Lack of funding may affect Air Force readiness

Holloman F-16 training program could be hit hard

Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote in a letter last week that a continuing resolution to buy time for Congress to come up with a fiscal year 2018 budget may delay the startup of Holloman Air Force Base’s two new F-16 training squadrons.

“Lack of funds to stand-up two F-16 training squadrons ... will further reduce pilot production, leaving the Air Force unable to train the number of pilots necessary for continued readiness recovery,” Mattis wrote in the Sept. 8 letter to the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

The letter was released just before a threemonth continuing resolution was signed by the president last Friday.

The Air Force is in the midst of a pilot shortage and the two squadrons of 45 F-16s were assigned to Holloman this summer from Hill Air Force

Base in Utah on a temporary basis to provide additional training opportunities at Holloman and produce pilots, as well as make room for new F-35s at Hill.

The Air Force was short 1,500 pilots at the end of 2016, said spokeswoman Ann Stefanek, and the majority of those were fighter pilots.

Getting the F-16s into full operation is expected to take around two years, Stefanek said, but a lack of timely and sufficient funding could prevent the process from moving forward.

That includes the relocation of instructor pilots and students, and the hiring of 700 contract maintainers to care for the squadrons, as the Air Force is also currently light on maintainers.

“If we don’t have the money we need, that will delay the pilot training from starting,” Stefanek said.

Mattis acknowledged that a continuing resolution is a better option than the sequestration, or automatic spending cuts, imposed by 2011’s Budget Control Act.

Congress has eased the cuts since the BCA’s passage, but the full effects of the law are expected to go into effect in fiscal year 2018.

“A CR, if required, avoids a government shutdown and provides an opportunity for a longterm solution that lifts the BCA caps,” Mattis wrote. “In the long term, it is the budget caps mandated in the Budget Control Act that impose the greater threat to the Department and to national security.”

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and who happily announced the decision to relocate the F-16s in June, agreed. “While continuing resolutions are better than shutting down the government, they are bad for the military, national security and the federal government — and, ultimately, they do a real disservice to the American people,” Udall said in a statement. “... In New Mexico, it directly affects new training missions and important maintenance.”

Udall added that sequestration would have “a devastating impact” on the state.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who worked with Udall and Rep. Steve Pearce to bring the mission to Holloman, said the proposed 2018 National Defense Authorization Act does provide funding for the F-16 relocation.

“I will continue to work with the Air Force and the New Mexico delegation every step of the way to ensure the relocation of the F-16 squadrons to Holloman is successful and as seamless as possible,” Heinrich said in a statement.

The new squadrons join two operational F-16 squadrons already on base at Holloman.

The House passed a $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2018, which starts Oct. 1, on Thursday. The bill appropriates $60 billion above current levels to the Department of Defense.