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USAF Posture Statement 2016 

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

PRESENTATION TO THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE

UNITED STATES SENATE

FISCAL YEAR 2017 AIR FORCE POSTURE STATEMENT

STATEMENT OF: 

THE HONORABLE DEBORAH LEE JAMES

SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE

 

GENERAL MARK A. WELSH III

CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

 

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED

BY THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE
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CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION: 

THE WORLD’S GREATEST AIR FORCE....................................................1

II. GLOBAL VIGILANCE, REACH, AND 

POWER FOR AMERICA... DAILY................................................................ 2

III. A CRUCIAL MOMENT: 

THE DYNAMIC, COMPLEX FUTURE IS UPON US NOW......................3

IV. A CALL TO THE FUTURE............................................................................ 4

V. CONCLUSION: A CALL TO ACTION......................................................... 6
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I. INTRODUCTION: THE WORLD’S GREATEST AIR FORCE

The United States Air Force remains the greatest air force on the planet. We are powered by Airmen with more talent 

and education than ever before. Our inventory, although aging, continues to be more capable across the enterprise 

than any Nation in the world. Together with our Joint and Coalition partners, Airmen provide around-the-clock Global 

Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global Power in defense of our Nation and our Allies. They are also vital to the most 

integrated Joint, Coalition and partner relationships in our history—even better than during the incredible combined 

success of Operation DESERT STORM 25 years ago.

However, we are experiencing a colossal shift in the geopolitical landscape. For the first time in a generation, adversaries 

are boldly challenging America’s freedom of maneuver in air, space, and cyberspace in contested regions and near our 

Allies’ borders. The era in which the United States could project military power without challenge has ended. Indeed, 

China has been increasing its military capability and is now expanding its grip on the Pacific. This compounds the risk of 

miscalculation or conflict in the region. Russia has attempted to annex Crimea and continues its aggression in Ukraine 

further pressuring the NATO alliance. At the same time, Russian and American Air Forces are both conducting offensive 

military operations in Syrian airspace. An unpredictable North Korea continues to conduct nuclear and ballistic missile 

tests in the face of international condemnation. Syria and Iran have purchased one of the world’s most capable air 

defense systems from their Russian ally while continuing to oppose our interests in the region. These challenges further 

complicate a relentless fight against Violent Extremist Organizations seeking to exploit weak governance and disrupt 

world order. The past two years are a reminder that stability is not the natural state of the international environment, 

that peace is not self-perpetuating, and that entire regions can suddenly descend into anarchy. 

While the world’s expectations of American airpower were shaped by Operation DESERT STORM, our near-peer 

adversaries responded to that victory by modernizing their forces with systems specifically designed to neutralize our 

strengths. Satellite-enabled precision, stealth, cruise missiles, and other military technology that debuted in DESERT 

STORM are now proliferating around the globe. Quite simply, our adversaries have gained unprecedented ground in 

just 25 years. In contrast, prior to 1992, the Air Force procured an average of 200 fighter aircraft per year. In the two 

and a half decades since, curtailed modernization has resulted in the procurement of less than an average of 25 fighters 

yearly. In short, the technology and capability gaps between America and our adversaries are closing dangerously fast. 

As our challengers employ increasingly sophisticated, capable, and lethal systems, your Air Force must modernize to 

deter, deny, and decisively defeat any actor that threatens the homeland and our national interests. This modern force 

hinges upon the globe’s finest Airmen. We will develop these Airmen through world-class education and training so 

they are prepared for 21st century combat.

The Fiscal Year 2017 President’s Budget aims to build, train, and equip an Air Force capable of responding to today’s 

and tomorrow’s threats. It balances capacity, capability, and readiness in support of a resource-informed Service 

strategy that Takes Care of People, Strikes the Right Balance Between Readiness and Modernization, and Makes Every 

Dollar Count. Congressional support for our budget, built in accordance with Air Force and National Strategy, will 

keep us on a path of disciplined modernization and begin to arrest the erosion of our competitive advantage while 

continuing to defend America’s interests wherever they are challenged. 
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II. GLOBAL VIGILANCE, REACH, AND 

POWER FOR AMERICA... DAILY

Our Joint Force’s strength and depth is a coercive instrument deliberately designed to deter, and if necessary, compel, 

our adversaries. We provide a broad range of military options for America. However, phenomenal Airmen, combined 

with airpower’s speed, agility, and flexibility, often make your Air Force a preferred employment option, for missions 

ranging from humanitarian relief to armed intervention.

Today, in our 25th consecutive year of combat operations, your Air Force provides the preponderance of combat force 

against Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. We monitor these 

organizations with an unblinking eye and a 34,000-person intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise 

dedicated to analyzing and disseminating intelligence to empower decision-makers, identify targets, enable air strikes, 

and protect Joint and Coalition forces. We have flown more than 30,000 sorties in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, 

including two-thirds of the 9,000 Coalition airstrikes and more than 90 percent of the 19,000 Coalition tanker sorties. In 

short, your Air Force is leading the campaign to degrade and destroy VEOs who seek to upend world order.

Additionally, when Russian forces challenged the security and territorial integrity of European nations on its periphery, 

American Airmen joined our fellow Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines to present a united stand against Russian aggression 

with our NATO allies. Deployed combat and mobility air forces, ISR and space platforms, and cyberspace assets spearheaded a persistent and dominant air, land, and sea presence in the region. While strengthening this vital alliance, we 

are also building non-NATO partner capability in support of the European Reassurance Initiative.

At the same time, we are projecting power in the Pacific because China’s defense spending continues to grow at 

double-digit rates as they fund and field an impressive array of modern weapons supporting a more assertive regional 

strategy. Thus, as China attempts to expand its claims in the South China Sea and coerce our Pacific partners, your 

Airmen are projecting power through a continuous bomber presence and by conducting reconnaissance operations in 

the region. We are preventing strategic surprise, bolstering freedom of maneuver and freedom of navigation for the 

Joint Force, and protecting the global commons.

Airmen around the globe protect American interests...daily. At U.S. Central Command’s Combined Air Operations 

Center, Airmen lead Joint operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. We have nearly 

20,000 Active Duty Airmen stationed in Japan and on the Korean Peninsula, where we fly regularly with our Pacific 

partners. More than 23,000 Total Force Airmen around the globe conduct operations in and through space and 

cyberspace supporting the Joint Force. Your Air Force supported 25 space missions, provided GPS, weather, communications, and Space Situational Awareness capabilities while tracking over 23,000 objects orbiting the Earth. We flew 

nearly 1.7 million hours in 2015, equal to 194 continuous years of flying. We moved nearly a million passengers, the 

equivalent of every man, woman, and child in Montana. Air Force aerial refuelers passed more than 1.2 billion pounds 

of fuel and our mobility aircraft airlifted 345,000 tons of cargo and evacuated more than 4,300 Joint patients—all in 

support of the Joint Force and our international partners. 

There is no mission more critical than maintaining our Nation’s nuclear capability. Your Airmen operate two of the three 

legs of our Nation’s nuclear triad and continue to improve the nuclear enterprise, providing the deterrence that keeps 

America’s most lethal threats at bay. The responsiveness of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the flexibility 

of the bomber underwrite U.S. national security. More than 35,000 Airmen protect our national interests and those of 

our Allies by ensuring a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent. Your nuclear forces ensure strategic stability with 

other nuclear powers and provide a wide range of options to deter strategic attacks and respond to emerging threats. 

Lastly, programs like Airmen Powered by Innovation and Every Dollar Counts encourage Airmen to take ownership of 

day-to-day processes and improve our business practices. These campaigns have yielded billions of dollars in savings 

and cost avoidance over the last two years. These funds are then reinvested in readiness and modernization. 

Today’s Airmen—your Airmen—are dedicated to innovation, accomplishing their mission, and building a better Air 

Force for tomorrow... all while supporting and defending our Constitution and protecting our Nation. 
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III. A CRUCIAL MOMENT: 

THE DYNAMIC, COMPLEX FUTURE IS UPON US NOW

While our Airmen remain heavily engaged around the world, the average age of our aircraft is at an all-time high, 

and the size of our force and state of our full-spectrum readiness are at or near all-time lows. Non-stop combat 

since Operation DESERT STORM has placed a substantial burden on our Airmen and their families while straining the 

readiness of our personnel and the systems they operate. Without question, the U.S. Air Force America remembers 

from 1991 is now shockingly smaller and older: 25 years ago, we had 134 combat-coded fighter squadrons while today 

we have 55; we had 946,000 Total Force military and civilian Airmen while today we have fewer than 660,000. If World 

War II’s B-17 bomber had flown in DESERT STORM, it would have been younger than the B-52, KC-135 and the U-2 

are today.

Despite America’s inherent strategic advantages, challengers are quickly closing the capability and technology gaps 

between us. Tools that were unaffordable to most nations during the DESERT STORM era, such as computing power, 

nuclear weapons, cruise and theater ballistic missiles, and other precision guided munitions have decreased in cost 

and continue to proliferate. Sophisticated air defense systems are becoming the norm. Furthermore, the declining 

cost of defense is outpacing the rising cost of offense, challenging your Air Force’s ability to present an effective 

conventional deterrent. The bold and deadly actions taken by revisionist powers in the last five years would have been 

unimaginable just a decade ago. Deteriorating military strength is an invitation for conflict as rising or unstable powers 

seek to gain from our eroding competitive advantage.

We must counter these challenges. This requires agile Airmen who we trained and equipped for all possible scenarios 

with modernized weapons systems and infrastructure where it counts the most. We remain grateful for recent budgetary 

relief from the Budget Control Act (BCA) caps in Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017, but Fiscal Year 2018 and beyond will return 

us to inadequate funding to carry out the National Military Strategy. Uncertain future budget toplines make it difficult 

to deliberately balance investments to modernize, recover readiness, right-size the force, and win today’s fight. 

Our rapidly shrinking advantage over competitors is the result of their increasing investment in areas designed to blunt 

our strengths combined with our limited funding and that of our Allies and partners. In fact, our forecasts from five 

years ago reflected we would have greater funding and fewer combat requirements than we are experiencing today. 

The combined strategic challenges of international financial turbulence, tenacious violence in the Middle East, and 

more ambitious great power actors have created a gap between the funding we need and the funding we receive.

Combat requirements since 2001 have created an imbalance due to a necessary focus on operations in relatively 

permissive environments. However, that does not relieve the Air Force from our obligation to be ready—always—to 

deter or defeat an adversary in a conflict where air superiority must be fought for and maintained instead of expected 

at the outset. Our Joint Force has enjoyed uninterrupted Air Superiority since April 1953—the result of realistic training 

and wise investments. Despite our outstanding aviators, maintaining Air Superiority while flying 20th century aircraft 

against 21st century enemy air defenses represents a strategic mismatch. The Fiscal Year 2017 PB works to correct this, 

but in order to ensure we have the capacity for today’s operations, we curtailed F-35 procurement and delayed some 

4th generation modifications necessary to keep our aging fleet relevant against all foes. The longer we are forced to 

delay modernization, the more we jeopardize our ability to dominate full-spectrum conflicts. This is a risk we must 

not take. Although we provide world-class intelligence collection, rapid global mobility, air and space superiority, 

command and control, and global precision attack, your Air Force’s future as a full-spectrum war-fighting force is in 

danger without substantial modernization.
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IV. A CALL TO THE FUTURE

America is an air and space power nation. In an historic anomaly lasting 25 years, the U.S. has possessed unparalleled 

dominance in the air and in space, enabling a generation of Airmen to focus almost exclusively on operations against 

non-state threats in permissive air environments. However, dominance is not an American birthright, and air, space, 

and cyberspace superiority are not American entitlements. Without the ability to achieve national security objectives in 

air, space, and cyberspace—all under-written by a strong and reliable strategic nuclear deterrent—America’s influence 

will diminish and the Joint Force will be forced to radically change how it goes to war. American lives may needlessly 

be put in danger and our leaders’ options will be limited. 

Air forces that fall behind the technology curve fail, and if the Air Force fails, the Joint Force fails. Your Air Force 

understands balancing combat capability, capacity, and full-spectrum readiness is a strategic imperative. While 

balancing today’s combat requirements, maintaining readiness, and growing our endstrength, we must simultaneously 

modernize in order to halt the erosion of our technology and capability advantages. In the Fiscal Year 2017 PB, we 

made difficult choices to best achieve this needed balance. However, to successfully execute the PB, we need your 

help to ensure we have the appropriate funding, the flexibility to execute the choices we are presenting, and long-term 

budget stability. We also request the repeal of the BCA which increases the risk to the Nation and our Allies. 

In order to create a consistent plan for our Service, we built a Strategic Framework that ensures our budgetary decisions 

are based on strategy. The core of this framework is a family of strategic documents describing the expected future 

environment, our Service core missions, how your Air Force will accomplish those missions 20 years from now, and 

what we need to focus on during this future years defense program (FYDP) to meet that strategy. The PB is built upon 

this resource-informed Strategic Framework, and it continues our efforts to “right the force” after Fiscal Year 2013’s 

sequestration. This Strategic Framework and our three priorities of Taking Care of People, Balancing Readiness and 

Modernization, and Making Every Dollar Count are the foundation of the Fiscal Year 2017 PB.

Our strategy-driven Fiscal Year 2017 PB is consistent with last year’s PB and offers the best balance for America’s 

current and future air, space, and cyberspace requirements at Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA)-level funding. It is designed 

to synchronize budget and acquisition decisions with strategy and provide a continuing advantage against competitors 

across the range of military operations despite the modernization slowdown necessary to continue current operations. 

It is credible, affordable, and executable—if we’re allowed to execute where we have requested.

Despite a BBA that resulted in a lower-than-expected Fiscal Year 2017 PB, your Air Force will support the Nation’s 

defense strategy and the most urgent Combatant Commander requests. The Fiscal Year 2017 PB is the result of 

difficult, purposeful, strategy-centric resourcing decisions made to meet obligations set in Defense Strategic Guidance. 

It aligns with Department of Defense and Air Force 30-year strategies and continues to gain ground in our ability 

to wage full-spectrum operations. It maximizes the contributions of the Total Force and reinforces investments in 

nuclear deterrence, space control, and cyberspace operations. It emphasizes global, long-range, and non-permissive 

capabilities and focuses on unique capabilities the Air Force provides to the Joint Force. It invests in our most precious 

resource—people—by growing our active force back to 317,000 Airmen by the end of Fiscal Year 2016. As part of our 

initiative to right-size our force, we also will right-shape our force by maximizing selective retention bonuses to address 

skilled manning shortages. We will take care of our incredible Airmen and protect our most important family programs 

by continuing to fully fund Military Tuition Assistance, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response programs, and Airmen 

Family Readiness Centers. 

In addition to right-sizing our Service for today’s demands, the Fiscal Year 2017 PB continues our efforts to balance 

readiness and modernization despite funding challenges. This PB includes a $6.5 billion investment in Nuclear 

Deterrence Operations, an increase of $4.3 billion over the FYDP compared to the Fiscal Year 2016 PB. This investment 

includes modernizing nuclear command and control, replacing outdated and unsupportable Minuteman III ICBM 

equipment, and building the Ground Based Strategic Deterrence program to begin replacing the aging Minuteman III 

in the late 2020s. We are also developing the Long-Range Standoff weapon which will provide the Joint Force with a 

survivable air-launched weapon capable of destroying otherwise inaccessible targets in any zone of conflict. 
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Additionally, we intend to delay the A-10 and EC-130 retirements to maintain capacity in support of today’s operations. 

We will fund flying hours to their maximum executable level, invest in weapon system sustainment, and ensure combat 

exercises like Red Flag and Green Flag remain strong. We will continue our top three recapitalization programs, though 

we have made the difficult decision to slow F-35 procurement. We will resource strategic assets such as the SpaceBased Infrared System (SBIRS) to detect global missile launches. We will also invest in preferred munitions capacity 

and the Combat Rescue Helicopter recapitalization program while continuing to grow from 26 Cyber Mission Force 

Teams to 39. Lastly, we will fund improvements to Global Integrated ISR with a focus on the Remotely Piloted Aircraft 

(RPA) enterprise. These include increased benefits for aircrew, a program to train enlisted operators to fly the RQ-4 

Global Hawk, a basing study to provide options to support flying RPAs on a schedule more conducive to steady-state 

operations, and other recommendations from our Culture and Process Improvement Program, a bottom-up review of 

issues impacting our RPA force.

The BBA has forced us to make sacrifices as we balance readiness and modernization. In this case, we must delay 

five F-35s and slow modernization of our 4th-generation aircraft. With increased funding, we would invest in these 

capabilities now to ensure they do not compete for funding with critical nuclear and space requirements in the outyears. Just as importantly, we must delay investment in aging critical infrastructure such as ranges, airfields, and 

taxiways, an action we have repeated annually since Fiscal Year 2013 sequestration. Every year we delay these repairs, 

operations are affected and the eventual cost of improvements grows substantially.

Importantly, this budget must mark the return of a committed investment to Global Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global 

Power for America. A return to BCA-level funding in Fiscal Year 2018 will undermine our readiness and modernization; 

it will require your Air Force to depart from a long-term, Strategic Framework in favor of a course of action that funds 

only things absolutely required in the short-term. It will abet our challengers’ efforts to further erode our capability and 

technology advantages, and we will be forced to slow our modernization programs, delaying our planned readiness 

recovery. A return to BCA-level funding will limit our space, cyberspace, and nuclear improvements and further degrade 

Air Force-wide infrastructure and installation support. It is critical that the looming threat of sequestration ends. 

BCA-mandated across-the-board defense cuts will act as a straitjacket, preventing the department from reallocating 

funds to the most critical capabilities and investments at the very moment such flexibility is paramount. This will 

result in significant strategic risk and greater cost over the long run. Fiscal Year 2017 represents a critical point when 

the Air Force can continue to “right the force” in terms of size, capacity, readiness, and present/future capabilities. 

Alternatively, Fiscal Year 2017 could simply represent temporary relief before inadequate future BCA-level funding 

thwarts modernization and readiness initiatives. Make no mistake, BCA-level funding will result in longer timelines to 

meet Joint Force objectives; this could result in increased risk to mission and service members.

Our Nation requires bold leadership from the Congress. Your Air Force needs the authority and flexibility to execute 

our strategy through Congressional support of the Fiscal Year 2017 PB. We appreciate the BCA relief provided by 

the 2015 BBA, but responsibly sustaining and investing in U.S. security requires long-term budget stability and the 

repeal of BCA. Critically, even at BBA funding levels, the overall capability gap between us and our competitors will 

continue to narrow; we can preserve the advantages in some areas, but determined adversaries will close gaps in 

others. Accordingly, we are prioritizing the Joint Force requirements our Nation needs the most.
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V. CONCLUSION: A CALL TO ACTION

Today’s national security challenges come from a combination of strong states that are challenging world order, weak 

states that cannot preserve order, and poorly governed spaces that provide sanctuary to extremists who seek to 

destabilize the globe. The world needs a strong American Joint Force, and the Air Force is its first and most agile 

responder in times of crisis, contingency, and conflict. The Joint Force depends upon Air Force capabilities and 

requires airpower at the beginning, the middle, and the end of every Joint operation. As our Army and Marine Corps 

get smaller, they do not want less airlift; they want it to be more responsive. As Combatant Commanders look toward 

battlefields of the future, they do not want less ISR; they need more persistent, capable, and agile ISR. Should our 

Nation find itself in another conflict requiring boots on the ground, we have the responsibility to assure air superiority 

so American Soldiers and Marines may keep their eyes on their enemies on the ground rather than concern themselves 

with enemy airpower overhead. America’s Air Force must be able to disrupt, degrade, or destroy any target in the 

world, quickly and precisely, with conventional or nuclear weapons, to deter and win our Nation’s wars. Undoubtedly, 

decisive air, space, and cyberspace power—and the ability to command and control these forces—have become the 

oxygen the Joint Force breathes and are fundamental to American security and Joint operations. Whether in support 

of global counter-terror operations or great power deterrence, your Air Force remains constantly committed, as we 

have without respite for the past 25 years. 

In the face of a dynamic, complex, and unpredictable future, your Airmen provide a strategic advantage over America’s 

competitors. They are educated, innovative, and motivated. Their ability to see threats, reach threats, and strike 

threats is an effective but shrinking conventional deterrent against America’s enemies. These courageous Airmen, 

when properly trained, effectively equipped, and instilled with the trust of their leadership, will ensure the Air Force 

continues to overmatch opponents in Joint and Coalition operations and defend the United States from any who 

would do us harm.

 

The Fiscal Year 2017 President’s Budget—and the flexibility to execute it as we have recommended—is an investment 

in the Air Force our Nation needs. The global developments of the last five years have reminded us that America’s 

Air Force must have the capability to engage anytime, anywhere, and across the full spectrum of conflict all while 

providing a reliable strategic nuclear deterrent. America expects it, Combatant Commanders require it, and with your 

support, our Airmen will deliver it.
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