And a Partridge in a Pear Tree …

United States Air Force (USAF) brass set forth on Monday, 13 March 2023, that the $185-billion+ 2024 budget proposal they intend to put before congress will be applied to the acquisition of some 96 aircraft, including 72 fighter jets, and the boosting of the service’s research into future combat technologies.

The spending plan for the 2024 fiscal year—which begins 01 October 2023—tops the 2023’s budget by approximately $5.4-billion.

Waxing poetic, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall characterized the budgetary request as a "beautiful balance" between extant operational demands and the exigency of modernizing the USAF for purpose of maintaining the service’s readiness to contend with future threats from near-peer nations—primarily China and Russia.

In addition to the aforementioned $185-billion, the Air Force is requesting $30-billion for the U.S. Space Force—thereby bringing the service’s total fiscal 2024 budgetary request to a kingly $215-billion.

After the fast and loose fashion of the career bureaucrat spending other peoples’ money, Kendall remarked: "I'm very comfortable with what we're asking for. I think we've got a good mix here."

The Air Force funding plan is a single facet of the Defense Department’s staggering $842 billion fiscal 2024 budget proposal—an increase of 3.2-percent ($27-billion) over fiscal 2023. The $27-billion year-over-year increase includes a 5.2-percent salary bump for troops—the highest in two-decades.

The Air Force's $185-billion + proposed budget accelerates the planned purchases of 48 F-35A Lightning II and 24 F-15EX Eagle II fighter jets. The service plans to retire 310 aircraft in fiscal 2024, including 32 F-22 Raptors, 57 F-16 Falcons, 48 MQ-9 Reaper UAVs, and 42 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs. The Air Force plans, also, to retire 24 KC-10 tankers against requested acquisitions of 15 KC-46s—the Boeing 767-derivative tanker by which the older, DC-10 derivative KC-10s are to be superseded.

The USAF’s fiscal 2024 budget request includes funding for 1.1-million flying hours.

USAF Major General Michael A. Greiner, the service’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, stated the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal calls for a 9.7-percent increase in research and development spending, to include the formation of an experimental operations unit, as well as an increase in funding for the Sentinel program, which replaces a portion of the USAF’s aging intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Additional new technology programs made ostensibly possible by $27-billion funding increase include next-generation manned and unmanned combat aircraft and test aircraft germane to the continued development of the Survivable Airborne Operations Center—known colloquially as the "Doomsday" plane—which is designed to survive a nuclear blast.

Some $42.1-billion of the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget will be allocated to paying the salaries of the 512,100 men and women currently serving the USAF, Space Force, and the Air National Guard in active and reserve capacities.

To bolster recruiting, the USAF’s budget request includes funding for increasing pilot retention bonuses from $35,000 to $50,000, and an additional $45-million for initial recruiting bonuses.

The Air Force also requested $588-million for its civilian personnel. The sum amounts to a 5.2-percent pay raise—the largest in four decades

Another $368-million will be applied to the construction of 39 dormitories. Still another $731-million will fund improvements to extant electric, water, pipeline, and landscaping infrastructure.

What’s more, the Air Force has requested $3.8-billion for 49 military construction projects in 17 U.S. states and numerous overseas locations.

Speaking to the timetable of Congress’s consideration of the USAF’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal, Kendall stated: "So many people have been asking me about going faster and accelerating change ... and how to make acquisition move faster. We move at the pace of money and engineering. And you don't start until you get the money.”

FMI: www.af.mil