got; and what it plans to do with its share.
Secretary Cohen testified this week that, at the DoD level, there is
a plus-up of approximately $112 billion over the FYDP. We are very
grateful to the President for working with Secretary Cohen and the
chiefs to come up with this result.
Out of that 112 billion, roughly 30 billion comes in the direction of
the Air Force. In FY 2000, the gain is roughly 12 billion and it's
composed of 4.1 billion of new top line, $3.8 billion of savings from
lower inflation in fuel costs, $1.6 billion of recisions of prior year
appropriations, and $3.1 billion of advance appropriations in the MILCON
(military construction) account.
Let me just say a couple of things about this. I am not a budget
expert, and therefore I can't say much about this technically, but let
me tell you that the adjustment for inflation in fuel costs is a
standard step in the budgeting process used by all recent
administrations, and what is significant here is that unlike the past
year where these savings were distributed throughout the President's
budget, they have been kept within DoD. The advance appropriation and
recisions are somewhat unusual, but they were used to provide DoD
additional funds without breaking the balanced budget caps that still
apply to the fiscal year 2000 budget.
It is my understanding that if there is to be more money for defense
-- and I understand that many people want to do that and we, of course,
would be happy to take all contributions -- there will have to be an
adjustment of the balanced budget agreement presently in place. That is
a big deal because the balanced budget, I think we can all agree, has
brought us an unparalleled period of prosperity and one that we would
not lightly give up.
There is a 4.4 percent real growth in the DoD top line over the next
6 years. This contrasts to the past 14 years of flat or negative real
growth.
Over the next six years, the Air Force will do slightly better than
DoD as a whole, with 7.3 percent real growth. For those of you who are
not budget experts, this “blue” top line refers to the Air Force top
line, less the intelligence and health program elements over which the
Air Force has no control.
Budget shares among the Services are largely unchanged, except at the
defense-wide level, and there we are beginning to see some of the
effects of the restructuring of OSD, which Secretary Cohen and Secretary
Hamry have conducted over the last year with a reduction at the OSD
level and a redistribution of funds to the three Services.
As in years past, our priorities remain people, readiness, and
modernization. But for the first time this year, we have thought it
important and useful to break out infrastructure as a separate category.
In fact, when we say "people, readiness, and modernization,"
we mean to imply by that a prioritization in that we fund people first,
then readiness, then modernization, all while trying to keep a balanced
program.
As General Ryan testified last September, the Air Force program
needed $5 billion in FY '00 over and above the pay, retirement
increases, and internally generated savings that we were able to
produce. We got roughly half of that. As a result, we had to prioritize
the $2˝ billion we did receive over and above pay and retirement
increases. We did this through the Air Force corporate process, which
resulted in a prioritized list of requirements, indeed, it is a
spreadsheet, one to 500.
At each step in that list, we attempted to create a program that will
allow us to execute the EAF reorganization and deal with the problems
I've just outlined, all in a delicately balanced approach, and that is
key. We have tried to balance this so we can execute the EAF program and
we can deal with all of the key readiness and sustainment concerns we
have. We've not been able to do them all, but we have tried to deal with
those which are key in a balanced fashion.
I think everybody is in heated agreement that fixing recruiting and
retention by fixing pay, pay tables, and redux retirement is the highest
priority, but there is more to quality of life than pay and retirement.
Quality of life also includes quality housing, a secure and safe home,
child development centers, excellent medical care, an adequate work
environment. And importantly, in an Air Force that thrives on doing a
job with pride and excellence, quality of life also means equipment that
works reliably, and the spare parts to keep it working so that our men
and women can do the work they do so well.
In summary, we crafted this budget to complement our EAF
reorganization, with a goal of ensuring that the Air Force can sustain
itself during peacetime operations. With EAF and this budget, we address
as best we can: pay, retirement, OPTEMPO, readiness, and spare parts
shortages. This covers the top items on everyone's hit list of why you
should leave the Air Force. Because the budget is constrained, we took
risks where we thought we could afford to do so, specifically in the
area of infrastructure, which fell below the cut line on our prioritized
list.
So we spent the additions for ‘00 in People Programs ($0.9
billion); Readiness ($1.1 billion); Modernization ($1.4 billion); and
Infrastructure ($0.1 billion). For FY ’00-’05, the figures are
(respectively) $11.5; $6.6; $9.7; and $2.2. In total, we had $3˝
billion more in FY '99 than we had initially anticipated. Of that 3˝
billion, 400 million was generated within the Air Force, and 600 million
was devoted to our triad of pay initiatives. When you take the 400 and
600 away from the 3.5 billion, you have the $2˝ billion figure that
General Ryan has used, and I have used today.
With respect to people: people are our highest enduring priority. We
must ensure that we can recruit, train and retain the very best airmen
in the world. In recent years, however, our pay scales have become
noncompetitive and retirement moved from an incentive to stay in the Air
Force to one of the top reasons cited for leaving the Air Force.
Even in a vibrant economy, however, recent exit surveys show that one
in three airmen would have stayed with us if retirement were returned to
50 percent, and one in two would stay with us if pay were more
competitive. Our highest priority therefore was to fund this triad of a
4.4 percent pay increase, pay table reform, and a return to the 50
percent retirement benefit.
The pay table reform targets mid-level enlisted airmen and junior to
mid-level officers with significant additional raises above 4.4 percent,
in some cases, up to a total of just under 10 percent. In the FY '00
budget, we also funded a paid television advertising campaign for
recruiting for the first time in Air Force history.
This is important because while we barely made our recruiting goals
in 1998, we have missed those goals in the first three months of fiscal
year 1999. In fact, this is a serious enough concern that General Ryan
and I have directed the reprogramming of funds in the current fiscal
year to begin paid television advertising during the NCAA basketball
tournament this March.
We also have added some funding for medical care. We have expanded
enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses to roughly four times what they
were just a year-and-a-half ago, and in the out years, we were able to
increase funding for repairs to family housing.
Readiness remains a very big challenge. As General Ryan discussed
yesterday, overall readiness is down about 18 percent since 1996. During
that same period, our CONUS-based assets in Air Combat Command have gone
down 56 percent. Our overall cannibalization rates have increased more
than 100 percent since 1995, and our mission capable rates have declined
9.3 percent since their peak rate in fiscal year '91, during the Gulf
War.
Some of the downturn in readiness is attributable to inadvertent
under-funding of spare parts in fiscal year 1997, which has put us
behind in catching up with the increasing costs of operating an aging
fleet.
For example, we estimate that age-related factors alone have
increased spare parts costs by $750 million in 1998 and 1999 combined.
Cost increases in industry and our depot and supply system have driven
costs up $2˝ billion in total during this same period of time. To put
that number in perspective, $2˝ billion equates to something over 10
new C-17 aircraft.
Over and above the $2˝ billion in increases in spares and repairs
that are in our base budget this year, we have added $300 million in FY
'00 to ensure that we have 100 percent funding for all of the spares
requirements that go with our flying hours. And on top of that, we have
added another $223 million in the modernization accounts for new engines
and engine modules and redesigned engine parts. We have a significant
engine problem. Engines age, and we need to fix the aging and bring the
engines back up to the readiness levels we need.
That is a lot of money for parts, and we are worried. Because parts
aren't as interesting as whole airplanes or whole rockets, we may lose
this funding on Capitol Hill. Therefore a key theme on the Hill, and one
on which I have pressed Congressman Stearns hard, will be our need to
refurbish our aging systems by adequately funding spare parts,
redesigned parts, and replacement parts for our aging aircraft fleet.
We have also, importantly, added funding for our combat ranges and
critical readiness training so that we can get the training we're going
to need with EAF. We have a spin-up training period for each EAF. It is
important that we do that training in connection with things like Red
Flag and other operations which bring units together, so that as we go
into EAF, training is important, and we have now funded some of the
lapses we've had in our training base.
But we have also spent or programmed money to fix our critical bare
base equipment, much of which is as old, or older, than our airplanes.
In fact, in many bases in this country today, if you go into a shelter
you are likely to see it dates to the Vietnam era.
In addition, we have used fiscal year '99 plus-ups to add money into
depot maintenance, and we will continue to put additional funds into
depot maintenance to stabilize and hopefully cut back the depot
maintenance backlog.
And finally, one other aspect I want to talk about is tech orders.
You know, tech orders may seem terribly mundane, but it is an area that
has been critically and chronically under-funded for years, and it has
become a must fix item if we are to keep our systems in proper flying
order.
On modernization, our top priorities continue to be the F-22 Raptor,
which will ensure 21st century air dominance, allowing our
forces to leverage the three key freedoms that General Ryan discussed
yesterday; freedom from attack, freedom to maneuver, and freedom to
attack. The F-22 is fully funded in our base budget. Likewise, the
airborne laser is a key priority. It will help underwrite aerospace
superiority by merging several revolutionary technologies to field the
nation's premier theater missile defense capability.
Because of a congressional cut in fiscal year '99, we are
restructuring the Airborne Laser (ABL) program with additional testing
and risk reduction in fiscal year '00, and a slip in initial operational
capability of about a year. But this is truly a heartbreaker because ABL
was one of the few Air Force programs that was on schedule, on budget,
and meeting or exceeding all performance requirements. The ABL program
was fully funded in the base budget.
We also funded the C-17 multi-year aircraft program in the base
budget, and, we were able to add 14 additional aircraft out of at least
15 that we think will be needed at the end of the current production
run.
Additional funds have also allowed us to continue modernizing our
global mobility assets. This is important, and I want to talk about it
for a second. As General Ryan said yesterday, we are fully funding the
Pacer-Crag upgrade for the KC-135, which brings its cockpit into the 21st
century. We are also funding global air navigation system and global air
traffic management system upgrades on all of our mobility platforms.
Just a week ago, we awarded the first of several C-5 contracts. This
one, C-5 Avionics Modernization, will give the C-5 computer horsepower
that is 21st century. Starting almost immediately, we will
begin the engineering work necessary to award contracts to re-engine the
C-5 and to make other important modifications to this aircraft, which is
truly a national asset.
Our war plans require us to have C-5s running at a 75 percent mission
capable rate. It is running today in the 60 percent area. The fixes that
we propose, our experts tell us, should bring us up well above 75
percent.
And later this year we will be awarding the first of several phases
of our C-130 modernization program, which will create a common cockpit
electrical and hydraulic configuration for all of our C-130s, less
approximately 150 really old ones which will be retired and hopefully
replaced by the C-130J.
The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) funding is an adjustment
to funding in the base budget to reflect a slightly different funding
profile that arose upon contract award. EELV is fully funded and is a
critical program. It shows the best of acquisition reform.
In addition to a $1 billion investment by your Air Force, Lockheed
Martin and Boeing are each investing $1 billion in their competing EELV
systems. We will soon have an extremely cost effective system that will
be provided to us as a launch service on a commercial basis in the same
fashion it is provided to commercial customers. It will lift off Air
Force launch pads leased to Boeing and Lockheed Martin at both Cape
Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB.
This is clearly the way of the future for expendable launch in space.
It is our hope that it will bring back the expendable launch market to
the United States and further cut our costs as we continue to be a space
ferrying Air Force.
Finally, I should say one brief word about bomber upgrades. Bomber
upgrades are fully funded in the base budget. Those upgrades were
intended to bring back the B-1 fleet from a nuclear role to a
conventional role, to make the B-2 to be a better and more operable and
lower cost aircraft to operate. Key changes and upgrades to the B-52 are
also included. We are also fully funding the procurement of precision
guided weapons that are necessary for the bomber platforms and which
multiply their effectiveness 10 to 100 fold. They are also operable in
all of our modern fighter jets.
We also used additional funds to buy 30 modern F-16 aircraft over the
course of the FYDP. These aircraft will be equipped with a HARM
targeting system for SEAD. This fills a shortfall in the EAF. Fielding
of these aircraft will also allow us to modernize the Air Guard F-16
fleet, while keeping 15 primary aircraft in each Guard F-16 Squadron.
This is long overdue. It has been a very difficult thing for us to
do. When we did the Quadrennial Defense Review, we assumed we would take
active duty force structure and move it into the Guard. We have been
unable to do that without a Base Realignment and Closure Commission
process. The Guard aircraft are 4,000 hour airframes, most of which have
4,400 hours on them or more. It is long time that we modernize that
fleet, and we're going to do it by moving the new Block 50s into the
active force and moving upgrade Block 30s with precision targeting pods,
which are also on the plus-up list.
The Precision Attack Targeting System line is on the plus-up list.
And we'll be moving those into the Guard as we get the new aircraft on
board. We're buying 10 in 2000. We couldn't afford to do it in '01, but
we'll buy 10 in '02 and 10 in '03.
I think this is a win/win/win buy. The EAF needs SEAD aircraft to
make sure it has balanced AEFs. We get a new multi-role capability for
the Air Guard, which is absolutely essential as we call on the Air Guard
more and more to help us in our day-to-day peacetime operations. We give
the Air Guard upgraded aircraft capable of using the precision weapons,
which are quickly becoming the way we want to do contingency operations,
and, at the same time, these aircraft fill out the attrition reserve
fleet, which has been low for a number of years.
We have used additional funds to restore the Polar Extra High
Frequency Program, which provides enduring and secure communications for
nuclear platforms operating over and under the poles.
And also we have added funds to the Space-Based Laser line. Let me
say a few words about this. Last year we were working on fielding
something called the Space-Based Laser Readiness Demonstrator.
After a review by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and by
OSD, a decision was made that the laser demonstrator, which used
basically near-term technology with a launch in the '06 to '08 time
frame, did not really provide a path to a future system. And because of
that, it was necessary to restructure the program, and we’re looking
to a flight experiment, in the 2010 to 2012 time frame.
In restructuring this program, we have moved the technology and the
demonstrator closer to what might be the ultimate technology and have
synchronized the program with work being done by NASA and the National
Reconnaissance Office in the field of deployable optics. The BMDO
Independent Review Team, chaired by General Larry Welch, has recently
endorsed this new approach.
Infrastructure is the not-so- good news. Let me start by talking
about the good part. Across the Air Force we are building 3,500 new or
renovated family houses. We will cut the ribbon on 22 new or renovated
child care centers, and we'll convert all of our permanent party
dormitories with gang latrines to the DoD one-plus-one standard. About
one-third of our Military Construction (MILCON) budget is devoted to
these quality of life improvements.
We used additional funds to buy back cuts in our MILCON program which
had driven MILCON (which is already at a historic low before
congressional adds) to an even lower level. We also funded some must-pay
bills for renovation of the Pentagon, and some up-front costs of
studying how we should privatize about 400 utility systems.
Now as I've said, we ran out of money before we ran out of useful
things we could do in infrastructure. As a result, in fiscal years '00
and '01, we will replace real property at the rate of once every 300
years, against an industry standard of replacement once every 50 years,
and against once every 200 years, which was our pace only two years ago.
We were also unable to increase Base Operating and Support (BOS)
funds which provide the glue that our wing commanders need to keep bases
operating throughout the year. As a result, BOS has funded somewhere
around 70 percent of requirements, and that is going to soon become a
very critical problem.
We had to take risks somewhere and we took that risk in
infrastructure support. If Congress were to give us additional funds, we
would probably put them against infrastructure in the first instance,
and then follow it with a balanced program in other areas.
So in summary I think you can see that the President has really
worked with Secretary Cohen and with the Joint Chiefs to fund our
critical requirements. In my view, the glass is definitely more than
half full. The Chief and I believe that the combination of EAF and these
budget initiatives will stop the decline in readiness by addressing the
four most critical sustainment issues in the Air Force: pay, retention,
OPTEMPO, and aging equipment.
It is now critically important for Congress to pass these
initiatives. As I have discussed with Congressman Stearns, as Congress
considers these initiatives, it is absolutely essential that it leaves
us with a balanced program. In that regard, let me echo Secretary Cohen
on one further point. DoD would be very pleased to see better pay and
benefits for our men and women than those we have proposed, but only if
Congress can fund those initiatives with additional budget authority,
and not at the expense of readiness and modernization funds that are
equally important to quality of life and readiness and ultimately to the
sustainment of the Air Force into the 21st century.
Gen. Shaud: Thanks for a great, comprehensive briefing. Sir,
the first question. As you know, we've been focusing on AEF. As you've
looked at this budget, are there enough resources to fully fund 10 AEFs?
Mr. Peters: I think the answer is yes. We are obviously still
working that, and we know in the area of F-16-CJs, that -- at least in
our current state of planning -- we don't have quite enough of those to
conveniently go around among all the AEFs. But otherwise, EAF is
primarily budget neutral. There are very few budget requirements that
EAF itself drives.
What we've found as we've gone into EAF is it gives us a method for
sizing the Air Force to meet its peacetime requirements. As we've looked
at those peacetime requirements, we see that we do not have adequate
capability in some areas, and SEAD is one of the first we've seen. I'm
sure there will be others.
Gen. Shaud: Sir, with regard to the budget, it looks like
modernization focused on aircraft platforms, and, as you know, the AFA
is heading to the Hill in a week or two, to talk about weapons. Are the
weapons being funded adequately?
Mr. Peters: I believe the answer is yes. I think, we have
funded all of our major modernization programs, such as the Joint Direct
Attack Munition, the Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile, Joint
Stand-Off Weapon, and the wind corrected ammunitions dispenser, to
levels that we need. The one area that we are still working is obviously
Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles. We shot some CALCMs recently,
and we need to work on replenishing that stock. We don’t have a
program to do that yet, but it’s in the works.
Gen. Shaud: Sir, two questions that kind of get at the edges
of the way the budget priorities are developed. First, with regard to
the CINCs. Secretary of Defense Cohen said that the ‘00 budget goes a
long way to meeting needs, but CINCs could use more. You mentioned ISR
assets. What other things are the CINCs talking about?
Mr. Peters: You know, the CINCs are the primary concern I've
seen as we go through quarterly readiness analyses for the two major
theater war scenario. The primary concerns of the CINCs are: ISR assets,
particularly JSTARS and U-2; strategic lift, particularly the difficulty
in fielding the C-5 at the moment with adequate mission capable rates;
and band width for global communications. Those are the areas that they
primarily mention.
Gen. Shaud: Sir, the next question has to do with foreign
military sales, and the question is as follows: what role will foreign
markets play in shaping or dominating what the U.S. Air Force can buy?
Specifically, will the international market be allowed to play in the
technology requirements, or will we have weapons systems strictly bought
for the United States, and wouldn't foreign play make it more
affordable?
Mr. Peters: International sales have always been a very
critical part of Air Force modernization, but, you know, at the moment,
there are not many people who are buying international arms, which is a
very serious problem. We are working several initiatives in that regard.
First, we are working with some of our allies to see if we can't get the
Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) program back up to
appropriate levels. At this point, the worldwide market has dropped
below expectations and we need to work that to keep the AMRAAM an
affordable system.
Second, we are looking at the disclosure issues that have been raised
by international sales, primarily in the area of the software which
drives all of our modern systems. Bob Bauerlein, who, much to my regret,
will be retiring at the end of February, has been working a fairly novel
package through the Pentagon and through the interagency. He’s looking
at ways for us to be able to disclose more software to our allies, but
still protect our important equities in software development and protect
our own assets against foreign use.
Gen. Shaud: Sir, the last question: reflecting on
Representative Stearns' presentation this morning, do you feel the Air
Force gets a fair shot at explaining itself on the Hill?
Mr. Peters: I think the Air Force is taken very seriously.
There are proponents certainly for air and space systems on both the
Senate and House defense committees, and they are very interested to
hear what we have to say and very willing to work with us. I think the
difficulty is that sometimes the program priorities of some of those
advocates of aerospace power don't match up with our priorities.
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