Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are scratching their heads over the Air Force’s 2007 unfunded priority list which includes a request for seven additional C-17 airlifters. At a Wednesday House hearing on the budget, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Gen. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, attempted to answer why the service has added seven C-17s to its requirements, making a total of 187, when the 2007 budget shows the production line stopping at 180—a number they maintained would be sufficient. The answer, stated Moseley, is that the “wartime utilization rates” were “unforeseen.”
As the Air Force struggles to ease its pilot shortage, it can still fill all its cockpits, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said June 7. But that has come at the expense of staff jobs normally assigned to pilots, leading the service to reconsider whether those staff…