WASHINGTON — A compromise defense policy bill released Wednesday night would grant the Air Force’s request to retire older F-15 Eagle fighters, A-10 Warthogs, and other aircraft, but again block its try to mothball 32 older F-22A Raptors.
And lawmakers wish to see more of the Air Force’s plans for folding drone wingmen referred to as collaborative combat aircraft into its fleet at an inexpensive rate, and the way it plans to create the Next Generation Air Dominance future fighter platform, as a part of the $874.2 billion conference version of the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
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The Air Force proposed retiring 42 A-10s and 57 F-15C and D-model fighters as a part of its proposed FY24 budget. This could bring the overall variety of A-10s all the way down to 218, and the F-15C/Ds all the way down to 92.
The conference NDAA would approve the Air Force’s A-10 request, but would allow the fleet to drop no lower until six months after the service sends Congress a report on the way it plans to perform close air support, combat search and rescue and other Warthog-centric missions.
The Air Force and Congress have argued for years over the A-10, with the service saying the plane wouldn’t be survivable in a future war. Congress until last 12 months continually blocked the service’s attempts to retire the Warthog.
A Thursday release from Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, said the NDAA also would authorize the Air Force to retire early-model F-15s.
But Congress is on the point of halt, for the second 12 months in a row, the Air Force’s effort to retire some Block 20 F-22s the service says aren’t in a position to perform combat missions.
Those 32 F-22s are actually mostly training aircraft, and the service has said getting them able to fight can be prohibitively expensive. In spring 2022, when the service first proposed retiring 33 of those F-22s, officials said it might cost $1.8 billion over eight years to make them combat-capable.
Nevertheless, Congress blocked the primary attempt at retiring those F-22s within the FY23 NDAA, and is moving to accomplish that once more.
The Air Force would even be required to maintain at the very least 1,112 fighters in its inventory, a short lived reduction from the minimum requirement of 1,145. Nevertheless, the Air Force now has roughly 1,800 F-15s, F-16s, F-22s and F-35s and will not be near that minimum.
By April 1, Congress wants the Air Force to present a long-term plan for its tactical fighter force’s structure, recapitalization, training and sustainment.
This could include the combination of fighters within the flight that might be needed to satisfy challenges around the globe, and plans to complement or replace existing piloted fighter capability with collaborative combat aircraft.
Plans for NGAD, drone wingmen
The NDAA would order the Air Force and Navy to send lawmakers reports by May 1 explaining their plans for acquiring fleets of CCAs inexpensive enough to be lost on missions without busting their budgets.
Lawmakers said within the conference report the Air Force and Navy’s plans to create their very own fleets of CCAs could “significantly increase the lethality of existing tactical fighter aircraft.” But they worry the services haven’t explained how they’ll acquire enough attritable or expendable CCAs, at an inexpensive cost, to make the concept work.
Congress also desires to see more details on the Air Force and Navy’s plans for his or her piloted NGAD programs. This could include key milestones, development and testing events, and performance goals for the engineering, manufacturing and development phase of NGAD, in addition to expected costs for the EMD phase and low-rate initial production lots for NGAD’s air vehicle, propulsion, mission systems, subsystems, software, and other elements.
These so-called “matrices” would grow to be the baseline for NGAD’s early phases. And the NDAA would also require the Government Accountability Office to review those matrices and discover cost, schedule or performance trends.
Lawmakers would prohibit the Air Force from moving to shut down the production line for the HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopter, made by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin. The Air Force has curtailed its planned purchase of HH-60Ws, arguing they might not be survivable in a high-end conflict with a complicated nation like China.
However the Air Force would get its request to retire two more E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft in 2024, which might bring the AWACS fleet all the way down to 16, but no further this 12 months.
The Air Force desires to retire 52 of its older T-1A Jayhawk trainers in 2024. The NDAA would put those on hold until the service confirms it has put into place across the fleet a brand new flight curriculum dubbed Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5. Congress wants a report on how UPT 2.5 has helped aspiring pilots finish their training, and the way the T-1 retirements might affect the Air Force’s try to speed up pilot training.
One other provision within the NDAA addresses Boeing’s decision to begin constructing components of some T-7A Red Hawk trainer aircraft before the Air Force officially issued a contract for the planes.
GAO said in a blistering May report on the T-7 the early initial construction on the planes meant the Pentagon couldn’t conduct all of the production oversight needed to make sure the latest Red Hawks will meet contract requirements. Boeing told GAO it took that step to maintain its suppliers busy and manufacturing costs down, within the face of schedule delays and financial losses.
The NDAA would order the Air Force to submit a plan spelling out when it might accept T-7 production work that was done before a contract was issued and never subjected to the same old oversight. Lawmakers also want the Air Force to conduct an assessment of the risks from overlapping development, testing and production phases on the T-7.
Meanwhile, Congress desires to see the Air Force’s plan for updating its tanker fleet — including the approaching recapitalization of the KC-135 fleet, after which procurement of the Next Generation Air Refueling System, or NGAS — before the service can release its acquisition strategy for the KC-135 recapitalization.
This could include a business case evaluation, and validated requirements for the contract competition for the following wave of tanker purchases, the NDAA said. The Air Force is strongly considering buying more KC-46 Pegasus tankers from Boeing for the following tranche of tankers, although Airbus continues to be planning to compete for the contract after its partner, Lockheed Martin, dropped out.
The laws also requires the Pentagon to think about whether Warthogs slated for retirement or storage may very well be transferred to a different ally or partner nation of america.
Some supporters of military assistance to Ukraine have suggested giving it retiring A-10s, although the NDAA doesn’t cite Ukraine in the supply.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.