Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney. Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD, industry, and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational concepts, technology,, and policy. When it comes to air and space power.

It is that time again for the Rendezvous, our monthly look at what’s happening in Washington DC when it comes to air and space power, plus important national security trends that we should be watching around the globe. We’re recording this on Monday, June 30th, so if world events have developed since then, we’ll catch that on the next episode or release, a special edition like we did for the Iran attacks.

So with that, we’d like to welcome our Washington experts Lazer Lazarsky.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Great to be back and a happy 4th of July to everybody.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you to you too. Sledge Harmer.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Glad to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Jeff Rowlison.

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: Hey, thanks for having me

Rowli, great to have you back. And also we have Lieutenant General Dave Deptula.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Hey, lot’s going on. Happy to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s right. Thank you, sir. JV Venable.

John “JV” Venable: [00:01:00] Happy to be with you, Heather.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Charles Galbrath “socks” of the Mitchell team.

Charles Galbreath: Great to be with you. Happy birthday America.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Very good. Alright, so Lazer, Sledge, and Jeff, we’re living through one of the most unconventional budget releases in modern history. Give us a state of the play on that update. What are the key elements we should be watching and where do they stand?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Yeah. Every year for the past 20 years that I’ve been working either on the hill or with the hill, many of us have said, “well, I’ve never seen that before.’ Well, guess what? So anyway, we’re in a bit of a perfect storm, with several issues, budget related issues to defense hitting all at the same time.

And the first thing I guess we can start with is a continuing year long resolution that we’re, under that didn’t get passed till the 14th of March, six months late. Obviously impacting everything that we do in defense. And while other bills, other appropriations bills have been on year long, CRs, the Department of Defense has never been on one.

So again, unconventional and then we’re sitting there, but fortunately [00:02:00] we had Congress, they gave us some flexibilities on new acquisitions, transferability and some funding tables. But the bottom line is it was still a cut based on inflation. And then the next, we have a delayed budget, which, the first we get this skinny budget on the, 14th and then we get some top line numbers 2 May. full budget around the 25th of June. And even with that, we didn’t get all the justification books. So that impacts Congress’s ability to view the budget, to hold the hearings, even though we were holding hearings. And then bill the appropriations bill as well as defense authorization bills. But they had to move forward and then the strange and the unconventional thing, which is set up at the very beginning was the defense portion of this bill relies on roughly 113 billion out of the 150 billion that’s in the yet to pass reconciliation bill. And that reconciliation bill, as we’re recording this, they’re going through a vote-arama on the Senate floor to [00:03:00] try to get this bill, this reconciliation bill passed so that we can get the $113 billion added on to that base budget, which is actually 44 billion below the current continuing resolution funding, so that we can have at least a flat budget going forward.

Not a great budget. But it’s better than a cut. So if we can at least get it passed, this reconciliation bill passed in the Senate and over to the house and there’s no guarantees that’s gonna happen, but at least we’re gonna see a de a decent budget. However, if Congress does not pass that reconciliation bill, we’re looking at $113 billion cut unless Congress gets together and says, “well, let’s go ahead and bump up the base budget.” But that’s gonna be difficult to do because if you increase defense, you’re gonna have to increase non-defense. And the last two issues being worked, there’s a rescissions bill and the rescission, basically rescinds funding of previous appropriations bills that has [00:04:00] upset the Democrats. They don’t wanna see that go through. That was a lot of the funding that. They had pushed for, and the issue with going forward on this Rescissions bill is if we do pass it. It is gonna cause even more partisanship between Republicans and Democrats, which directly impacts our ability to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass our appropriations bills, which then can lead us into a potential another year long CR.

And then the last thing, which is passed every year for the last 64 years of the authorization bills and the House and the Senate are moving forward on the week of the seventh, you’ll have the Senate Armed Services Committee, go forward with their National Defense Authorization Act, mark it up, and then the following week you’ll have the house mark it up.

So, at least we’re moving forward on there. But there’s a lot of unknowns and a lot of angst between Republicans, Democrats, in the House and the Senate.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s quite a roll up. I mean, things are really complex now. Sledge and Rowli, what are your thoughts?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, just a [00:05:00] couple things I wanna update on Lazer and I thought he’d laid that out very nicely there.

To the National Defense Authorization Act. The timeline that Lazer just gave is all predicated on the reconciliation bill passing. So if that doesn’t pass, it’s possible that they could, you know, they’d slip the NDAA, but who knows there. And where we are right now in terms of ground truth on the defense appropriations bill.

So the House has marked or the House Appropriations Committee, the full committee has marked the defense bill at $831 billion. And that’s an important number there. And when you talk about the jurisdiction of the committees, it’s hard to compare apples and apples between the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations committee.

But the bill is out of committee. No idea when it is gonna go to the floor. It could go next week. It could go sometime in September, but they at least have a bill ready to go to the floor. The Senate appropriations committee has not marked their bill yet. So, that, again, there are too many variables there.

And the reason I say the $831 the HAC defense bill is a significant, [00:06:00] is if you add a $1 13 billion, the reconciliation, then you come up with $961 billion, which is about what you’re gonna see at the HASC and the HASC eventually mark two, and that’s what the FY 26 budget request looks like.

So it does seem like it’s all random, but there is some, method to the madness there.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So we’re adding reconciliation on top of that. That’s great for this year, but what does that pose or, what does that mean for future year budgets?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I’ve got some, a little later on I’m gonna talk a little bit more about that.

But this is, this is a sugar high. And, you know, unless we can get back to doing regular order, a normal budget request. The normal markup process in Congress and actually Congress passing bills before the end of the fiscal year. This is the world we live in.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: And it’s, well, it’s almost like OCO, right? You sitting there, you’re relying on this extra funding, which is not guaranteed.

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: And you see that playing out, that OCO reference, Lazer. You see that playing [00:07:00] out in the tables. If you look at the R one documents, you can see major programs being shifted from base funding to the supposed reconciliation funding. And we’re gonna have to reconcile through these spend plans. How we account for what we’ve budgeted for in reconciliation funding in a very separate spend plan that Congress is gonna expect to receive. And so it’s gonna be really interesting to watch how we reconcile the differences between base budget and reconciliation funding.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, Sledge I just wanted to comment on your analogy of a sugar high. We gotta remind Congress sometimes you have to eat your vegetables. And to me that, that means finding a way to cooperate and actually pass a budget that we call agree to. That gives us the growth that we absolutely need because this CR and then continuing resolution and the reconciliation is a dangerous path.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and as I recall, OCO was dominantly, not purely, but dominantly ops and maintenance, right? It [00:08:00] wasn’t procurement funding. So we’re seeing a different flavor from reconciliation where there is more procurement, there are ads for platforms, and we’re seeing those then get decremented out of the FY 26 budget.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: And then the other thing, and you asked it at the beginning, so there’s only 150 billion in total in this reconciliation bill. So a large portion of it, 113 goes in 26. What happens in 27? You’re looking at 37. That’s not gonna be enough unless they significantly increase the base.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So we’ve had a lot of posture hearings occurring on the hill and well before the actual budget was released. So, can y’all update us on where those are going? It’s hard to testify and answer the test questions before you’ve actually been issued the test.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Jeff, you wanna jump on that one first?

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: Yeah. Well, I think all of us lived through experiences where, you are trained not to say things against the budget, right? And so, you know, as service representatives working with the Hill, you [00:09:00] defend your budget. It is really hard to defend a budget that hasn’t been made public or delivered to the staff that you were providing testimony to. And so I think, across the board the, leaders did as well as they could, considering that they really couldn’t get into the specifics of what they were briefing and the poor House appropriators had to mark a budget that they didn’t even have the details of what they were marking. And I think they’re. the marks reflect that.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: the only thing I would add there, I mean, this is, it is typical in a normal year with the budget to be a little bit late to the hill for the combatant commanders to come in and talk about their priorities without knowing what the numbers are.

And again, that’s different because they don’t have, they don’t budget authority and the organize, train, and equip part of the services takes care for the most part of the COCOM requirements. But when you do hear a COCOM commander come in, it’s about what their priorities are and if I had more money, this is what I would do. And I think that’s a lot of what you saw in the hearings this year was, “yeah, you know, [00:10:00] it’s predecisional and this is what we would like to do.”

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: I agree with everything and I think while there was overall frustration by members, at the administration for not getting, the documents to ’em on time. It did open up, and as everyone has watched the hearings, it opened up questions. More strategic on the budget. They got to talk about technological advances of our adversaries. They talked about acquisition reform, force structure, you know, support for different assets. They also talked about our shrinking the force and making sure and General Deptula talked about it a lot, but making sure that we’re not getting rid of assets until we’ve got new assets coming in. And then the industrial base, so you know, again, they couldn’t get down into the meat of certain things. So, what it did is it forced ’em to talk some more strategic, level questions. I thought some of the hearings were actually good, uh, despite the fact they couldn’t get into specific.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, I know we’re gonna talk about the modernization program and aircraft procurement a little [00:11:00] bit later on because we are not seeing a one for one replacement in this budget. But before we get there, I’d like to hear from y’all about how this is sitting with the key power brokers on the Hill. ‘Cause senior appropriators and authors they can’t enjoy this kind of process. So do you sense that they’ll throw down and send a clear message of the White House? That the order needs to be better next year, that there needs to be more discipline in how the budget is released? I know we talk about the risk of another year long CR next year, and I can’t imagine that would be popular. We know it’d be devastating for the service.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, Lucky, Congress is absolutely gonna fire that shot across the bow, but a lot of this is a self-inflicted wound too. As Lazer mentioned earlier, the FY 25 CR wasn’t approved until the 14th of March. When you have a new administration come in it’s not uncommon for them to put their spin on the ball. So, they wanted to give a review and a scrub of 26, so that’s delayed. But I think Lazer also said earlier, there’s a lot of frustration, and that’s probably the best way to describe it. They’re frustrated with the [00:12:00] process, the lack of communication. I think this is probably the most contentious, I’ve seen it between the legislative and the executive branch. And the fact that you have so close to party parody in both the House and the Senate. It’s really hard to tell, exactly what people are thinking, but the bottom line is there’s enough blame to go around. Let’s hope Congress can help solve the problem by getting something done ideally by the end of the fiscal year, but more likely something before Christmas so we can get onto to FY 27.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: I agree. The best message Congress can send is passing 12 appropriations bills and a defense authorization bill by the end of the calendar year. And I’m with Sledge, i’d like to say the end of the fiscal year, but we know we’re gonna be on another continuing resolution ’cause there’s just not enough time to pass all the bills we need to by the end of the fiscal year. But if Congress can just get the bills done, get ’em passed, then that’s the message. And it’s their appropriations, it’s their policy that they’re sending up to the [00:13:00] administration and sending out, and it’s gonna be an interesting next six months.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. The last thing I was gonna say, there I agree with Lazer but back to the whole reconciliation thing, I think that’s really the, that’s the fly the ointment here. I think Congress is really upset with the way the process has gone through, how they’re injecting extra money. There’s no visibility on what’s gonna happen in the out years or beyond the 113 billion in 26 and then the rest of the 150 in 27. But you know, as of the time we’re recording this the J books for most of the Air Force budget request are still not active.

So, we really don’t have an idea. And the j books that you do get only have FY 26 data. So there’s nothing in the FYDP nothing in FY 27 through 30. So there’s no idea how, what they’re, what the priorities of the administration are, where we’re going, how they’re gonna pay for that. Which makes reconciliation even that much more dangerous.

But the big trends that I noticed was everybody’s touting how to, what a big increase in, [00:14:00] in defense spending, this is. The non blue pass through of the Air Force budget is 51.5 billion dollars and that’s, basically six and a half billion dollars more than last year.

The part that’s mandatory spending or the reconciliation for the department of the Air Force is 38.6 billion. So if you look at 25 enacted, you take reconciliation out and you look at the discretionary spending between 25 and 26. The Air Force actually gets $1.8 billion less in 26. So, in terms, it’s a real budget cut. And that’s, I think that’s really gonna hurt. And then the other thing that, that stood out to me was if the Air Force RDT and E budget is 22% higher than their procurement budget and while I believe you ought to be investing in future technologies, at some point you’ve gotta buy stuff.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: The R&D budget has been outta whack with the procurement budget for years. I mean, we long talk about the inability to leap [00:15:00] over, that cliff and if you don’t buy none of the investments that you make in R&D matter, ’cause you have to then field the capabilities in operationally meaningful numbers in order to be able to reap the harvest of all that R&D.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, let me say that another way. The future doesn’t matter if you can’t fight today, so you’ll survive to be in the future.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We need those fight tonight forces. So sir, let’s then pivot over to you and talk about Air Force modernization. We alluded to what’s going on this year? And it’s super thin to say the least. The Air Force is accelerating divestments, so it’s retiring aircraft, but it’s not buying much. And we were told that this was going to be a piece through strength budget, but it’s looking more like an accelerated death spiral for the Air Force in key areas. What’s your take?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, my unemotional assessment is to say that you’re accurate. The budget looks to divest 340 aircraft in 26, but only buy [00:16:00] 76 aircraft. That accelerates the decline in the size of the Air Force to historical lows at the same time, America is facing the greatest threats in its history. This budget accelerates the Air Force’s fighter force death spiral. It seeks to retire 162 A 10s, 13 F 15 C/Ds, 62 F 16 C/Ds, and 21 F 15 E’s. I’ll do the math for you. That’s 258 fighters, which is over three and a half fighter wing equivalents. That’s what we are proposing to retire in one year! And it only acquires 24 F 35s and 21 F 15 EXs, so that takes care of that over a half for a net loss of three fighter wings. The [00:17:00] consequence is that this continued decline in four structure will eventually undermine America’s combat capability as well as exacerbating the fighter pilot and maintainer shortfalls that have become perennial issues.

The impact of this 26 budget on the Air Force is wholly incongruous with global demand signals and real world trends that we see in places like Ukraine, which is a good illustration of the cost of not being able to achieve air superiority in Iran, or conversely, we dramatically witnessed the benefits of achieving air superiority.

Additionally beyond the fighters, this budget will further stress our training capacity. It retires 35 T 1s, but only acquires 14 T 7s. It treads water with tankers when we should be growing our tanker [00:18:00] force. 14 KC 135s divested for 15 KC 46s acquired. It goes on to seek to sunset 11 HH 60 Gs when we have no solid answer for the future of combat search and rescue. And that will put our CSAR professionals at risk as a career field.

That career field requires highly trained personnel, and I’d suggests it’s a moral imperative to retain and grow this capability. It seeks to shrink our mobility fleet. It gets rid of the 14 C 130s and procures none at a time when the Pacific will demand more lift, not less. The problem is that I seriously doubt that the President of the United States is aware of these facts, but he needs to be because the impact of the Air Force 26 budget is [00:19:00] the opposite of peace through strength. Rather at foretell’s losing through weakness.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, sir. I’m glad you mentioned and went through all the specifics of the aircraft that are being divested and how anemic, the procurement budget is because it’s not just the aircraft that matter, it’s also the people. And you highlighted that’s important because if you don’t have the experienced expertise in your war fighters, you can’t employ the capabilities as needed.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. I would say not just for CSAR, but close air support as well. If you’re getting rid of the entire A 10 fleet.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Exactly.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: It’s CAS is not a platform. It’s a mission, and unless you have units that are dedicated to doing close air support every day, it doesn’t matter what airplane you’re flying.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and let’s remember that the A 10 dominantly supports the CSAR mission as well. And so when you package all of that together, you’re seeing an inability for our nation to go and pick up pilots who’ve been down to behind enemy lines.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Well, and then we talked about the E 7 last podcast. I mean, it’s the same thing!

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. And we’re gonna talk about that later.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. [00:20:00] Sir, how do these investment priorities stand with the type of power projection that everyone has been celebrating with the Iran strike? F 35s are the backbone of taking down Iran’s IADs.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Well, Heather, as I just said, this budget is dangerously disconnected from the options that the President needs for both today and tomorrow. And it is important to highlight the spectacular performance of the F 35 in achieving Israel’s objectives. In fact, they could not have accomplished the success that they did without the stealth and situational awareness provided by the F 35. The Israeli Air Force’s F 35s conducted the initial penetration missions deep into the heart of Iran, that didn’t just degrade enemy defenses and gather real time intelligence, it destroyed them. Meanwhile it enabled F 15 I and F 16 I fighters, [00:21:00] that followed with heavy payloads for sustained bombing, hitting over 800 AIM points in two weeks. So, the F 35 also served as an airborne sensor network providing 360 degrees spherical situation awareness and threat warnings to non stealthy fighters operating at the same time.

Say if you want decisive air power, like we saw Israel demonstrate, we need to pay for decisive air power. The other point that’s really important is that this is not just about the iron. As you alluded to in your opening comment here part of this segment, these actions are being seen by the pilots and maintainers and they realize the impact on them. No planes to fly. Increased maintenance tasks for aircraft with insufficient spares and increasing age. So you [00:22:00] know, there’s a demoralization factor at play here as well.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, exactly. Because if you don’t value that mission area and you just decimate or fully divest the aircraft and the pilots the personnel that are associated with that mission area, that your other combat forces are gonna look and go, “well, I guess I’m not that important either.”

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): I’m outta here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, I’m outta here. There’s no reason for them to remain in the service if they aren’t valued. And then as you’re divesting all of these aircraft, you’re just spinning the remaining forces harder and harder.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: And Lucky, it was an outstanding mission, but it took 125 aircraft to execute a single strike in Iran. What about if we had to sustain those operations at a higher and consistent level, and then we had a factor in attrition of aircraft? Do we have the force structure needed to execute that? And the answer is no. And I, besides General Deptula, my other hero has always been President Reagan, and he gave a radio address back in 83 and he said, “we must develop a responsible and [00:23:00] balanced understanding of the dangers we face globally, and then we have to make up for loss,” and that’s amazing, “we have to make up for lost years of investment by undertaking development and force modernization to meet the crisis which this nation could face.” We’re back in that same situation.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Thanks very much for highlighting that topic. There is a new article out in the hill by yours truly co-authored by representative, Pfluger. It’s entitled, A Spectacular Airstrike on Iran and a sobering warning. I’d encourage all in the audience to dig that up and read it

John “JV” Venable: Lucky. I’d love to jump on Lazer’s comments there. That ability for us to go in and strike one time was impressive. But the ability to sustain it is something different. If you just look at the total size of the Israeli Air Force, upwards of 250 fighters, and they have two goes of 200 fighters, that’s an 80% fully mission capable rate. [00:24:00] Their F 35s are flying at a 90 plus percent mission capable rate, and we’re struggling to get 50% in the Active Duty Air Force. So those two facets right there. Our ability to project and our ability to sustain our crippling right now in, in the large, sense of what the funding and what our priorities get you. If I could go back to one more thing that General Deptula said earlier is the disconnect between the budget and the President’s priorities.

I don’t think the President understands that because he increased the budget in his first four years as President by 30% for the Air Force alone. And he gave the Air Force specific directions through the Secretary of Defense to increase mission capable rates of key fighters and of the acquisition of additional fighters. And the Air Force actually was unable to execute any of that. And as we heard just a little bit earlier by Sledge, that ability for us [00:25:00] to generate what we need going forward is all predicated on the budget that we’re not getting. We have to be able to tell the President facts. Somebody has to get to him with that, and I’m not sure who that’s somebody’s gonna be.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, JV I’m glad you mentioned numbers. So capacity and readiness equals your ability to go to combat. And again, as everyone has said, impressive one-time strike. But can you sustain that for the duration and also be able to feed the fight to adapt for combat losses? And I would say right now we don’t. So Charles, pivoting over to you and space budget. Reconciliation looks good for the Space Force, but the actual budget submission, like the Air Force is a cut.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, you’re right, Lucky. So the actual budget is about 26 billion, which is approximately a three to $4 billion cut from what we had previously.

And let’s not forget, year long CR is actually a net decrease because of inflation. But with reconciliation, assuming it passes, we’re looking at about a $40 billion budget [00:26:00] for the Space Force, total. And that’s important because the mission sets that are being added to the Space Force require additional resources. And General Saltzman made it, very clear when he was testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, last week that these new mission sets require the resources and some of the areas that we’re looking at, like Golden Dome, they’re gonna have utility, not just for missile defense, air defense the nation, but also supporting missions around the world to include space superiority, which is absolutely critical. But just wanna reiterate what everybody has already said multiple times, and that is the CR with the reconciliation is no way to, to run the growth of the Space Force. In particular, we need real growth at the baseline budget.

One of the senators said, ” how can we keep pace with China if we can’t keep pace with inflation?” I think that was just such a good line and so accurate that, we know that the threats are growing against our space capabilities. And we’ve gotta defend [00:27:00] against those. And we need the resources to do that. This even at 40 billion, it doesn’t do it. We need more.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Rowli doesn’t this approach cutting the core budget and relying on the reconciliation that sugar high to carry those programs forward, doesn’t that actually go against Congress’s intent to accelerate defense investment after too many years of thin funding? And so what are you hearing members of Congress say to you?

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: Yeah, well it’s tough to say what members of Congress are saying. They’ve been so focused on passing sort of their near term threat with reconciliation. But just to go back to Charles’s comment, right? We have this massive investment in long range kill chains in Space Force, RDT and E. It’s gonna, requesting 6.4 billion in the reconciliation only column, right? So there’s no base investment in long range kill chain, in this strategy. And so how do you sustain that year over year, over year and how do you get others within our industry? You know, mostly in the venture capital, private equity side of things [00:28:00] to make investments in companies that can contribute to this.

Without the assurance that this is gonna be in the base budget. And so you take that methodology, throughout and I think JV, you said this is an impressive one-time strike. If that’s all this is, then we’re in real trouble, right? And so we’ve gotta think about how we’re articulating our budget requirements in the base budget and then, eventually as the administration unveils the FYDP, we’ve gotta add some strength into our base budget. Not the impressive one-time efforts that reconciliation may or may not be at this point, right? So that said, I think Sledge mentioned it earlier. I think there is concern on how the marks are gonna come out.

And I think, presupposing, what members are saying about this right now is a little early to me other than to say, hey, I think everybody’s really nervous about making a mark on the base defense budget, that looks a little bit like a shell [00:29:00] game. Like the old OCO tactics, but with honestly less stability than the OCO funding of the past.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, so let me ask you this then. So, if the baseline budget has gone down in part because of reconciliation, how do we then bring that back up to the levels and the growth that we need to see in the baseline budget?

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: No, I think we talked about a little bit before, I think Lazer mentioned, if we can get, if Congress steps in reallocates and re designates programs and then puts that funding in the base appropriations, that’s gonna send a clear message, right?

Whether or not that really affects the 27 cycle that is already well underway with the current guidance from the administration and OMB, this is gonna be a bit of a cycle that, has some long-term corrections, but we really need to get there. I just fundamentally think we’re broken if we depend on one or two years of reconciliation to invest in the industrial base that we’re really not. We’re [00:30:00] faking it by moving things from the base budget to reconciliation. Over.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. And we can’t lose sight of the fact that while we’re talking about dollars here we’re also exchanging time, right? The time to develop the force that we need both in the Air Force and the Space Force in terms of capacity, areas of coverage, in terms of new mission growth. We need the time to procure those systems and if we’re delaying, because of continuing resolutions, and if we’re delaying because of other priorities, we’re just seeding time to our adversary, and we can never get that back.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Spot on.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: To raise the defense budget, the problem is, and I talked about it earlier, you need 60 votes in the Senate. Well, you’re gonna have a push to increase non-defense. And that’s, that’s what we constantly, fight with because I think a lot of people think we need to re increase defense spending. But that corresponding increase in non-defense spending is, what is really gonna get us in trouble.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Well, and I’m gonna bang my spoon on my high chair once again here. [00:31:00] At some point the bill comes due and $37 trillion in debt, I mean, if you took the interest payment on the debt alone is more than we spent on national defense. And if you took our discretionary spending in the federal budget down to zero, we still have a deficit. So, the answer to your question there Lucky is Congress has gotta get serious about mandatory spending and put us on path to, fiscal sanity because without economic power, you are not a military power.

Charles Galbreath: Eat your vegetables.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, that’s all true. But the fact of the matter is all politics is local like Tip O’Neill said. And until we introduce terminal limits, there’s no congressman that is gonna vote for a reduction in the mandatory social spending and that is a, you know, maybe six months prior to the economic collapse of our nation, someone might come out and do something, but by then it’ll be too late.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, let’s pivot the conversation back to our bread and butter, which is Air Force capabilities, Space Force capabilities. And sir, [00:32:00] last week you hosted the deputy director of DARPA and he made some pretty provocative comments about the future viability of stealth. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Heather, here’s the key point that Mr. McHenry privately acknowledged, and that’s, that stealth does increase the probability of penetration and it does decrease the probability of intercept of the stealthy aircraft. What Mr. McHenry raises is that those probabilities may be changing, but the fact is that they will continue to exist.

Furthermore, the entirety and complexity of the kill chain is not addressed in Mr. McHenry’s suppositions. Detection is about one element of a series of actions that have to be taken to defend against stealth. After detection, tracking at a low observable target must be established. Then there’s track transfer from the acquisition means to an [00:33:00] interceptor. Then there’s track transfer to a weapon. Then there’s track transfer to a fuse. Then the fuse must be properly designed and each one of these elements of the kill chain are complicated by stealth and result in a decreased probability of intercept against a stealth aircraft. Additionally, a modern stealth aircraft operates with an associated set of other mission assets that employ real time with other advanced electronic warfare, cyber space effects, and kinetics.

It’s about a set of combined effects. Add that up and factor in the dynamic variables of combat, and it’s quite formidable and it presents an advantage that we should not forego. All right? Now, all of that said technologies that Mr. McHenry referred to, like quantum [00:34:00] computing, advanced sensors and adversary kill chains, do not exist today except at labs. And only some of these capabilities exist in labs. They don’t exist at an operational level, and they won’t for many years, if not decades to come. And so these lab proven capabilities are a far cry from real world amidst the pressures and complexities of combat. How many years have we been studying things like quantum, directed energy, and hypersonics? For decades and our adversaries face similar challenges. Past that stealth continually advances. Multi-spectral stealth is increasingly vital given the rise of EO and IR detection capabilities. But I’m here to tell you 2025 stealth is not 1990 stealth. [00:35:00] Finally, I think it’s important to recognize that at the end of the day, wars are won by going on the offense.

By putting bombs on target and creating decisive effects. Stealth and other countermeasures increase our odds of survival. Now did we give up on land warfare when the first soldier was detected and hit with an arrow? Hundreds if not thousands of years ago. There comes a point where we go, we employ technology, but we must also anticipate losses and have attrition inventories given those expectations.

So, if you follow these technical projections that you know, scientists are likely and should, ’cause that’s what we pay ’em for, but if you follow them all and believe that they’re relevant today. Well, we live in a world where everything’s instantaneously detectable. Everything can be [00:36:00] engaged, and it’s the end of the world.

Well, we’ll see how that plays out, but we can’t toss in the towel on what works today and I would suggest to you will continue to work. Stealth is an entry level requirement. In our air and space power capabilities. Did you like the Iranian strike or do you want to be Ukraine?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, I think those are really great points. Stealth is the cost of entry, today’s modern battle space, and when you layer effects on that, you have the ability to maintain that initiative so long as you field insufficient numbers. Just because something’s in in the laboratory doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be operationally viable in the near term.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yep.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So JV, you mentioned this before, earlier when we were talking about, Iran, and the strike on Iran and the necessity to have the appropriate readiness levels. You recently released a major article that’s a summary of a new report that we’re about to issue about the need for more capability, capacity, and readiness. And for our listeners, [00:37:00] we’ll include a link to that article in our show notes. So would you give us a summary JV, on your findings, especially on the readiness?

John “JV” Venable: Heather, it’s a very detailed report. Bringing it up to the 50,000 foot level capacity, capability, and readiness are the three ingredients to actual combat power. The Air Force has withered over the years, and if you go back to 19 87, the height of the Cold War, the Air Force had 700 plus fighters in Europe alone, 29 fighter squadrons based in Europe. Today, the entire active duty inventory of fighters is comprised of 32 fighter squadrons. If you add up our total force, Air Force, Guard, and Reserve, we have 50, roughly 55 fighter squadrons. But the way those squadrons are, disposition, you would call that posturing is we only have a couple in Europe, we have a couple in the Pacific, and the way they’re based in the United States is one or [00:38:00] two fighter squadrons per location.

There are exceptions to that. Like at Shaw where there are three fighter squadrons, but when you have one or two fighter squadrons, it actually reduces the number of airplanes that you can project into a combat. And when you couple mission capable rates with our posturing today, we have the ability to move little over 500 fighters, mission capable fighters into a Pacific fight.

And that’s total force. And once those fighters are moved. There’s no ability to pick up the parts and pieces and move those into combat because of the lack of aerospace ground equipment at each of those installations. And so capacity wise, we’re at roughly one third the capacity we had at the height of the Cold War.

And when we go to the Pacific, we’ll be playing an away game with mission capable rates that are still staggeringly low, around 60% even when everything is deployed forward. The [00:39:00] Chinese, on the other hand, are playing a home game. They would be able to project forward about 700 mission capable fighters.

And so the outnumbering aspect of that is not too far off what it was during the Cold War we were outnumbered by the Soviets, but what has changed significantly is the capability of the opponents fighters and the readiness of those compared to the United States. So, capability wise, back during the Cold War, we actually had fourth and fifth generation fighters, brand new, and they were averaging around 14 years total, including all of the other fighters F 4s and F 111s. 14 years of age. Today our fighter force is roughly around 29 years old, depending on whose numbers that you use. While the Chinese have refurbished their entire fleet frontline fighters over the last 14 years. They have a, an average age of about eight years, which means their [00:40:00] technology is really up to speed and anecdotal evidence of how well that J 20 their stealth fighter is doing is actually surpassed what most people thought they would first be able to do. So capacity, they actually have significantly larger numbers and would be able to generate many more numbers of fighters and sorties over Taiwan than we would be able to. The capability of those fighters, they’re actually much younger than ours. And so if you look at the parody of technology, it’s getting pretty close.

But the readiness thing with which we actually beat the drum and we would’ve soundly defeated the Soviets during the Cold War. Average fighter pilot during the Cold War was getting more than 200, and most were getting around 250 hours a year. Today the average fighter pilot in the United States Air Force is getting 120 hours a year. That’s what we scoffed at the Soviets over. That was the average fighter pilot in the Soviet Union was getting 120 [00:41:00] hours. Today, the Chinese fighter pilots are reportedly getting over 200 hours a year. And so capacity, capability, and readiness in a China fight, we would be operating at best, at a parody, but most likely at a deficit.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I really like how you articulated that. We don’t have the mobility or the support equipment, the maintenance equipment, to really be able to do that power projection within the Pacific at the scale that we would need to, because it’s really truly in away game in ways that. Our posturing within Europe, uh, during the course of the Cold War, it was very much not.

We had the value of interior lines, even though they’re with our allies and partners, they were still interior lines and still a significant amount of support infrastructure available there.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Hey, lucky, I mean, and to jv, what about munitions? Because we see that we’re increasing funding for munitions, but how is that factoring in also besides the readiness and, uh, eight, uh, ground equipment?

John “JV” Venable: Well, laser, you’re digging a deeper hole for [00:42:00] me here. Um, we have a lot of really exquisite weapons, if you will, on, joint direct attack munitions, where you actually have to overly the target, but our really exquisite weapons where you’re sending able to send them 500, 700 miles and stay outside the range of the threat.

We’re less than 7,000 total in our inventory of JAS and SMS and the likes. Now, why does that make a difference if we have 350,000 J dams but we have only a handful of stealth platforms that can overly the target and deliver ’em. That’s an issue. And our fighter force is roughly 28%. Stealth platforms.

Our bomb reports is right around or slightly below that, and so when you start thinking about the other 75% of your fleet is going to have to send these long range. I lost munitions into the fight, and we only have a couple of days of those munitions [00:43:00] we find ourselves in another ringer. The numbers right now in war games, open source war games, laser means that we have less than a week’s worth of those.

1. Long range standoff munitions. And so our, inventories, our bomb dumps globally do not have the supplies of those munitions that we need to actually execute a fight of the duration that we think a China fight will be.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and jv you made a really good point about the cost of those long range exquisite weapons because those are used and loose.

Once you fire it off, you don’t get to fly and fire that again. And so there’s a, a knee in the curve regarding how long range we wanna be for those standoff munitions. and also the cost of that because as you get closer, there’s actually a sweet spot. And Mark Gunsinger did a study on this. It was roughly 250 to 300 nautical miles where you hit the right cost point for being able to stand off some, and still be able to be effective.

’cause you’re [00:44:00] also really dependent upon those long range kill chains. But getting back to your report, jv, what about the notion of modernization and capacity in the FY 26 budget? Because you have a lot of insight here based off of what you’ve recently been talking about, general Abula weighed in.

But what are your thoughts? How do they stack with what your report found?

John “JV” Venable: It’s the same as General Dip Tula alluded to. We need to be acquiring 72 F 30 fives a year as soon as we possibly can, 24 F 15 exs as quickly as we can, and then maximize the potential of the B 21 production line, bringing it up above 20 platforms a year. As quickly as we can in order to reverse this curve. And the one thing that I would add, which is counter to what many people believe, which is we need to stop retiring platforms. I don’t care if it’s an A 10, I don’t care if it’s an F 16 C model that has issues getting to the fight. We need those platforms until we can get them replaced with frontline fighters [00:45:00] like the F 35 and the, and the F 15 ex. And that means Congress needs to hear this right away. We need to stop retiring those platforms and start moving those new platforms in and building up our inventory before we start retiring the older platforms. And we need to do that right away.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): I mean, having sufficient aircraft to allow our pilots to maintain readiness.

John “JV” Venable: It is big General Dip Tula and you know that when we have those platforms, we need to keep ’em ready. So weapon systems sustainment accounts need to go way up. We’ve been funding those. If we FA hun, if we fund a hundred flying hours a year, if that was a total budget, we’re only funding spare parts at 85% of that.

So 8.5 stories. We can never reach our, our flying our contracts because we don’t have the spare parts with which to. To fulfill ’em with.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, and you’ve got to, I’m totally aligned with you jv. We have to retain the aircraft that we have, replace ’em on a one for one [00:46:00] rate. ’cause it isn’t just about the compact capacity and the iron, it’s also about the human capital, which pivoting on the human capital piece, we talked about the E seven officially listed as cut, which means all of those air battle managers are at risk ’cause they don’t have an airplane to fly jump.

Doug Tula, you wrote about this in a recent op-ed and you’ve done a lot of interviews on it.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Heather, the bottom line is we can’t afford in the context of actual combat capability to virtually eliminate our Air Battle Management capability and capacity. Now, Air Battle Managers have resided in three primary areas in past years. E 3 AWACs, the E 8 JSTARs, and ground stations that folks tend to overlook that are tied to surface radars. The reality is that E 8 is gone, the E 3 is on fumes and the ground stations that [00:47:00] capability’s not very large. So we can’t cut two thirds of our capacity and expect that the career field is gonna survive. Space solutions may be great and we fully endorse that move. But it’s gonna take a while to deliver at a level that will fully meet operational expectations. Just as sort of a, an indicator, JSTAR’s recapitalization was killed in 2018. We still do not have an operationally viable space-based replacement seven years later.

Yeah, test articles are up there but are not operational capabilities at scale. That’s something we need to grasp the reality of the situation. It’ll kill the manpower part of the equation as well. People should note that the Iran raid, air and missile defense of Israel, those were commanded and controlled by air [00:48:00] battle managers in theater.

We won’t have those capabilities if we divest our operational, our current operational capability or plan to replace it. Look, the E 2 is part of the current DOD solution. It’s fine for carrier defense, but it’s not for theater wide air battle management at scale. Pass that five airplanes that are in the proposal are a joke. They simply won’t meet combatant command demands because it would leave only two to three airplanes being operationally available at any given time for the entire global demand signal. The analogy here is the track that this budget takes us down is not unlike the Air Force cutting back electronic warfare way too much in the 1990s. We’ve yet to recover and it’s a vital mission.

Now, there’s one other aspect that I think it’s [00:49:00] important to consider. And this is the one that’s often held up about the threats and the ability of a large airborne platform to survive. We can’t forget that for 99.9% of the time, we’re not fighting the most capable threats. We’re not engaged in the peer conflict. So undermining our airborne command and control advantages for what we do day in and day out is simply not wise.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and sir, you mentioned space and how there are some space capabilities, but they are not operationally viable, just yet. Space should be an “and” not an “instead of,” and if we’re able to layer those capabilities, we can actually do more with the battle management career field and the effects that we need within the battle space as opposed to one or the other.

It really needs to be both. But what we have to ensure that we do in the meantime is preserve that human capital, preserve the battle managers. Who are doing the job and understand [00:50:00] this because it’s not just about putting warheads on foreheads. We have to ensure in a key component of our lethality as a western way of war, has been have the how those battle managers have moved chess pieces within the airspace to ensure that not only our fighters are in the right place at the right time, but they’ve got the tankers, they’re launching the alert fighters.

This is not about the kind of war that we’ve been doing over the past 20 years. It really is about the kind of war that we are prepared to do and ready to do during the course of the Cold War.

Lazer, Jeff, and Sledge, I’d like to toss that last question over to y’all. What should we be tracking in this very confusing budget process over the next couple months?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: First, and we’ve discussed all this, but number one, let’s watch the reconciliation bill. We should know what happens with that. We should know whether or not we’re gonna get an additional $150 billion for defense. 113 of that comes in FY 26.

The next up are the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. They’re gonna be working the [00:51:00] authorization bills. House is open so we can get a better look at that. The Senate’s closed, but we’ll see press releases. But we’re gonna be looking at top lines and then look at programs that are supported and cut. That’ll give you indications ’cause they’re not doing it in a vacuum.

They’re talking with the appropriators. And then we start looking at where are we with the appropriators? What top lines are they agreeing to in the House and the Senate? What differences are there? How does the defense subcommittees mark up? And how are they reconci? Are they gonna reconcile those differences?

And then when we get into September, how is Congress working together? How do they go ahead and hopefully do a short term continuing resolution? And then how are they gonna work together to pass the appropriations bills that we need done by the end of the calendar year? And then the last thing is, what is President Trump and the administration saying about the process and the bills?

Because that’ll be a key factor as it has been so far this year, and what the final passage of those bills, when it will be and what it will [00:52:00] look like.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I would just add, regardless of the legislation that’s on the floor of either chamber, just look at your calendar. Congress needs a deadline to act, so as we get closer to deadlines, you’re gonna start seeing movement.

 

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: And one last thing. We need to get General Gutlein confirmed as the Golden Dome lead and start getting that out, right? Everybody and their mother wants to contribute and nobody knows what the plan is. And I think, you know, General Gutlein will be methodical and maniacal about communicating with the services and industry on how to execute and what he wants to execute. And so I think as we see the reconciliation funding, that 25 billion that’s coming into Golden Dome, that’s a great opportunity for our Space Force, for our Air Force and others to contribute. But we need General Gutlein to get confirmed to get this moving.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Alright folks, so if you’ve been listening, we told you we’re gonna give you JV’s article in the show notes, but go ahead and check that out because we’re gonna include some additional links to some of General [00:53:00] Deptula’s op-eds, which are absolute must reads.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Hey. Thanks Heather. Always a pleasure.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Great to be here. Great discussion today.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks, Heather.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarsky: Yeah, thanks a lot. See you next podcast.

Jeff “Rowli” Rowlison: Hey, thanks so much, like Lazer we’ll see you next time.

John “JV” Venable: Love being with all of you. Great discussion. Thank you, Heather.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you. And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s conversation. I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t forget to hit that like button or follow or subscribe to the Aspace Advantage.

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Thanks again for joining us and have a great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.