- Sep 26, 2011
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The cost of 20 years of vanity ops.
STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT: As the Pentagon prepared for a three-day weekend, the civilian head of the Air Force delivered what has been become an increasingly urgent refrain. While higher funding levels are in the new defense authorization bill, they mean nothing unless Congress acts to lift the spending caps known as sequestration that remain the law of the land. “The most important thing we need to do is we need to lift sequestration as it's currently structured,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters at a Pentagon briefing yesterday. “Risk accumulates over time, and you just don't know exactly when things will break. But we are stretching the force to the limit, and we need to start turning the corner on readiness.”
Wilson and Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, painted a grim picture of a overburdened force on the ragged edge of readiness, in which jobs formerly performed by the many are now done by the few. That, Wilson said, is burning out people, and exacerbating a growing shortage of pilots that has gone from 1,500 earlier this year to 2,000. “It's not just pilots, though, and air crew, when it comes to readiness. It is spare parts and flying hours and munitions,” Wilson said.
High operational tempo combined with years of budget cuts have left the Air Force “too small for all the missions that we're being asked to carry out on behalf of the nation,” Wilson said. “Secretary Wilson and I remain adamant that Congress turn off the auto-pilot and get back in control of the budget,” Goldfein said.
SHELL GAME: It was a similar tale of woe over at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee, where the senior aviation officers from the four services described the toll that the lack of stable, predictable budgets was taking on the combat readiness of U.S. forces. “We are meeting the combatant commanders' requirement for ready, lethal carriers and air wings forward, but at a tremendous cost to the readiness of our forces at home," said Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, commander of Naval Air Forces.
Shoemaker described what he called the “shell game” required to move jets around in order to ensure the USS Carl Vinson, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt had their full complement of aircraft for their deployments this year. The result is the hollowing out of nondeployed squadrons, which are left behind without enough planes to provide the flying hours needed to allow pilots to maintain their proficiency.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/a...tching-the-force-to-the-limit/article/2176984