President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Air Force told senators the best way to bring down the service’s skyrocketing bills to operate its aging fleet would be to buy more Lightning IIs — despite a myriad of unresolved flaws with the troubled fifth-generation jet.
Seventy percent of the Air Force’s overall weapons budget goes to sustainment costs, keeping its ever-aging fleet of combat planes in shape to fly. Couple that with a smaller-than-planned F-22 Raptor buy and developmental quagmires on the companion F-35, and the service faces challenges to fulfill all its missions.
That is a big reason Biden and his team selected Frank Kendall, a longtime defense industry official and Pentagon acquisition chief under former President Barack Obama, to lead the Air Force.
He was peppered with questions during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing about the troubled F-35 program and a laundry list of other challenges he would face in the post if confirmed.
The Air Force’s most advanced tactical fighter is also the most expensive to maintain. The F-35 costs taxpayers $36,000 per hour to operate while only yielding 250 hours per year in operational time. It also requires 40 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, according to a report cited by Armed Services Committee member Sen. Angus King of Maine.
Due to the F-22 buy being slashed dramatically due to its own developmental snags as the only fifth-generation fighter game in town, the F-35 program has irked lawmakers from both parties for years.
Kendall was pummeled with challenges from senators Tuesday, including how he would handle the F-35 dilemma, nuclear modernization, a pilot shortage, and readiness challenges facing the Air Force amid a tightening defense budget environment.
“The age of the aircraft is an issue,” Kendall agreed of the Air Force fleet, which includes just 20% of fifth-generation aircraft.
AIR FORCE WEAPONS SYSTEMS IN ‘DIRE SHAPE’ DESPITE YEARS OF BIG SPENDING
Ranking member Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe took pains to clarify he disagreed with prominent members of Congress calling to divest from the F-35 program.
“It’s been said that the Air Force is too small and too old to do what the nation asked it to do,” Inhofe said. “My concern right now is what kind of actions can we take to ensure that we’re fielding the number of F-35s needed to fight against Russia and China? It’s a different game out there.”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat, said in March he was ready to “cut our losses” on the program and stop throwing money into a “rathole.” To that end, Inhofe noted during the hearing some prominent Washington officials oppose the program, overseen by influential defense firm Lockheed Martin.
Despite Smith’s view, Kendall called for a newer fleet with more F-35s.
“The key to keeping the cost down in an air fleet is getting the numbers up, and there is a very strong correlation between the size of the fleet and the cost to sustain that,” he said. “If there were one thing that will drive cost down overall, it would be to continue to buy.”
Kendall called for more investment in future projects during the design phase to ensure sustainment costs are lower.
The nominee also promised to request the necessary budget to meet National Defense Strategy requirements, which call for competition with China and Russia.
Kendall said he remembers being at the Pentagon in 2010 when China began angling to prevent the United States from operating in the Pacific Rim.
He said that challenge still concerns him.
“The specific problem that I’ve been concerned about for some time is China’s investments in capabilities that are intended to defeat the U.S. ability to project power in that region,” he said. “Both the Air Force and the Space Force.”
‘A potential Achilles’ heel’
Kendall acknowledged the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the commercial airline industry, which actually allowed the Air Force to retain pilots — but he said the service was still some 2,000 pilots short of where it needs to be.
If confirmed, Kendall would be responsible for recruiting and retaining talent, including minority talent, alongside Air Force chief of staff C.Q. Brown, the first black man to hold the position.
Biden’s Department of Defense budget is expected to be $720 billion, which some consider a flat budget for not incorporating an increase of 3-5% that many hawkish defense experts and lawmakers advocate for. (As a reference point, that is more annually than the gross domestic products of American Samoa and other small countries, according to the World Bank.)
One of the heftiest costs facing the Air Force will be the modernization of two legs of the nuclear triad, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, to replace 50-year-old Minuteman III missiles, as well as new B-21 bombers to replace aging B-52 aircraft.
Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer called the mission the DOD’s most important.
“As the service responsible for two of the three legs of the triad, the success of this mission depends heavily on the Air Force,” she said.
Liberal Democrats have called for shrinking nuclear deterrence capabilities or delaying nuclear modernization further, something that military and security experts have said is no longer possible.
But Kendall, in written comments, told the panel, “The nuclear enterprise is by far the most important and significant responsibility of the secretary of the Air Force.”
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The nominee similarly shared concerns that cyberattacks by an adversary such as China could render America’s most powerful aircraft useless, and he called for investment that would keep pace with the threat.
“Cyber is a ubiquitous problem. It is a potential Achilles’ heel in any number of places in our overall economic, social-military enterprise, including potentially in the nuclear command-and-control area,” he said. “The threats never stop, they keep coming at you.”
