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WASHINGTON: The US Air Force will seek an additional $20 billion a year in non-war spending over its current budget request for 20 years starting in fiscal 2009, a senior Air Force official said.
The move may be be matched by the Army and the Navy, which are also concerned about what they view as a mismatch between the growing roles assigned to them and their current budgets, according to some experts.
“We have only managed to slow, not reverse, our aging inventory,” the Air Force official told a small group of reporters. “Without significant recapitalization, the Air Force will become a much smaller and less capable force.”
The official spoke Friday on condition that his remarks not be published until the president's budget was sent to Capitol Hill on Monday morning.
Among companies that stand to gain from such a jump in Air Force spending are aerospace companies Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co..
President George W. Bush's fiscal 2008 request would give the Air Force about $110 billion in non-war funding for fiscal 2008, which begins on Oct. 1.
The official said the Air Force would seek $20 billion more per year over a “20-year time frame.”
In seeking about $481 billion for the U.S. Defense Department in fiscal 2008, Bush would boost military spending to near-record levels.
But U.S. defense officials say U.S. military spending remains low as a percentage of gross domestic product compared with the Cold War and World War II years.
U.S. military-related spending in current fiscal 2007 is about 4.0 percent to 4.5 percent of GDP, less of a burden on the economy than the 6.2 percent of GDP in 1986 under the Reagan administration's arms build-up, said Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
If Congress approved the White House budget plan, it would mark the highest defense spending in inflation-adjusted terms since 1953, according to Kosiak.
