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Federal News Radio
Air Force to
ask for base closures, aircraft retirements despite repeated rebuffs
Monday - 1/19/2015
By Jared Serbu
Two of the Air Force's most contentious budget proposals, getting rid
of excess bases and retiring aging aircraft, will be back on the table
in next year's budget, despite congressional votes just a month ago
that rebuked both requests.
President Barack Obama's budget for the Defense Department, which is
scheduled to come early next month, will violate the $523 billion
sequestration cap for 2016. But even at that higher level, the
five-year spending plan won't have room for excess bases or the current
complement of aircraft, and officials want to hold the line on any
further personnel reductions, said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force
secretary.
So the service will run last year's rejected ideas up the flagpole once
again.
"We are going to be asking the Congress of course to eliminate
sequestration, as well as to allow us to get rid of excess base
infrastructure. We'll be renewing that as well," James told reporters
Jan. 15. "And we will once again ask for the authority to divest some
of our older aircraft in order to free up money to plow back into
people, readiness and modernization. Keeping in mind, as we've said
many, many times, if sequestration does return in FY '16, it will have
very, very serious and devastating effects on some parts of our Air
Force."
On the topic of excess infrastructure, the Air Force thinks it's in
worse shape than the other military services. Its most recent analysis,
conducted in 2004, estimated it had 24 percent more capacity than it
was using, and the Air Force has shrunk significantly in the
intervening decade to the smallest size in its history. While the Navy
and Marine Corps believe their basing infrastructure is more in line
with their current force structure, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby
confirmed last week that another round of base closures remains a high
budget priority for DoD as a whole.
"We know this is not an easy thing for the Congress to take up and to
deal with. But the secretary wants very much to work with the Congress
as we move forward to try to get another round of BRAC," he said. "It
really is necessary, and it's time. It's overdue, actually...
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