A cash-strapped Air Force needs to shift some personnel from its active-duty force to the less-expensive Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, a high-level panel recommended Thursday morning during congressional hearings in Washington D.C.
The report followed nine months of deliberations — including 19 days of public hearings in six states, featuring 154 witnesses — by the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force.
In all, the commission recommended 42 policy changes, from adjusting the way the Air Force calculates personnel costs to easing the “up-or-out” promotion policy in career fields where training and development is exceptionally expensive.
Several of the changes would better integrate active-duty troops with the Air Force Reserve, making it easier for airmen to move back and forth between full- and part-time status.
“Although many have discussed increased integration of the components for several years, today’s Air Force is ideally positioned to make further advances in this area,” the commission’s report said.
Currently about 480,000 airmen are performing core Air Force missions — about 65 percent on active duty. The commission suggested reducing that percentage to as low as 55 percent by moving some missions away from active-duty forces.
For example, it suggested reassigning the B-1 bomber to the Air Force Reserve, a shift of about 3,750 airmen. Some of the other recommended shifts to the Reserve include 2,500 nuclear deterrence jobs, 3,725 education and training jobs, and 3,875 involved in cyber operations.
Congress created the eight-member commission last year to resolve a fierce internal dispute that pitted the active-duty forces against their Guard and Reserve components.
For several years, the two sides have been tussling over how to manage the shrinking pie of the defense budget. The pressures of the federal budget sequester have only made things worse.
“Money’s tighter now,” said Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning Washington think tank. “It’s going to get intense.”
The stakes are huge. Hundreds of aging aircraft need to be refurbished or replaced, thousands of airmen will lose their jobs and aviation squadrons will be shut down. The decisions Congress makes now will ripple through air bases across the country for years to come — and determine how prepared the Air Force is when the next conflict erupts somewhere in the world.
“Historically, we’re very (bad) at figuring out what’s coming around the corner,” said Steven Bucci, a senior foreign policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “A very fit, uber-capable force is better than one that’s small and flabby.”
Some observers say reinforcing the Guard and Reserve can be an affordable way to give the military the ability to ramp up its forces if unanticipated conflicts arise.
“We don’t know what the demand is going to be in the future. Other countries have a say in that,” said Todd Harrison, a former Air Force Reserve officer who is now a fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “Putting things in the Guard and Reserve can be a good way to hedge your bets.”
The timing is important, with the Air Force just weeks away from presenting its 2015 budget plans.
With so much anger pointed at Congress these days, there’s pressure to compromise.
“There’ll be some wailing and gnashing of teeth, at the state level and with the congressional (state delegations),” said Bucci, director of Heritage’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. “(But) I think we’ll end up seeing both sides giving a little bit.”
It wasn’t always as ugly as it has been lately. The Air Force got along well with its Guard and Reserve components until a congressionally mandated round of military base closures in 2005, said retired Maj. Gen. Roger Lempke, a former adjutant general of the Nebraska National Guard.
He said the Air Force gathered information from Air Guard and Reserve units around the country, then worked in secret to come up with a plan that Guard leaders thought hurt them badly.
“They really tried to take a whack out of us,” Lempke said. “The relationship really turned sour. It’s been that way ever since.”
Congress jumped in then and forced some changes, he said. Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue and the National Guard Base in Lincoln both had appeared to be in jeopardy, he said, but both survived.
Bucci said Air Force leaders anticipated leaner times two years ago when they pitched their 2013 budget.
“They tried in good faith to get ahead of the curve,” he said. “I think the active-duty Air Force is trying to do the right thing.”
Foresighted or not, the cuts seemed to Lempke and many governors to be skewed against the Guard and Reserve. That didn’t sit well in Congress, where the National Guard in particular carries a lot of clout. Air Guard units are in every state plus the District of Columbia.
“There was a lot of backlash,” Bucci said. “The folks on (Capitol) Hill said not only ‘No,’ but ‘Heck no!’ ”
Congress restored most of the Guard and Reserve funding. And in January 2013 it created the commission to determine what the Air Force should look like in the future. Of the eight members, four were selected by President Barack Obama and two each selected by the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
“That was Congress’ way of slapping the Air Force’s hand,” Harrison said. “The Air Force learned from that. They’ve learned they have to coordinate more with the adjutant generals. They’re not going to be able to get a lot of cuts from the Guard and Reserve.”
The Air Force got hit hard last year from the combined effects of budget cuts and the federal budget sequester. Besides mandatory furloughs for civilian workers, Air Force leaders grounded some fighter wings and slashed maintenance and training.
“It’s a little hard to stay ready if you can’t fly,” said Bucci, who served as a military aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the early part of the George W. Bush administration.
At Offutt, some Rivet Joint pilots resorted to “chair-flying” — sitting in their grounded KC-135 jets and pretending to fly training missions. Offutt and three other bases permanently closed their base libraries, and the two swimming pools closed for the summer after money to pay lifeguards was yanked (although one reopened after private funding was donated).
Thursday’s commission report is aimed at helping policymakers deal with those tighter budgets in the future.
The report did not settle the future of the A-10 Warthog, a slow, low-flying, 1970s-vintage aircraft used to support ground forces. Although the Warthog is scheduled to stay in the fleet until 2028, the Air Force has proposed eliminating it. Last month, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III said $3.7 billion could be saved by retiring all 349 aircraft from the fleet by 2019 and letting other aircraft pick up the close-air support mission.
“From the Air Force perspective, that low-altitude, low-tech aircraft is not the way they want to go,” said Lempke, who is now an aide to Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb.
Congress, naturally, sees things quite differently, because many of the A-10 squadrons are in Guard and Reserve units (though not in Nebraska or Iowa). Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. — whose husband is a former A-10 pilot — has led the fight to save the Warthog. Last year she held up the confirmation of new Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James for a time over the A-10, and she sponsored a provision in the new defense authorization bill barring any moves toward retiring the aircraft.
Thursday, the commission didn’t make any recommendation as to whether the A-10 program should survive. But it did say that, before eliminating the A-10 or any other aircraft, the Air Force should provide a “detailed, complete and comprehensive” plan for carrying out the mission of those aircraft, and for retraining the highly trained crews that staff them.
Lempke said he thinks Nebraska’s air units — both active-duty and Guard — should fare reasonably well. The U.S. Strategic Command is building an expensive new headquarters at Offutt, and the Nebraska National Guard now occupies a gleaming new headquarters at the Lincoln Air National Guard Base.
The Air Guard’s 170th Group, at Offutt, has worked side by side with active-duty Air Force units since its establishment. Lempke said that’s exactly the kind of partnership the commission may want to see more of.
“We bring continuity to them for training and mission support,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of emphasis on that.”