The Air Force says it will not divest its fleet of U-2 Dragon Lady planes in fiscal 2025, despite language to the contrary in the service’s 2021 budget request. Air Force Magazine first reported that the budget submission, unveiled Feb. 10, planned to start retiring the Cold War-era Dragon Ladies in five years, though the service would continue to update the fleet through 2024. But the service said that mentions of divestment in the budget proposal were incorrect. “The Air Force FY ‘21 budget position is to fully fund the U-2 through FY ‘25,” service spokeswoman Laura McAndrews said Feb. 11. U-2 manufacturer Lockheed Martin is looking into the confusion as well.
The combination of an electrical failure and bad weather caused a pilot to eject and an F-16 to crash shortly after taking off from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, in October 2019, the Air Force announced. The pilot survived, but the F-16 was destroyed at a loss of $25.5 million, according to a U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa Accident Investigation Board report released Feb. 11. About 45 seconds after takeoff, the F-16’s power loss caused the jet’s instruments to malfunction, causing “the [pilot] to become spatially disoriented and unable to maintain aircraft control in the weather and at low altitude,” the report states.
The Air Force wants to boost its investment in the Advanced Battle Management System for fiscal 2021, more than doubling funding for the effort to $302.3 million. The uptick reflects the progress researchers are starting to make and leaders’ optimism that the idea will bear increasingly more fruit over the next few years. In 2021, the Air Force hopes to be able to move from demonstrations to concrete lines of effort that deliver the most promising technologies to Airmen.
The European Deterrence Initiative—funding dedicated to building up the U.S. military presence in Europe and improving readiness across the continent—will take a large hit in fiscal 2021 if Pentagon planners get their way. The Defense Department’s budget requests includes $4.5 billion for the EDI, a drop from the $6 billion Congress put in place for fiscal 2020 and the $6.5 billion in 2019. The Air Force has used the fund for base improvements, rotations of theater security packages, training deployments, and positioning materiel in the theater.
The Pentagon is asking $23.1 billion for its military intelligence program in fiscal 2021. That level is nearly flat from its 2020 request, but still the highest since the Pentagon began releasing its MIP topline in 2013. Prior years' toplines show funding has ebbed and waxed, but is now only about 10 percent higher than eight years ago.
