AF leaders: Surveillance demand drives budget decisions, fleet cuts

The constant, insatiable demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance has driven the Air Force to reduce funds for some missions in order to keep more spy aircraft flying and to increase combat air patrols, Air Force leaders told lawmakers Friday.

The fiscal 2016 budget request looks to keep flying the U-2, previously planned for early retirement, at least until 2019 to address the demand for surveillance. The budget also would fund 60 combat air patrols per day, up from 55. But that funding has to come from elsewhere in the budget, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

"We build to combatant command requirements, not to Air Force requirements," Welsh said. "So when the combatant commanders tell us that their No. 1 priority is ISR ... we will sit with them, as I did again this year, and ask each of the regional combatant commanders; Would you prefer for us to invest in more ISR, or would you prefer to invest in maintaining things like close air support capacity for you?"

The demand for ISR is increasing in each command across the world, because it provides "precious information," Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said.

"It can avoid loss of life, innocent life, if you really are persistent in knowing who's who and what's what," she said. "You can actually do, in some cases, attack missions. It provides a lot of information, and that information is power."

In addition to the U-2s, the budget request seeks to continue procurement of RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance drones and continued buys of the MQ-9 Reaper drone to replace the MQ-1B Predator.

The constant need for surveillance in the Middle East has meant the Air Force's slice of the overseas contingency operation budget has been steady, and will remain so in the coming years, James said.

The intense demand for surveillance means some regions do not get near the attention that others do. Most U.S. military surveillance is focused on terrorism and targets such as the Islamic State group in the Middle East, said Gen. Philip Breedlove, head of U.S. European Command and NATO supreme allied commander. As a result, EUCOM gets just 2 percent of the military's surveillance flights, and of that, 80 percent goes to missions in Africa, Breedlove told reporters on Thursday.

"So ISR is always short," Breedlove said. "Yes, I could use more ISR. But I understand the calculus by which it has been apportioned."

The service is increasing flight pay and using other incentives to try to keep drone pilots in their current jobs. It also is trying to address the constant workload that has contributed to burnout in the ranks. And it is trying to beef up training programs to bring new pilots in.

"We've been chasing this training problem for the last eight years," Welsh said. "And we just can't get ahead of it because the operational demand won't slow down."