President Joe Biden’s nominee for Air Force secretary, Pentagon veteran Frank Kendall, has a tough job ahead of him. If confirmed, the former top military buying official would immediately inherit a slew of over budget and behind-schedule weapon programs that would require him to secure funding to salvage them despite decades of questionable management of taxpayer funds.
Biden waited three months to nominate Kendall, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and Pentagon acquisition chief who also has defense industry experience. The nomination came alongside the president’s pick for deputy Air Force secretary, Gina Ortiz Jones, a retired Air Force intelligence officer who deployed to Iraq before advising on military intelligence in Latin America and Africa. Jones would also bring congressional ties with two failed Democratic runs for Congress in Texas.
“He’s gonna conclude real quickly that the Air Force is in real dire straits,” retired Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula said of Kendall. The dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies nonetheless praised Biden’s choice for the job.
“He’s a defense professional of the highest order,” he said, noting his decades of experience in national security, government, and the private sector. That means he is a known entity to the senators who soon will vote on him taking the Air Force job.
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Deptula, who flew F-15s when they were the newest commodity in the 1970s, said 80% of the force is now fourth-generation compared to just 20% stealthy fifth-generation aircraft. In the past three decades, the fighter and bomber force has also shrunk by more than half.
“If you ain’t got stealth, you ain’t s— when it comes to a modern conflict,” Deptula said.
“They’ve been assigned more mission than the resources that they have available to accomplish it,” he added. “The force structure is the oldest and the fewest in its history, so he’s going to have to recapitalize the Air Force, the traditional Air Force, while all the while growing and fortifying the Space Force.”
‘Military political correctness’
Deptula does not believe Biden’s lengthy nomination delay will hurt Kendall, but he will have to hit the ground running to catch up to the heavy investments that adversaries China and Russia made while the United States was fighting two wars in the Middle East.
Kendall’s biggest mission will be convincing Congress that the Air Force needs a bigger share of the defense budget.
“Without understanding the dire condition of the Air Force, the entire Department of Defense is going to be hard-pressed to deter, or if necessary defeat, a peer adversary in the next decade,” he said. “We gotta move beyond joint military political correctness because the threats that are facing America are too real not to speak plainly and honestly.”
That will mean making the case for the Air Force taking some of the budget from another service, such as the Army, which is recalibrating its combat arsenal to play a land role in the Indo-Pacific.
The Air Force is also overbudget and behind schedule on the KC-46 tanker aircraft program. The F-35 fifth-generation fighter brings unmatched capability but has had a long list of major problems and brings a high operational cost. The service must also replace a “geriatric” B-52 bomber, the youngest of which is 59 years old, with the B-21 bomber.
Deptula suggested the next Air Force secretary complete full buys of existing programs and advocate for a more realistic approach to force planning analysis.
Retired Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz, president of the Institute for Defense Analysis, agreed that Kendall is a good choice for the job.
A former Air Force chief of staff himself, Schwartz said getting on the same page with service chief of staff Gen. Charles Brown will be vital to setting the tone for success.
“He’s a proven defense professional, and I think we’ll make an excellent teammate for Gen. Brown,” he said.
Schwartz also said the choice of Jones with her congressional chops will help strengthen relationships with lawmakers.
“From a skill set point of view, that’s a nice combination,” he said, noting all three will spend a good deal of time with Congress.
Deptula also praised the choice of Jones, a member of the LGBT community, as a move in the right direction for the Air Force.
“Diversity is an important piece of the equation,” he said. “Diversity of thought is part and parcel provided by diversity of different groups.”
‘Choices and priorities’
Schwartz opined that Kendall will be particularly adept at making sure the Air Force’s programs deliver.
“My hunch is that he can perceive a program that’s not delivering very, very quickly,” he said. “It won’t take much time for him to figure that out.”
Schwartz said the B-21 is a well-managed program but that F-35 operational costs need to be pared.
Kendall will also play a key role in making the case for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, which would replace the 50-year-old Minuteman III ICBM force unless liberal lawmakers get their way.
“Minuteman III is a little bit like my father’s Plymouth,” Schwartz said. “I mean, you can keep them running and you can fix the body and do what you have to, but ultimately, that isn’t what we need.”
In addition to modernizing the land-based leg of the nuclear triad and giving it decades more of life, the program would modernize nuclear command and control.
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Schwartz, who served during the sequestration period of 2008 to 2012, said he does not believe that the oncoming tight budget environment will doom Kendall to failure.
“The bottom line is, this is all a matter of choices and priorities,” he said. “I wouldn’t see it as a prescription for failure at all, and I’m sure that Gen. Brown doesn’t see it that way. And as a defense professional, I’ll bet you a buck that neither does Frank Kendall.”
