The Air Force’s Fiscal 2012 spending plan doesn’t have any money in it for buying kits to perform a service life-extension program on some of the service’s F-16 fighters, but does provide $25 million for studies of a “potential SLEP,” and “defining what it would mean,” said USAF budget director Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers in a Pentagon briefing. Flowers also said that if USAF must operate under a continuing resolution for Fiscal 2011, it doesn’t have the authority to launch a program to equip its F-15s with advanced radars. “We are worried” about that, Flowers said, because without the new radars, “we are at risk of having to ground some aircraft in the future.”
Airmen and Guardians in the Active and Reserve component, as well as civilian employees, in “mission critical and high-risk populations” are now required to receive influenza vaccinations annually to “preserve force readiness,” according to a recent Department of the Air Force memo.