“We need our industry partners on board,” with the new budget plan, said Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz on Thursday at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla. He asked industry to get behind the service’s new budget proposal and help make it work by keeping program costs down and schedules on track. There can be “no bonuses for . . . cost creep,” said Schwartz, noting that the Air Force will also do its part by keeping requirements stable. “That’s my job,” he said. While he said the current budget request—which places the Pentagon on a course to reduce its spending by $487 billion through Fiscal 2021—is “manageable,” deeper cuts “would send us back to the drawing board” on national strategy. The 2011 Budget Control Act’s looming sequestration clause—with more steep spending cuts—would be “indiscriminate salami slicing” that would be devastating to Air Force plans and attempts to remain capable at a smaller size, argued Schwartz.
The Pentagon has concluded a new agreement to buy laser-guidance kits that turn rockets into drone-killing weapons. BAE Systems and the Defense Department announced a framework deal of up to seven years for 25,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System guidance kits annually for the U.S. military.