House vote slows Air Force bid to retire aging aircraft
Armed Services panel chairman says plan to use money from retirements for upgrades and new purchases is too risky.
Over strong objections from the Bush administration, the House has voted to halt Air Force attempts to retire dozens of aging aircraft -- a move service leaders hoped would save more than $2.6 billion by 2011.
Faced with a government-wide budget crunch, the Air Force had planned to use the money to upgrade other planes and buy new ones. But in passing the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill last week, House lawmakers thwarted those efforts amid concerns from both parties that the Air Force plan was too risky and might ultimately leave the service with major holes in its fleet.
"The question is how much insurance do you want to retain?" House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said Thursday. "When you start jettisoning your insurance, [there is] a certain amount of risk."
The average Air Force plane is 23 years old. The service spends 20 percent of its procurement budget on modifying and upgrading the aircraft -- the highest percentage in the service's 59-year history, according to an Air Force document circulated on Capitol Hill.
"The Air Force's ability to transform to a more capable, lethal, sustainable force hinges on the ability of its leadership to manage its fleet in a safe and fiscally responsible way," the document states.
Hunter, however, stressed that the Air Force was potentially paying for its future plans at the expense of its existing force. While the military might be comfortable with a certain level of risk, "we're not," he said.
Specifically, the House prohibited the Air Force from retiring any of its venerable B-52 bombers before a replacement is available. The Pentagon earlier this year revealed its intent to reduce the fleet from 94 B-52 H-model planes to 56 -- a move that would have saved $680 million through 2011, a congressional aide said.
Meanwhile, the Air Force wanted to accelerate the retirement of 52 F-117 Nighthawk fighter jets, which would have saved $1 billion by 2011, the aide said. The House, however, allows the Air Force to retire 10 Nighthawks in fiscal 2007 and requires all retired aircraft to be preserved for possible future operations.
The House also wants to delay retirements of any of the 34 U-2 reconnaissance aircraft until the Defense Department certifies to Congress that the manned planes are no longer needed for intelligence-gathering and surveillance missions.
Retiring those planes would save $1 billion over the next four years, the aide said.
House lawmakers also limited the retirement of KC-135E aerial refueling tankers to 29; the Pentagon wanted to sideline 78 of them, but did not provide Congress with details of those savings.
The Air Force has not yet submitted documents to the House Armed Services Committee detailing the ultimate cost of the delayed retirements, the aide said. An Air Force spokeswoman would not comment on the legislation.
Congressional opposition to aircraft retirements, which often result in significant local job losses, is not a new issue, particularly during an election year. As of December 2005, Congress had restricted 347 of the Air Force's proposed aircraft divestitures.
But Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., a member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said he fears the House decision this year might have long-term implications on the Air Force's fleet.
"I'm a little nervous that there is such a squeeze for money that if we don't go along with some of the shutdowns, we won't have money for new programs," said Dicks, who represents a district heavily employed by aerospace giant Boeing.
Appropriators, he predicted, would "probably go along" with much of the language in the defense authorization bill. But he left the door open for some differences between the two panels' marks on the aircraft retirement issue.
In the Senate, the Armed Services Committee restricted some aircraft retirements, but its markup of the defense authorization bill did not go as far as the House legislation. For the B-52, for instance, committee members required a Pentagon report before retiring any of the bombers.
The Senate likely will consider the defense authorization bill next month.