Air Force faces tough choices, chief says

In a wide-ranging interview at a Government Executive leadership breakfast on Wednesday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said the worldwide financial crisis would force hard choices on the service.

"It is inescapable that we're in the midst of a global economic crisis," Schwartz said. "I know of no armed force in the history of such things that wasn't fundamentally based on a viable economy."

In 2008, Air Force officials estimated the service faced a $20 billion shortfall between its five-year defense plan and projected budgets -- an estimate that was developed before the depth of the economic crisis was known.

The Air Force is looking at a number of complex acquisition challenges as it crafts its 2010 budget request, including finding a replacement for its aging fleet of refueling tankers and balancing requirements for more F-22 fighter jets with investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is intended to fill the needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps as well as some U.S. allies, and the other services are concerned that if the Air Force revises its level of support for the program, the aircraft would become prohibitively expensive for the other partners.

Schwartz indicated earlier this week that the Air Force would not seek to buy as many F-22 fighter jets as planned, although he declined to commit to a specific number before reaching agreement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"The truth of the matter is, there are opportunity costs associated with almost every choice. More of something probably means less of another thing. Where are the trade-offs? Adults can have legitimate [disagreements] on the merits of the trade-offs. Right now we're in the midst of serious discussions about what are the ideal trade-offs for the joint force," Schwartz said.

Any decision about the F-22 will necessarily affect the F-35 and many other weapons systems, he said, including the number of tankers the service ultimately will need, the kind of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance it performs and the organizations that support all of those things. "You cannot look at these things in isolation," Schwartz said.

"This will be a fact-based discussion. It will be dispassionate and rational. All voices will be heard and then we'll move on," he added.

Schwartz, like the other service chiefs, is trying to build capabilities for dealing with future threats against the ongoing requirements of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A key issue for Schwartz and other defense planners right now is whether the government of Kyrgyzstan will continue to grant access to Manas Air Base there, which is a major staging area for U.S. military operations in neighboring land-locked Afghanistan.

With the Obama administration poised to make a greater troop commitment to Afghanistan, the logistics of supporting troops there is enormous. "There is not a single oil refinery in Afghanistan. All the hydrocarbons used there come from outside the country. That's a significant feature of the mission," Schwartz said. "I would not say [the base] is indispensible, nor would I say it is irreplaceable, but certainly it will be more challenging for us to support the mission in Afghanistan without it."

In many ways, Schwartz is an unlikely chief of staff for the Air Force. He is the first chief of staff in the service's history who is not a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot. Although he is a pilot with more than 4,400 flying hours, his experience is predominately in flying special operations gunships and cargo aircraft. He spent years commanding Special Operations units and in various joint-duty assignments before Gates tapped him last summer to replace former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley after a series of debacles involving nuclear weapons caused Gates to lose confidence in Air Force leadership.

Gates' unconventional selection to lead the Air Force was "less about me than about the experiences that over 35 years I've had the opportunity to accumulate," Schwartz said. "I had not until last August been in the Air Force for about 10 years; I'd been largely in joint service jobs. I think that gave me a perspective about the Air Force [that] perhaps was a bit different from those who labored long and hard with conviction within the Air Force over that period of time. Circumstances allowed me to bring a perspective to the Air Force from the view of the joint community.

"This is a team sport, believe me," he said.