AURORA, Colo.—Next year’s budget will make fiscal 2027 the “year of restoring our foundational readiness accounts,” Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier promised Feb. 24, investing billions of dollars to fund spare parts, flying hours, facility maintenance, and more.
Lohmeier’s remarks at AFA’s Warfare Symposium are the clearest signal yet that the Air Force will put budgetary oomph behind its new leadership’s focus on ensuring USAF is ready to “fight tonight.”
President Donald Trump has said he will set a topline of $1.5 trillion for defense spending in 2027, a $500 billion plus-up. While officials are still being tight-lipped about how that increase might be divided among the services, the Air Force and Space Force could see tens of billions of extra dollars.
Lohmeier said the lion’s share of that increase will pay for improved Weapons System Sustainment, fully funding the Flying Hours program with parts and fuel, enhancing the Facilities Sustainment Model, and fixing enterprise IT, among other long-festering issues.
“Over half of the increases in funding in the FY ’27 [Program Objective Memorandum] are directed with those foundational readiness accounts,” Lohmeier said. “Think in terms of billions of dollars, not millions of dollars. And if we can get that right away with the field, the right capabilities tonight for the fight, not just for the future.”
These accounts, Lohmeier added, have long been seen as “bill-payers” for other priorities like modernization. That won’t happen next year.
“We tend historically to have a habit—it’s all too tempting to pilfer those accounts to pay the bills, and in the FY ’27 POM at least, we’re aligned as leadership in making sure that we budget appropriately and increase our funding to those accounts,” Lohmeier said.
The upcoming budget will be the first fully formed by Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink, Lohmeier and Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach. When the 2026 budget rolled out last June, Meink was just a few months on the job, Lohmeier was awaiting confirmation, and Wilsbach hadn’t even been nominated.
As those leaders have settled into their jobs, they’ve talked a lot about readiness. Meink said challenges in that area were the biggest surprise of his early tenure and will require a “rebalance” in the department’s approach. Wilsbach has made “fly and fix to fight and win” his mantra, and showcased various Airmen who embodied that during his keynote address at the symposium.
There has already been movement to back that talk up with resources. The Air Force said its 2026 budget request included $37.9 billion for core readiness accounts, an increase of $1.5 billion over 2025 Congress bolstered with another $220 million for F-35 spare parts. And the reconciliation package passed by Congress last summer included $2.1 billion for Air Force spare parts and $2.5 billion for facility “sustainment, restoration, and modernization.”
Meink confirmed during a media roundtable at the symposium that momentum will continue into 2027.
“As the budget rolls out, you’ll see more money devoted to readiness,” he said. “. … “We will see pretty, pretty significant increases in readiness.”
But more money is not the only lever the Air Force pulls to improve readiness. It is also pressing industry to invest more in parts production, something Meink said the service will do by pursuing multiyear procurement deals for spare parts—a strategy already used to incentivize increased munitions production.
“Having a steady demand signal for industry is important, so that they can build up infrastructure and get the parts supply chain spun up to produce those things, is critically important,” Meink said. “The only way to get the benefit of doing that is structuring some of these long-term deals.”
Wilsbach suggested the Air Force can also be more efficient in allocating resources, parts, and maintenance manpower. Air Force Global Strike Command is already getting after that with a new “fleet maintenance action group,” he said.
“The group draws on commercial aviation and industrial best practices and has delivered striking returns,” he said. “The command has seen a 43 percent increase in mission-capable B-52s. This model is already informing improvements across other Global Strike airframes.”
