The Air Force portion of the Bush Administration’s 2008 budget—to be released today—compels an “unnecessary and unreasonable” decline in the Air Force into the future, a senior service official told reporters in a background briefing Friday. The Air Force plans to embark on a campaign to correct the situation, hoping to persuade both the Defense Department and Congress that it needs an extra $20 billion a year for the next 20 years. Without that additional funding, USAF will inexorably become “a smaller and less capable force,” the official said. (Read more about USAF budget woes below and In More Depth: “How to Break an Air Force.”)
Watch, Read: CSAF Brown on ‘The State of the Air Force’
Sept. 29, 2023
In his last major speech before ascending to the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown delivered a keynote address on “The State of the Air Force,” at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 11, 2023. Watch the video…