Senate Panel: Air Force Budget Is Not Adequate

The Biden administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) $895.2 billion defense budget request complies with spending restrictions imposed by 2023’s Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), which cap Pentagon spending increases over this year’s budget at 1 percent. That blanket restriction, however, is unlikely to survive as Senate and House appropriations and defense panels begin reviewing Department of Defense (DOD) budgets, especially with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) March announcement that it was increasing military spending by 7.2 percent this year. Those fiscal pressures surfaced on April 9 before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee in bipartisan criticism of the U.S. Air Force’s proposed FY25 $188 billion budget, which calls for a 1.1 percent, or $2.4 billion, spending increase while trimming 129 aircraft from its inventory and dipping below 5,000 jets for the first time since its 1947 inception....