What To Look For In The U.S. Air Force’s Upcoming Budget

AURORA, Colorado—Beginning about one year ago, the U.S. Air Force created a threat briefing for Capitol Hill. It outlined China’s capabilities and intent to deny the U.S. military the ability to project power in the Pacific. 

The goal was to get lawmakers to go along with Air Force plans to retire older aircraft and increase research and development on how to address the threat. The briefing got support from key committee members and budget planning continued. 

And then China sent a spy balloon over the continental U.S. in a seemingly made-for-TV saga that captivated the country and Congress.

“One of the things about [the balloon], it brought home to the American people the reality of China as a threat in a way other things have not ... That’s an enhanced level of awareness of the significance of the problem that we have,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall tells Aerospace DAILY March 8 in an interview at the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium here. 

This awareness comes as the service is about to unveil its fiscal 2024 budget request, and Kendall hopes it convinces Congress to agree to authorization and appropriations in a timely manner and allow the service to spend money on its biggest priorities. 

“I think we have a good story to tell,” Kendall says. “We need a timely appropriation. We are burning daylight ... China is not waiting for us to get an appropriation. They are moving forward.”

Kendall would not provide specifics on the budget but did highlight two changes it will include. First, there will be a significant increase in research and development largely focused on his series of “operational imperatives” that were outlined last year. These include defining a space order of battle and architecture, making the Advanced Battle Management System operational, the Next Generation Air Dominance and B-21 system of systems, moving target engagement at scale, resilient basing, and the readiness of the Air Force to transition to a wartime posture. 

This will include about one dozen new start programs and another approximately eight substantial changes to ongoing acquisition programs. 

As the Air Force worked with budget planners in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, it became clear that only a fraction of what it wanted to do would be funded initially. The service pressed its case over time, outlining the operational imperative work, and was able to gain more support, Kendall says. 

“We’re back into a very intense game of racing for technological superiority. We have steps forward identified in our budget request,” Kendall says. “We just need Congress to give us the authorization.”

The other change will be a substantial increase for the Space Force, Kendall says. The service is prioritizing moving missions to space, including ground-moving target indication, as it also builds more resilient missile warning. 

The specifics on the budget will be unveiled on March 13.

On the balloon, Kendall says he does not expect there to be many surprises in the technology China uses. The surprising aspect of it is the brazenness of flying it over the continental U.S., if that was intended, he says.

In terms of military significance, however, China’s 2021 test of a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) was much more important. It demonstrated the potential at least of orbiting weapons and a sophisticated, orbitally delivered hypersonic boost glide vehicle and its capabilities, Kendall says. While the balloon caught attention on TV, the FOBS is a larger demonstration of the threat.

“In that sense, from the point of view of them moving technology forward and showing something operationally significant potentially, and also potentially destabilizing, it was much, much more significant than the balloon,” he says.