Doug Birkey: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m Doug Birkey, Executive Director at the Mitchell Institute. 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.

Now this week it’s time 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 we should be watching around the globe. We’re recording on Tuesday, April 28th, so if world events have develops, then we’ll catch ’em on the next episode.

So at that, I’d like to welcome Sledge Harmer and Lazer Lazarski two of our Washington insiders, who’ve also got General Deptula, J.V. Venable, and Charles Galbreath of our Mitchell team. Everybody welcome.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Hey, it’s great to be back, Doug.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Thanks for having me.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Always good to be back.

Charles Galbreath: Great to be with everyone again.

John “JV” Venable: Great group of folks to be talking with.

Doug Birkey: Okay, let’s dive into the deep end of the pool up front, the defense budget request. So I want [00:01:00] to hear one key observation from each one of you. Obviously this is a complex topic, so we’ll flush it out more but, Charles, let’s start with you since space is a clear winner in this one, and then let’s go to General Deptula and work around the table from there.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So the Space Force budget, is projected to grow by as much as 80%, with the President’s budget. But my big question is, will Congress actually approve this? How much will the Space Force actually get? One thing that stuck out to me though, was the amount of procurement increase. I mean, there was an increase across all the colors of money, but the fact that procurement is scheduled to jump from 3.6 billion to 19 billion says that all the investment that the Space Force has done over the past couple years in R&D has paid off, and they’re ready to take that next step to actually fielding operational systems.

Doug Birkey: That’s huge.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, well, my key observation is that this was a generational opportunity for the Air Force and they did not take full advantage of it. We’re looking at a defense budget that’s dramatically higher than last year, yet the Air Force is still [00:02:00] not buying enough combat aircraft to reverse decades of decline in force size. In fact, the Air Force budget request divests 149 older aircraft and only buys 108 new ones in FY 27. So the total force continues to shrink. It’s only asking for 24 F-35As in the baseline budget, 14 in reconciliation, which is doubtful of being passed, and 24 F-15EXs. That’s 62 fighters total, which remains below the longstanding 72 fighter aircraft per year benchmark. Just to hold the average age of the force constant. This is the paradox. The 27 budget is historically high. The Air Force aircraft buy looks just like last year. Actually, it’s worse if you believe air power is central to deterring China and defeating aggression then we should be buying [00:03:00] capacity at scale. FY 27 should have been the moment to stop the decades long decline in the size of our combat Air forces instead, the request modernizes pieces of the force. But it doesn’t rebuild the force at the scale of the threat demand. So look, bottom line here is readiness, modernization, capacity are not substitutes for one another. We need all three. And right now combat air capacity remains a glaring shortfall

Doug Birkey: Lazer?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah, it’s not a perfect budget and whether it’s gonna be 1.15 or 1.5, I can say at least it’s a beginning to try to improve on our national security. I agree with General Deptula it doesn’t hit the marks of, that, that spiral we’ve talked about, however, looking at the overall budget, it tries to modernize and grow. it’s done a good job on the space forces, but try to grow air space forces over the long term. And I, [00:04:00] and it does try to prioritize to deter China

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I’m gonna repeat what’s been said. Woohoo for readiness. And JV will cover that I know in great detail here. But at some point you gotta buy stuff and we’re at that point.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah. I absolutely love what Charles said is the huge investment in RDT and E is now flipping over into procurement. The Air Force just doesn’t seem to get that, and I’m talking about the air breathing side. We got a big increase in procurement, but an equally large increase in an over, over budgeted RDT&E slice. And we just cannot get into the mindset of buying aircraft that we desperately need. So we need to get in the mindset of fly, fight and win as the. As the chief has said.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, the thing I’d add, just looking at this budget, it’s all about multi-year authorities.

It’s great to dump a ton of cash on the table, but unless industry has confidence that they can actually scale to numbers that are [00:05:00] gonna be held across multiple years, it’s gonna be pretty tough to get ’em to make the necessary investment to actually digest this cash and really build out to where we need to go.

I mean, so fantastic that we’re seeing this on the weapons accounts. It’s very important. But when it comes to aircraft accounts, I think it’s gonna be absolutely huge to show that kind of confidence. And that’s where the legislation we saw introduced by Senators Budd and Shaheen is so important and it’s just something we gotta do more of. But yeah, we’ll see how it goes.

So JV, in your recent paper that released last fall, you discussed readiness and modernization a lot, and you had some really important ideas regarding steps the Air Force needs to take to get healthy again. So if you use that as a baseline evaluator and a scorecard. How do you look at this budget and what are your recommendations?

John “JV” Venable: Well, there’s a couple of goods that are qualified and then a couple of bads. The goods are, what Sledge mentioned earlier is the increase in readiness and the increase in weapon system sustainment accounts. While those are both [00:06:00] good, if you read the details, the increase, 7 billion dollars i s roughly 95% of what the requirement is to meet the training squares for the Air Force. It just, you go, “well it’s a big increase,” but it’s still not where it needs to be. With General Deptula’s statement this was a generational opportunity to go, “We’re going to get a hundred percent and then we’re gonna start increasing the flying hours by a significant margin to where we get our pilots, the training, our air crews, the training that they need to actually, not just fill all the squares, but to master the jet and to master the delivery process.” So that’s one side.

And then you look at the weapons system sustainment, which is the spare parts required to fulfill the flying hour contract, and we’ve increased that, but it’s now 95% of the requirement to fly. 95% of the flying hours our aircrew needs, which means our maintainers will still be cannibalizing jets and we’re still going to have [00:07:00] problems meeting the number of flying hours that are actually contracted for. We had Greg Hadley a couple of years ago go and map this out and historically the Air Force, the last years that they’ve published their flying hours and that they’ve actually executed, we failed to meet the flying hour contract by 9%. Well, that’s no secret. When you fund weapon system sustainment below the requirement that you need to actually fly the flying hours. And this year they had the sky as the limit. For what they could ask for.

And this is the best they do there. So the flipping over to procurement, I echo General Deptula statement entirely. So I’d say it’s a mixed bag. It’s an improvement, but it’s not nearly the improvement we need in this generational opportunity.

Doug Birkey: What are thoughts from everybody else on this?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So Doug, I’m gonna echo what you said earlier about multi-year sustainment. And so this is a huge shot in the arm for the Space Force. It’s on a path to grow the way it needs to [00:08:00] grow, which is great, but a lot of it is still in reconciliation. $12 billion of it is in reconciliation funding.

So is that gonna be there year in and year out? And so what are the future year dollars is gonna look like, and I think there is a lot of skepticism in industry about, is this a one-time good deal and then we’re gonna have to have leaner years? Or is this a path that we’re gonna continue to see grow as it needs to for the Space Force in particular.

And I think there’s probably some folks in the Space Force that are maybe hedging their bets a little bit. Okay, this is great money, but how do I make sure that I buy stuff that I can sustain year in and year out with the funding that I expect to get in leaner times? But the bottom line is the Space Force needs to grow regardless of who’s in office or who’s in Congress.

The Space Force needs to grow in order to do its mission and make that happen. It needs a larger budget.

Doug Birkey: Absolutely. Other thoughts?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, I’ll just add that was a bright spot, a little bit negative on what happened on the air side, but on the space side, that’s fantastic. [00:09:00] And Charles is spot on. Finally there’s a realization that the Space Force has been underfunded, undersized, and now the next thing they could do is a little bit more consolidation inside the Department of War. But hey, this is great news.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah. Oh. I’ll jump in and, we talked about, sustainment of this budget and so just because we get a bump up for one year, 1.15, and I know as we look at the FYDP, it looks like it’s going to continue, but there’s no guaranteed, and I think General Deptula you said, we need to do this for 10 years. At a minimum, I’ll say 10 years to be able to grow the force. Now granted, it’s not a perfect budget. We’re not growing it like we need to. We are divesting to invest, which, as we’ve talked about before, does not work. But it’s a step in the right direction.

I think the increased budget is a step in the right direction. The munitions, the maintenance, the readiness. No, we’re not up at a hundred percent, but compared to where we were in the past it’s a [00:10:00] positive move, but we have to sustain it for the future. And then we have to re-look how we’re spending the money within the Air Force.

Doug Birkey: So Sledge and Lazer, what are the odds that Congress really provides a full 1.5 trillion? We’re talking about this before we began recording it. It’s the big question in the room.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I would say slim and none. And slim just left? I think, 1.5 trillion and.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: It ends that one. Okay, next?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. 1.5 trillion. A lot of money and if that’s the bar you’re shooting for the request doesn’t even add up to 1.5. It’s 1.45, which is a lot of money. I think they’ll get close, but they’ll be just short of that amount. Right now it looks like the HASC and the HAC-D are gonna mark to the president’s budget request. So 1.15 trillion, they’re counting on that 350 billion in additional mandatory spending. That’s gonna come through reconciliation. And I’ll let Lazer talk more about the specifics of that, but there’s gonna be a bit of a head fake with reconciliation here.

The senate just passed the, their [00:11:00] budget resolution. You can think of what’s gonna play out first as reconciliation 2.0. That’s gonna be Homeland security, ICE, CBP funding. So don’t, don’t be distracted by the shiny object there. And what you need to look for is the reconciliation 3.0 that’s coming shortly after, and that’ll have the defense p art of that, again I’m skeptical that they’re gonna be able to get the full 350 in that we’re bumping up against $40 trillion in debt and even though reconciliation could be passed on straight majorities, it’s gonna be tough to get to 218 votes in the house and 50 in the Senate when you just keep, when there are other competing priorities. And I’ll leave it at that. But, the one thing I want to add here before I let Lazer take it. Home is I totally agree. This cannot be a one and done infusion of cash. This needs to be sustained in terms of quantity and quality, so that would be it.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: You cannot budget and hope for reconciliation.

I agree with everything that Sledge said. We can’t plan on that funding. [00:12:00] And I think it’s slim and none. Also the 2.0 reconciliation that Sledge talked about that solely focused on homeland and it’s focused on border and it’s fo focused on ICE. That’s taken a lot of effort to get that done.

That won’t get done until June has nothing to do with defense or any of the other areas that they’re trying to push. So now, we get into July, August, September, we’re trying to pass a continuing resolution. There may be a little hope there and I’m interested with Sledge thinks, but there could be a supplemental because we’ve heard the supplemental now is below a hundred billion dollars, out of, the Pentagon.

And if they pair that up with, potentially some disaster relief funding or some other, type of funding. Maybe they can get, an infusion of about a hundred billion dollars into defense as part of the continuing resolution. But now we have an election that’s really gonna determine on where we’re gonna go and if there’s a reconciliation [00:13:00] 3.0 with $350 billion it could come at the end of the year, but it’s gonna be very difficult to do. think there’s a lot of hurdles to step over. So, my only advice to the Pentagon is plan on a 1.15 it’s gotta get through Congress obviously, but I think Sledge is right. There’s support for it up here. But the other three 50 I just wouldn’t count on it. I mean, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Doug Birkey: Do you think the odds of supplemental happening to backfill the wartime losses and burn rate ammunitions?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Well, I don’t even think a hundred billion backfills the losses, right? It’s just a little help, but we’re gonna need something. And I think the hill and Sledge I’d open it to you, but I think the Hill realizes that we need some funding. But how do you marry that up with non-defense and be able to get that through?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, Lazer brings up a great point and I think, it’s probably gonna be substantially less than a hundred billion.

And this, the first, what is it, the homeland, reconciliation 2.0 is about 70 billion. So it’s, compared to some of the other numbers fairly modest. But if we do have to go [00:14:00] to a supplemental, now you’re talking about getting 60 votes in the Senate, you’ve gotta have a majority in the house. And for every dollar of defense discretionary. It pretty much has to be met with a dollar of non-defense discretionary. So that means the defense amount in the supplemental is gonna be low to increase the probability that it passes. But it’s, as Winston Churchill said, the worst form of government, but it’s better than all the rest.

And we’ll see how it plays out.

Doug Birkey: I get it. A lot of plays here yet to go.

John “JV” Venable: Doug, if I could add one thing in the positive side to this, we’re adding 12,700 personnel to the Air Force total end strength and as you read it, these are going to two different areas. One is maintenance and the other one is security forces. Maintenance was reduced in end strength, unfunded billets in the last administration by 6,000 personnel, which hurt our ability to maintain our aircraft and sustain high readiness rates. So that’s going to be [00:15:00] a big boost. And the second area is for security forces personnel, they’re going to get a boost in personnel for this ground-based air defense mission, which is coming also in the budget. We’re looking at going from about a hundred million dollars a year in GBAD to over $1.5 billion a year. And that’s going to give us the ability to be a very integral part of the layering air defense from the grounds perspective that we desperately need in the Pacific.

Doug Birkey: Now I’m glad to hear you say that. And really, if you think about, aside from buying airplanes, there are two key areas where we needed more. It really is on that maintainer side and air missile defense, you can’t get enough. So that’s awesome to see that. That is good. Positive news.

Okay, so we’ve gone through the details of the budget, but I want to focus on something that it’s definitively positive. The National Guard Generals, they released a super powerful letter highlighting the need to fix fighter modernization gap we’ve been discussing. And before I open this [00:16:00] up to the group, I just want to go through the quick hit details. It was sent over to the appropriators and it opens with the following statement “we write to express urgent concern regarding the US Air Force’s current and future ability to meet the requirements of the 2026 National Defense Strategy. The US Air Force is the oldest, smallest, and least readying its 78 year history. We must build a force that will win.” Gee, somebody read some Mitchell Institute stuff. That’s good to know, huh? So the details of this, it focuses on total recapitalization for the fight force, not just for the Guard, but for the total force.

And it does highlight the need that this inventory needs to team with CCAs. So look to the future. They’re looking really for multi-year procurement between 72 and a hundred fighters, so comprising of the F 35 and F 15 ex, and, you know, their suggested baseline is 48 F35s and 24 F 15 EXs per year.

But they suggest, you should go north of that. And they cite and they’re right. It would, even at those big [00:17:00] numbers, it would take over a decade to catch up with the the trough they’re in right now. They also highlight that 13 of the 24 Air Guard states they’re currently programmed at the F 16 indefinitely.

And that math just doesn’t add because post block Vipers, the air, quote, new ones, forties and fifties, those are already in their 20 year mark right now approaching 30 and fighters die in the thirties, so that’s problematic. This is the first time all 22 a Adjuncts Generals representing fighter states signed a single letter.

So I think that’s really huge. And their numbers, they do fall in line with Air Force’s fighter recap plan from last year. And I think we’re seeing a lot of people sing from the same sheet of music, even though this budget request didn’t match from that. I’m glad to see multiple centers of gravity starting to go towards what we’ve been saying. It’s required for a lot of time, but thoughts from everybody else on this?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Let first, Doug, let’s make sure that we post a link to the [00:18:00] letter.

Doug Birkey: Yep.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Because everyone needs to read it. It pretty much summarizes the position we’ve been talking about for years. So it’s good news. Like you said, that folks are paying attention.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah I thought at the beginning I thought it was right. Great quoting Mitchell Institute. There was another one, which later on they said if we keep dabbling under 72, that isn’t winning. That’s raising the water line. What I loved about it is they weren’t talking about the National Guard they were talking about the total force, and this is about the total force. This is about improving the Air Force. I thought it was one of the best letters. And what’s the impact up on the hill? The impact is that you’ve got 22 National Guard, 22 constituents and states. That are out there that now have member interest and member caring of what’s going on and it’s being reflected.

When Sledge and I were up on the hill and Otis, and Gorilla [00:19:00] as we were working these, and we were trying to put, the floors on the different, levels for our fighters or for our forces. So we didn’t go below that to try to get out of this death spiral. I think this takes a great, push in that direction.

I think it’s gonna go, get possibly received in both appropriations and armed services Committee. ’cause now, they will take a look and get their inputs on what the budget cam came over as and hopefully follow what General Deptula and others are saying and maybe make some changes.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: I thought the letter was absolutely brilliant. The Adjunct Generals, they have a little bit more flexibility than, other uniformed officers because they’re Title 32 authorities there. I thought it was great and Lazer focused on the, the total force aspect of being great teammates there. I’d be really curious to know if there was any coordination with the secretary and the chief of staff of the Air Force went out, because this is something they can’t say, but it really advances the football for them. And I think it, it gets back to some of the points that we said early [00:20:00] on about the numbers here, but Doug, the one, one thing I wanted to go back and just, make a clarification, something you just said in the preamble here is. For the F 16 the Air Force stopped buying block 50 in 2005.

So it’s been 21 years and the last block 40, I think, came off the line in 1996 or 98. Somewhere in there. So, I mean, you’re talking the, those airplanes were old when I was flying ’em. And between 20, 21 and 30 years old and we’re still trying to keep those flying so. Yeah I mean, really but the bottom line of the letter from the the adjutants general there this is really about trying to procure capacity for the service that we absolutely need. How’s it gonna play out? I think it’s gonna be very well received because they do have a lot of clout with their congressional delegations, but at the end of the day, the committees and their staff are gonna look at the budget request and they’re gonna say, this is what we need and this is what we can afford, and they’re gonna go forward with that.

Doug Birkey: No, totally. So, General Deptula, Senators Budd and Shaheen, they just issued legislation aimed at helping rebuild the fighter force. Walk us through the [00:21:00] details.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, Doug, this is a, another really important piece of legislation because it recognizes that rebuilding American air power it’s not just a platform issue. It’s an industrial base issue. It’s an inventory issue and it’s a people issue. The Air Power Acceleration Act does several things.

First, it gives the Air Force authority to use multi-year procurement for both the F 35 and the F 15 EX. That matters because as many of you have already observed, industry needs a stable demand signal. You can’t ask the defense industrial base to scale production if you only give it uncertain year to year buys. This is a problem. It’s a fundamental problem with our congressional budgeting process, but that’s a discussion for another another podcast. But multi-year procurement can reduce costs, stabilize suppliers, and then [00:22:00] increase production predictability.

Second pretty amazing is it raises the ceiling for the F 15 ex procurement pretty dramatically. The Air Force had been planning around 129 aircraft, actually less than a hundred in the last administration. Then they move toward 267 and this legislation authorizes up to 329 F 15 ex’s with the additional aircraft focused on recapitalizing the aging F 15 E fleet as discussed earlier. Now that’s a practical way to add capacity faster. While the F 35, F 47, B 21 and collaborative combat aircraft mature.

Third, it addresses the fighter inventory mandate. Now look, I know this is getting a little bit down in the weeds for John and Susie Q Public, but let me explain. Congress previously required the Air Force to [00:23:00] maintain 1800 fighter aircraft as a minimum, including 1,145 in what’s called the primary mission aircraft inventory.

Now the Air Force has come up with a new counting method called Combat Coded Total Aircraft Inventory. This new bill updates the fighter floor to account for that mechanism. 1,369 combat coded fighters by 2030 and 1558 by 2035. That helps prevent the Air Force from managing decline through manipulating accounting definitions.

Finally, the package recognizes that aircraft without aviators are just ramp space, so the retain act, boost Aviation incentive pay. It improves aviation bonus flexibility, aligns active duty incentives with [00:24:00] reserve component options, and then adds non-monetary incentives like assignment stability and flexible career paths.

So the fighter Air Crew Career Flexibility Act also permits a one-time career intermission for fighter pilots and WSOs. So I see this as a very serious bipartisan attempt to address the fundamental air power problem that we have comprehensively. Buy more aircraft, stabilize production, stop the inventory, decline and retain the experience the air crews needed to employ the force.

Doug Birkey: I think if you add that with the power of that tag letter, we might be getting somewhere. Thoughts from the group?

John “JV” Venable: Yeah, I’ll pile into what the boss said. This changing definitions, the combat coded TAI, that seems to be just a gamesmanship on paper. You could fly all of those aircraft in a combat coded unit. Why don’t you pile ’em on a in together? Unfortunately, maintenance [00:25:00] manning, pilot manning, and then weapon system sustainment requirements are all based on, not the total, but on the PMAI, the primary mission aircraft inventory. And by changing the definition, it looks like we’re healthy, but in fact we’ve reduced our capability to fly those aircraft by a significant margin, and we change those definitions just on paper. If you look at someplace like Lakenheath, they still have the same total of F 15 Es they had before. They’ve just reduced the number they consider PMAI. So that reduces your maintenance manning requirement.

It reduces your pilot manning requirement. So on paper it looks like you’re really healthy. When in fact you still got the same number of aircraft. You just can’t one, maintain ’em, two, fly ’em, and three have the spare parts with which to repair ’em.

Doug Birkey: Sledge, Lazer, have you ever seen legislation like this in recent history?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: [00:26:00] Similar. Yes. I think we’ve both seen it. Even from back when you knowledge was working with Chambliss, we were pushing on F 22 multi-year, and what I’m seeing recently is there’s more support for multi-year looking at the cost savings.

There is some concern about locking in future congresses, but I think it’s the right thing to do for all of these. But the issue is every year is a fight. Even though we’ve had floors for the fighters, every year, somebody’s trying to play around with it and to include the Air Force trying to lower it or change it.

So, I think this is gonna think parts, I don’t know if all of it’s gonna get through, but I know that senators Rounds and Schmidt, Sheehy, Kaine, King, Rose, I mean, there’s a lot of support for this. So I expect some portion, or most of this will get into the NDAA. It is a policy thing, but it’s gonna be a fight every year. This is not something that just goes in and stays there. It’s something that we have to work and make sure [00:27:00] stays front and center, or we lose it.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. My take on this, when I first saw the legislation that this is another attempt by Congress to save the Air Force from itself. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It probably won’t be the last, as Lazer mentioned. And it’s not unique to the fighters. I mean, there are, bomber inventory concerns. There’s airlift capacity concerns. This is just gonna be an ongoing battle between between congress and the the department.

Doug Birkey: Now, I’m glad you referenced the F 22 multi-year. I mean, that resulted as I recall, in four extra tails due to the savings derived out of that. Oh, absolutely. So that’s actually, it took us to 187.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: It also saved us from getting 60 aircraft canceled on us.

Doug Birkey: No, absolutely.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: And by the way, I think there’s a few pilots that’d be willing to go back and fly if they, they needed us.

Doug Birkey: Okay. Charles, we’ve been talking about air a lot. So let’s go back to space. So Chief of Space Operations, Saltzman issued a future operating environment and objective force, document looking at 2040. What are your thoughts on that?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, this has been coming for a while. They were supposed to be a 15 year look. [00:28:00] So they, just made it, at 14 years. But, beside that what I really liked about this future operating environment in particular was it acknowledged the importance of maneuverability in satellites and talked about on orbit servicing, which were things that we’ve been talking about for a while that also talked about the importance of cis lunar.

Which we’ve been talking about for a few years as well. So it was really great to see those incorporated into the future operating environment and the objective for structure. There were a few other things that really stood out to me as well. The concept of unrestricted spectrum warfare that we’re gonna be jamming and we’re gonna be spoofing and messing with the electromagnetic spectrum and the adversaries will as well on a continuous basis. And so what that means for spectrum dominance or spectrum superiority and how that will affect the Space Force and its operations in the future. it talked about, AI and an AI enabled decision making at speed.

It talked about, quantum sensing and, potentially power beaming from space. So there are some interesting [00:29:00] concepts out there. It did make clear that it’s not trying to predict the future, it’s just trying to identify some of the trends, the things that we might be able or might need to address going forward.

One thing that stuck out to me. That I think, is missing and I’ve read through this document a couple times and it is a pretty dense document, so if I missed it, I apologize, but I didn’t see any explicit mention of humans in space now. It talked about missions that might be performed and it doesn’t say if it would be done autonomously or via astronaut but the fact that it didn’t make that really stood out to me because there are implications for the future operating environment assuming that we have more humans in space and certainly NASA’s, attempt to go back to the moon and establish a colony on the lunar surface, China has that same ambition all within the next 14 years. So where was that accounted for in the future operating environment, and what would the Space Force’s response to that be?

Now, the Space Force may say we can do our [00:30:00] mission without any guardians in space. That is an assumption, but the fact that they didn’t even address it at all, it’s just absent, really stood out to me. In their assumption section, they said they’re not gonna violate the laws of physics or have any miracle capabilities, right?

So if you’re gonna assume that you’re gonna follow the laws of physics, but you’re not gonna assume one way or the other, where humans are gonna be in 15 years. That’s kind of a, a swing and a miss.

Doug Birkey: And I think, we’ve talked about this a lot before too. We need to be really careful. We don’t mirror image when we go to space. It’s through a scientific exploration lens. Traditionally peaceful. We’ve always taken that approach in general, and yet if you look at China. They’re taikanauts version of an astronaut. They’re predominantly military.

Charles Galbreath: They are all military.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. Look how China behaves pretty much everywhere on Earth, south China Sea, et cetera.

It’s elbows out. And so I do think we need to ensure that we set norms and standards as we look at the moon and beyond, because if we don’t, we are not gonna like the ones issued to us. And that does take a Title 10 presence.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. And All that said, it’s so good to see these [00:31:00] documents on street.

Doug Birkey: Oh my God yeah.

Charles Galbreath: It provides a clear vector of where the service thinks it’s gonna be heading in the next 15 years, which is welcome to see, General Saltzman and his tenure has done some incredible things to focus on the fight tonight. And this is the app opportunity to talk about the fight in the future.

Doug Birkey: Now if you think where we were at the beginning of his tenure and then you look at it now, it’s just unbelievable. It’s truly historic, what they’ve done.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely.

Doug Birkey: So there’s also personnel news on the Space Force front when it comes to reservists. What’s up with that?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, so the Space Force Personnel Management Act, it’s been around for a few years. We’re actually starting to see some traction on, the identification of personnel on the reserve side that are gonna be made guardians on non-sustained duties. So there’s 247 of these reservists that are gonna come over and be part-time.

So rather than have reserve and guard and active duty, there’s this one component for the space force. And because it is so small they believe that they can manage their personnel more effectively, through this approach. So those 247 will come over. They range in ranks from second lieutenant all the way to colonel. [00:32:00] And so that’s adding capacity, if you will, to the force structure. And when the Space Force talks about growing its size, this is one element of it, but there’s still a lot more growth that needs to happen. But it’s good to finally see these steps being taken.

Doug Birkey: Nah, that’s awesome. Okay, so AFA and Mitchell are marking National Space Day in a pretty special way this year. Fill us in on this one.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So if you’re not tracking the first Friday in May is National Space Day. It’s been that way since about 1997. It’s an opportunity to, celebrate, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or STEM education.

It’s also a way to, to celebrate innovations and achievements that have been in the space area. So AFA is marking that now with what we call the salute to space. And each year we’re gonna highlight a different achievement or milestone in the development of space capabilities. This year is the inaugural year. We’re of course highlighting General Schriever and we’re doing that with, a statue that, we commissioned and is now gonna be unveiled in the lobby of our, AFA headquarters [00:33:00] here. It’s a statue that, resemble the statue that’s out at, space Systems Command in Los Angeles. where General Schriever worked in the fifties.

And it’s great to have a counterpart here gonna be unveiled. Actually by the time this airs, it will have been unveiled. So, check online for the photos for the event, but each year we’re gonna highlight some new aspect of innovation or accomplishment, over the history of space development.

And we’re gonna conclude each year with what we call the Schriever charge. And it’s basically a way toast to the successes the innovations and shaping the future that can happen with, the next generation, because this is part of STEM education as well.

Doug Birkey: That’s awesome and I think one thing to highlight for people when they come here, we actually have, due to the generosity of the Schriever family, a number of his personal items in our heritage hallway, whether they be reports. Actual his Time magazine cover that hung in his office.

It is so cool to have the actual tactile items that he had that, that he used to learn about space power up in our building. It’s very inspirational and we’re gonna have members of the Schriever [00:34:00] family at the event on Friday.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And to your point, you know that we have some documents from the late nineties that he’s actually handwritten some comments on. So it’s a really cool.

Doug Birkey: And when you read those and the guy was crazy insightful. He is highlighting things that are just taking effect today.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Doug Birkey: No, it’s amazing. Okay, so I want to talk about a huge news item, obviously Operation Epic Fury, where it stands, the current state of play with Iran. I’ll just start with my initial thoughts. We’ve talked about this in past episodes, but first and foremost, this has become hyper-partisan, whether you’re for or against this right now. Often depends on party affiliation, which I think is clouding the issue a little bit here. Big picture from my vantage point, I still go back to the fact that Iran could not be trusted with nuclear weapon, and multiple administrations have kicked the can on this, and it was entering a point where something had to be done.

We did not want to slow boil like North Korea, where all of a sudden there they are. And you’re stuck with a regime [00:35:00] with very different value sets that you cannot trust. We can’t tolerate them destabilizing the Middle East forever either. And so I think the conflict definitely helped on the nuclear weapon front. But the broader Middle East security piece, obviously we’re seeing that play out in a very complicated fashion. My 2 cents here, hard power and economic influence are the only things that are gonna motivate the Iranians. The blockades really useful. I am frustrated by the fact that we just hear a lot about naval assets.

That blockade is fundamentally going to be largely enforced through space power, with overhead imagery and air power through a sensor shooter complex. And that is really important to emphasize. And I think that is going to be absolutely crucial. You look at the oil that’s piling up and their storage facilities and all that, they do have to pay attention to those realities, and they gotta maintain the notion of strikes on our Iran again. They gotta be on the table if you want a strong negotiating position, but at the end of the day, the Strait of Hormuz It’s gotta be open. [00:36:00] And so there are more turns here, but what does everybody else think?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, will, let me jump in here. First, an institutional observation. Isn’t it interesting when the operation Epic Fury opened up and the air campaign was the leading element, all we heard about was the joint air campaign, the joint application of force.

But when we do the blockade, it’s all, it’s a navy blockade. What happened to Jointness? Back to your point it’s not gonna succeed without air and space power. Those are critical elements. My point is, it is really interesting if you step back and look at the US military as an institution and what they like to label as joint and then what they like to associate with individual services. Okay. I’ll stop there. Let me go back and reframe this in three parts.

First. Epic Fury has once again demonstrated the centrality of air power and modern [00:37:00] warfare. The US and our partners, principally Israel here, have been able to strike at scale over distance and with precision. That’s exactly what air power provides.

The ability to hold critical targets at risk. Without exposing America’s sons and daughters into the harm’s way of a bloody, uncertain and highly risky ground campaign. Second tactical success doesn’t automatically equal strategic closure. Iran’s been hurt. They’ve been hurt bad, but it’s still dangerous.

It’s missile forces, maritime forces, proxies, cyber capabilities, and internal security apparatus. All give it ways to keep imposing costs. The ceasefire and diplomatic channel appear pretty fragile. With the straighter horn moves and the US joint blockade still central to the dispute. [00:38:00] Iran’s latest reported proposal ties reopening the Strait to ending the war and lifting the blockade while the US position remains tied to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Third, there should be a warning about capacity. We can conduct impressive air space and maritime operations, but the real strategic question is whether we can sustain them while still deterring China, Russia, North Korea, and other actors. Epic Fury is not just an Iran story. It’s a readiness, munitions, basing, tanker, ISR, and force structure story. And it shows why a smaller and older Air Force is a strategic liability. So my bottom line is don’t confuse the successful air campaign with the end of the problem. Iran may be degraded, but the region remains [00:39:00] volatile. The maritime situation remains dangerous and US global deterrence now depends on how quickly we can reconstitute capacity and ammunitions.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah, if I could pile on to what the boss said. starting from the beginning, we talked earlier in the conversation about the Air Force’s lack of advocacy for itself and when it comes to the budget, and it’s obviously lacking there. It’s a hole that we’ve got to fill and that has to come from the top down.

But the second is the lack of advocacy for what the Air Force is doing right now in the Gulf, you have two carriers there and that equates to roughly 90, maybe a hundred fighters that can be deployed and employed at any given time. But their tanker capacity is not applicable. It’s more than a thousand miles each way to get into the heart of Iran from where those carriers are based and the only thing that can get them there are Air Force tankers. And we are, it’s kind of been [00:40:00] an aside discussion, but we are sorely lacking tankers and the mission capable rates and the overall capacity of our tankers is down and yet we’re somehow able to sustain this fight and nobody’s talking about that.

It is not the Navy doing that. You look at their fighters a hundred. More than half of the United States Air Force’s total air fighter capacity is now in the Gulf, is deployed for this particular engagement. And that’s startling for a couple of reasons. One, Iran’s pretty big, but it’s dwarfed by what we would face in the Pacific with China, and that pounding on the the table for capacity has gotta be there.

We’ve got to do more and it’s got to be done at every level, but that level has got to start from the top. Right now the United States Navy has approximately 82 E2 Ds, a great capability of an airplane. Relatively new and they’re still being [00:41:00] fielded. We’ve got now 15, total AWACS, of which seven or eight of them are flyable, which means that we can have one CAP in the Gulf.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: It maybe six.

John “JV” Venable: What’s that?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: I said maybe six.

John “JV” Venable: Maybe six.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: And ICE with seven.

John “JV” Venable: And the, and now the Navy is filling the thing that we used to do all the time. And so well, with our AWACs, our incredible control to believe that we’re going to have, and AMTI that contract from space, the targets that we need to both terrestrial based and airborne you can believe that, and I wholeheartedly think that in 10 years we may have that, that constellation and space, but we will always need that air breathing asset if you think about from a backup standpoint, certainly there but always need that redundant side. And if that constellation is fully fielded in 10 years, what happens between now and then? And that E7 that’s still [00:42:00] hanging in the balance and maybe is held up at the highest levels of our service that they need to pull the lever and they need to move on that right now.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: So I mean, on the E7, I think Congress is supportive and we’ve seen them put some additional funding and direction, to the Air Force. They still haven’t committed or not, except for the first two. But looking at overall Epic Fury it sent a signal around the world. If you look at it overall, look at the capability, what the United States can do, where Russia can’t even go to a neighbor and execute an operation. And I guarantee that China looked and now they’re reassessing on what it means, to try to maybe make a move on Taiwan.

But while it highlighted our capabilities, and I think, you just brought it up is it highlighted our limitations, the limitation in the asset we have, the fact that we had to move assets out of the Indo-Pacific. The fact that, there’s all these stories about running low ammunitions and I think that also highlighted that up to Congress [00:43:00] and I think that’s where you’re seeing a focus up in Congress.

It may not be perfect and maybe not gonna get the assets, but I know their focus on munitions up there and trying to make sure that when our wartime reserves have been basically eroded, trying to get those back up to speed, especially for an Indo-Pacific. I know there’s gonna be hearings on this coming up. That’ll be an opportunity for information to get out. Senator Wicker said. That he’s gonna hold standalone meetings. He’s also, voiced frustrations about the negotiations with Terhan and basically said that we should just finish the job. Which is obviously air power. I think this is gonna continue to be a state of play up in Congress. I think Iran’s gonna continue to delay and we’re sitting on a timeline right now on how long we can keep our forces in play. And we just need to finish the job.

Doug Birkey: Now well said. So I wanna pull a thread on this munitions deficit idea a little bit more. And so General Deptula, the FY 27 budget. We’ve discussed boosts munitions [00:44:00] acquisition in a big way, but this is a huge hole to fill. What are people thinking, from what you’re getting inside the building, the hill, and everything else?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Doug, as you’re well aware all of us here, the munitions issue is one of the most important lessons coming out of both the budget as well as current operations. The 27 budget proposal does make a major move in the right direction.

This is good news. I mean, the Air Force request includes about 15 billion for its munitions portfolio, 10.8 for weapons purchases, and 4.3 for RDT&E for weapons. Now at the department level, the budget identifies 52.9 billion for critical munitions, including efforts to scale production, bring in new entrants, and use multi-year procurement contracts.

But the problem is that this hole was many years in the making, and it’s gonna take [00:45:00] sustained investment over many years to fix it. A regional war like we’re in right now with Iran can’t be allowed to deplete inventories needed for deterrence elsewhere for years afterwards. So we need to size our munitions enterprise, not for peacetime efficiency, which by the way, was the choice over the last 30 years.

This wasn’t an accident, this was done intentionally, but we need to correct that. And prepare for a far larger fight against a peer adversary. We also should not simply just buy back the inventory that we used to have. The answer is a new mix, high-end penetrating and long range weapons, affordable mass air defense, interceptors, anti-ship weapons, hypersonics, where they make sense, not just for hypersonics sake.

And lower cost cruise missiles [00:46:00] where volume is decisive. We need both high capacity and magazine depth. There’s also a false debate between standoff and stand in weapons because both matter, I say a false debate because there are those who just wanna do everything with standoff. That’s naive, ridiculous and doesn’t and is uninformed by the reality of history.

Standoff weapons were essential especially early in a campaign against advanced air defenses. But stand in strike is fundamental. If you want any proof, look at the now over four year ongoing war with Russia, Ukraine. And the munitions requirements there. Now, granted, that’s not how we would fight, but if we were fighting the way we’d fight, we’d still need a hell of a lot more munitions than we have in our inventory.

And the Air Force is uniquely tasked with [00:47:00] doing stand in strike at scale. That’s one of the Air Force’s unique capabilities. We’re just not another air arm. We’re fundamental to the nation’s ability to take the fight to the heart of any adversary. And that means China. If we ignore that requirement, we’re assuming away the hardest part of the fight.

Finally, we need to diversify the industrial base, keep the traditional primes, we need ’em, but on-ramp new companies, new production methods and new suppliers. More capacity is a good thing. We need more capacity to undo the mistakes of the last three decades. More competition is good. More resilience is good.

Public reporting from Epic Fury suggests US munitions have been expended at extraordinarily high rates, and even large appropriations are gonna take years to turn into [00:48:00] actual weapons inventory. So the key to sustained. I should say the key is sustained commitment, multi-year procurement, expanded production capacity, supplier depth and a smarter weapons mix. Obviously this can’t be done in a one year plus up. It’s gotta be a decade long reset.

Doug Birkey: I appreciate that. Okay, we’re at time, so I wanna thank everybody for their being here and sharing their thoughts.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, thanks. Have a great air and space power kind of day.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Thanks all.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Thanks a lot.

Doug Birkey: Loved it.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Always a pleasure.

Doug Birkey: With that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s discussion. I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard, don’t forget to hit the like button and follow or subscribe to the Airspace Advantage.

You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about our [00:49:00] show or areas that you’d like to see further exploration. And as always, you can join in the conversation by following Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always find us@mitchellaerospacepower.org.

Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.