One solution to the Air Force’s budget dilemma—the one forcing it to sacrifice airmen for aircraft and to defer some critical modernization efforts—is to direct attention to its mobility forces because they are most critical to ground missions, so said Jeremiah Gertler, long-time defense analyst and one of the authors of the Quadrennial Defense Review, at a Heritage Foundation seminar Monday. Gertler, now a defense policy chief with the Aerospace Industries Association, says that Air Combat Command must articulate better how critical its aircraft are to ground forces, but he declared that when it comes to budgetary decision-making time, tactical aircraft do not serve as adequate measures of current and future relevancy. “What matters [are] the trash haulers, the tankers, the logistics forces, and the even less visible” service aspects such as communications and satellites, he said. “It’s a largely untold story, and the more that story comes forward, the better off the Air Force will fare in budget decisions.” So that’s the answer
Members of the House Armed Services Committee say the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile program has been set back three months due to the ongoing government shutdown. The comment is noteworthy because the JATM's status has been kept tightly under wraps.
