The Pentagon rightly has decided it needs to advance the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program to push 3,500 MRAP vehicles into Iraq by the end of the year. To do that, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked Congress to let him reprogram $1.2 billion from various other accounts into the MRAP account. One of those “other” accounts is Air Force depot maintenance. According to news reports, depot maintenance would lose $100 million in 2007 dollars. Yes, that is a small part of the overall $1.2 billion, however, earlier this year, Air Force officials complained of escalating readiness problems and one of the contributing factors was scarce depot maintenance dollars. And, USAF was only able to scrape enough from its 2008 budget request to fund aircraft depot maintenance at 77 percent of required levels.
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
