If the Air Force’s long-awaited E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) recapitalization program doesn’t survive a Pentagon budget battle for fiscal year 2017, it’ll make the FY ’18 budget request, according to the service’s top officer.
“We will continue to push hard for it. Hopefully, it makes the budget cut this year,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told an audience Tuesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “If it does not make the budget cut this year, we’ll keep the idea in the budget so the idea doesn’t go away, because that’s what the combatant commanders want us to do.”
Air Force officials for years have stressed the importance of JSTARS recap, only to see the program struggle recently. The Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) declined to approve a Milestone A decision last summer. The service’s outgoing acquisition chief last week said the fate of JSTARS recap was being debated outside the Air Force as the service and Defense Department plot their FY ’17 budget requests.
Welsh said he didn’t believe JSTARS recap was hanging in the balance “at this particular moment in time” because combatant commanders have a requirement for a battle management command and control (C2) system and they want that capability to continue.
“They (have) used the JSTARS for dynamic targeting, which has become a huge part of…combatant commands,” Welsh said.
The Air Force requested $44 million in fiscal year 2016 for JSTARS recap and anticipates spending roughly $1.2 billion on the program through FY ’20, according to budget documents, if the program survives internal budget battles in its current form. JSTARS recap will enhance the warfighter’s ability to achieve the joint vision of combat operations by integrating current and mature sub-system technologies onto a commercially available business class jet, according to budget documents.
Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord warned Monday some major modernization programs, including the Air Force’s Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB), would be slowed as DoD absorbs a $15 billion cut in FY ’17, thanks to an 11th hour budget deal recently passed by lawmakers (Defense Daily, Dec. 1). Welsh said the Air Force is debating how to plug that budget hole and that big programs are on the chopping block. Welsh said the Air Force would have a “pretty clear picture” by the end of the year of what will make it into the FY ’17 budget.
“When you decide where to take the money from to pay those bills, you have to go where the money is,” Welsh said. “So big programs are always in consideration.”
Loren Thompson, chief operating officer (COO) of the Lexington Institute think tank, said Tuesday he thought the A-10, the KC-135 aerial refueling tanker and the U-2 surveillance aircraft were “logical” targets for cuts. Thompson said since the Air Force can’t give up on LRSB or the KC-46 tanker, he believes it will look at retiring legacy fleets where it can get an entire type of aircraft out of the force. Though if the Air Force tried to retire the U-2, Thompson said it could run into a “buzzsaw” on Capitol Hill as it would leave a big gap in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability due to a lack of alternative platform.