Air Force to cut nearly 10,000 troops in cost-saving effort
WASHINGTON — The Air Force will shed people, planes and drones as part of the Defense Department’s overall budget-cutting efforts, the force’s top leaders said Friday at the Pentagon.
The measures will protect the most critical Air Force capabilities while adjusting to more modest modernization goals and trimming in areas officials say are now too expensive to maintain in an era of tightened budgets.
Cuts and realignments to active-duty, Guard and reserve units will affect every state and territory in the nation, officials said.
“We had to balance force structure, readiness, modernization and certainly our support for airmen in that mix,” Air Force secretary Michael Donley said.
The proposed cuts in force structure, which should save an estimated $8.7 billion over five years, include the elimination of 123 fighters, 133 cargo planes, 18 surveillance drones and 12 surveillance planes.
Among the cuts is the controversial decision to cut five of 15 squadrons of A-10 ground attack aircraft, which have been key in providing close air support to ground troops in the recent wars. Over 100 A-10s were judged expendable, more than a quarter of the total.
“We chose to retire more A-10s as a result of guidance to size our forces for one large-scale combined-arms campaign with sufficient combat power to also deny a second adversary, without conducting a large-scale, prolonged stability operation,” according to an Air Force strategy paper released Friday.
Funding in areas determined to be critical — cyberoperations, long-range strike programs and nuclear weapons — is protected in the current budget, Donley said.
Troop levels will fall by 9,900, Donley said, citing reductions of 3,900 active-duty airmen, 900 reservists and 5,100 in the Air Force National Guard.
Reduction-in-force boards shouldn’t be necessary to reduce the active-duty component by that amount, Donley said. But the Air Force will ask Congress for “tools” like those used to manage the active-duty ranks to help with the deeper cuts needed in the Air Guard, he said.
The Air Force will still be able to do its job once the cuts take effect, said Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff.
“What we’re doing is not without risk,” he said, “but I would characterize it as appropriate risk.”
Twitter: @ChrisCarroll_
