The President’s Fiscal 2014 budget request will be sent to Congress in the next few weeks, but officials at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., last week said it’s basically a house of cards. There is still too much uncertainty about the Fiscal 2013 budget, which Air Force Secretary Michael Donley on Feb. 22 called a “moving target” because Congress has yet to approve it. The devastating across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which are set to kick in on March 1 unless Congress acts, are now a very real possibility. Sequestration calls for some $500 billion in additional cuts to the US military through Fiscal 2021. Donley said the Fiscal 2014 budget request will not “reflect the likely reality of sequestration.” That makes Fiscal 2015 and future planning numbers “very suspect,” he said during his state of the Air Force address at the symposium.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
