Wilson Presses For 40K More Airmen, 74 More Squadrons
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Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson visits the Special Tactics Training Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida
AFA: After years of the Air Force saying it is too small and cannot afford to execute the missions it’s required to do, Secretary Heather Wilson stepped forward here and laid out a plan to fix it between 2025 and 2030.
It won’t be cheap. Todd Harrison, defense budget guru at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tweeted that the larger service could cost an additional $13 billion per year, on top of the $53 billion it already spends on aircraft operations, training, and recruiting.
2. Right now the Air Force spends about $53B per year on aircraft operations, training, and recruiting. Increasing the number of squadrons by ~24% would probably add another $13B per year in these operating costs.
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) September 14, 2018
Wilson told a packed room filled with some of the more than 10,500 registrants, that the service had spent the last six months modeling and analyzing combat and other scenarios, guided by the “most current concepts of operations from the Joint Chiefs of staff.”
The conclusion? It will require:
- 22 more C2ISR (Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance) squadrons;
- 14 more tanker squadrons;
- nine more combat search and rescue squadrons;
- seven more special operations squadrons;
- seven more fighter squadrons:
- seven more space squadrons;
- five more bomber squadrons (the biggest percentage increase);
- two more drone squadrons;
- and one more airlift squadron.
“We aren’t naive about how long it will take us to build the support and the budget required for the force we need,” Wilson said. And it comes with the obligation to tell “our countrymen… what should be done, what must be done.”
Meanwhile, Wilson noted that the Air Force delivered Friday a “proposal to our colleagues in the Department of Defense about the Space Force, what it will do and how it will be structured.” We’ll have more on that later today.
