Carter: Budget Request to Invest in Training, Ranges

The Pentagon’s Fiscal 2017 budget request will begin years of investment in Air Force training, exercises, and range improvements to prepare aircrews for the current fight and for high-level threats, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. The budget request, expected to be released this week, will begin an investment of $1 billion over the next five years for training, Carter said during a Feb. 4 visit to Nellis AFB, Nev. “We have to be ready for it all, and with respect to those future high-end threats, this is the only test range where you can bring it all together—not only all the kinds of aircraft that you see on the ramps out there, but the satellites you don’t see, and the cyber you don’t see,” Carter said. The funding will support at least 34 large-scale exercises, such as Red Flag and Green Flag. “So that’s a tempo of intense activity that is incredibly important, but we’ll use this range to its fullest extent,” Carter said. “And we’re also, by the way, investing in these training ranges so that they will continue in the future to be the very best training ranges.”