Source: United States Senator for Oklahoma James Inhofe
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today criticized President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget request for the Air Force and Space Force at the committee’s annual Air Force posture hearing.
Witnesses include: John Roth, Acting Secretary of the Air Force; General Charles “C.Q.” Brown, Chief of Staff of the Air Force; and General John Raymond, Chief of Space Operations.
As Prepared for Delivery:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Roth, General Brown, and General Raymond, thank you for being here today and for all your work.
The current National Defense Strategy directs our nation’s military to be prepared to deter and, if necessary, defeat our peer adversaries including Russia and China.
For the Air Force and Space Force to meet that requirement, they must be properly manned, trained, and equipped to win in both air and space. Given this budget, I fear that is an unachievable goal. We’re going to have to improve upon this budget.
At the end of the Obama administration, the Air Force was at a historic low in readiness and size. Less than 10 percent of combat squadrons were ready to deploy, and even fewer were prepared for a peer fight.
We began to improve readiness over the past four years and started to really get after modernization. I’m concerned that with this year’s budget, we will never achieve modernization and will return to those dark times for readiness.
Previous Air Force leadership told us that the Department of the Air Force is too small and too old to do what the nation asks. Almost half of our aircraft fleet is beyond its service life. Our satellite programs were built for peacetime—we didn’t anticipate what China and Russia have done in space.
China and Russia combined are already spending more to modernize their force than we do, and it shows. China will have more stealth fighters than us in the Western Pacific by 2025, and Russian air defenses continue to improve and expand.
All the independent studies show the Air Force needs to grow and modernize. This budget doesn’t do either—procurement actually decreases by almost 15 percent. We keep divesting, but the investments never follow.
Nearly all of these bad choices were caused by a budget that cuts defense instead of achieving the 3-5 percent growth recommended by the NDS Commission report.
Our Airmen and Space Guardians deserve better. I look forward to understanding from our witnesses the impact of this budget on the readiness and modernization of the entire Air Force and Space Force, and how it could risk its ability to implement the NDS.
Mr. Chairman.