The Air Force needs at least $20 billion more each year to fund necessary recapitalization efforts more efficiently and to sustain rising operations and maintenance costs, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told reporters at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington. It is not a new figure. Air Force leaders made this claim earlier this year after they rolled out the 2008 budget request. And, in April, Gen. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, called the $20 billion figure a “useful mark on the wall,” but one he did not expect to get in the current budget climate.
Under a late summer sun, Air Force basic trainees practice safely rearming a retired F-16 Fighting Falcon at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, with mock AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Nearby, a bulldozer levels the ground where the rest of this first new airbase training range will sit.
