NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The U.S. Air Force, whose demand for precision-guided munitions (PGMs) is straining its supply, is trying to increase the production capacity of those weapons, but an uncertain budget climate is making its task difficult, service Secretary Heather Wilson said Sept. 19.
With the Air Force depleting its PGM inventory to support current operations, the service is eager to boost its orders for the advanced weapons. But weapons manufacturers are reluctant to invest in more production facilities and employees without a definite funding source. A series of continuing resolutions and the potential return of sequestration’s across-the-board budget cuts are clouding the fiscal picture.
“We have been engaged with industry directly — probably at least four or five months ago starting at the very senior level with our logistics and munitions people — to see how we can expand the production capacity of precision weapons,” Wilson said at a media roundtable at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “The most important thing that we have to do now is to get a budget” to provide both money and certainty
Also at the roundtable, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said the service and other users of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 are debating whether to retrofit or replace early versions of the fighter jet.
“What you’re going to see is us continuing to do a business-case analysis of the cost of retrofit of older airplanes as we go forward,” he said.
Such reviews are common, as the Air Force conducted them with the F-15, F-16 and F-22, Goldfein explained.
Turning to the B-52, Wilson said the Air Force has concluded it will need to pursue a re-engining if the aging bomber remains in service for decades to come as planned. But it is still trying to find a way to pay for the modernization.
“It’s one piece that we’re still struggling with a little bit, and we’re trying to look at all of the tradeoffs in our budget to be able to potentially do it,” she said.
Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX], which built the B-52’s TF-33 engines over half a century ago, has said that an engine upgrade would involve lower cost and risk than new engines (Defense Daily, May 31).
Wilson elaborated on the Air Force’s recent decision to explore alternatives to replacing its aging Northrop Grumman [NOC] E-8C JSTARS ground-surveillance aircraft (Defense Daily, Sept. 12), saying the service wants to determine whether fusing data from various air-, ground-, sea- and space-based sensors would provide a better picture than a JSTARS replacement. The existing JSTARS can meet only about 5 percent of combatant commander requirements for tracking moving ground targets.
“The question is, ‘Can we do a better job at that if we do this, if we think about this in a different way?’” Wilson said. “Can you now aggregate sensors not just from one platform but from a variety of platforms to meet more of the combatant commander requirements.”
For now, the Air Force is proceeding with the current competition, with a contract award expected next year. Boeing [BA], Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are competing.