Air Force says budgets are billions short

[unhappycamper]

Air Force says budgets are billions short
The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Feb 18, 2008 14:14:41 EST

WASHINGTON — Air Force officials are warning that unless their budget is increased dramatically, and soon, the military’s high-flying branch won’t dominate the skies as it has for decades.

After more than seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Air Force’s aging jet fighters, bombers, cargo aircraft and gunships are at the breaking point, they say, and expensive, ultramodern replacements are needed fast.

“What we’ve done is put the requirement on the table that says, ‘If we’re going to do the missions you’re going to ask us to do, it will require this kind of investment,”’ Maj. Gen. Paul Selva, the Air Force’s director of strategic planning, said.

“Failing that, we take what is already a geriatric Air Force,” Selva said, “and we drive it for another 20 years into an area of uncertainty.”

An extra $20 billion each year over the next five — beginning with an Air Force budget of about $137 billion in 2009 instead of the $117 billion proposed by the Bush administration — would solve that problem, according to Selva and other senior Air Force officers.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/02/ap_WornOutByWar_080218/



uhc comment: Like I keep saying - 3/4 of a trillion dollars just isn't enough.

[thunder rising]

1. Can't pour enough money into that hole to fill it up.

[jimshoes]

2. This and the other military leviathans that eat up over half

of our yearly spending need to go on a diet. They've spent us into oblivion.

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Well, shoot...

just order one less B-2 (not)Stealth bomber, and your budget will be balanced. Problem solved!