Supplemental funding for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has “masked” consistent shortfalls in the Air Force Reserve budget, a situation that the Reserve officials are working “very hard right now” to readjust, said Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, AFR chief. He cited global airlift as one example of a mission that the supplemental war funding has covered over the past decade. Since such missions exist “whether there’s a war or not,” efforts are underway so that “we can get to where a baseline is actually available to us with sufficient funds to do what we need to do,” he told reporters last week in Orlando, Fla., during AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium. Stenner said the Reserve faces an 18-month gap until that will be possible—in 2013.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
