Members of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday pushed senior Air Force leaders to speed up JSTARS recapitalization efforts, which have repeatedly been pushed back. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said the biggest hurdle so far was the debate about how to meet the requirement. “We’re past that now,” he said, adding the recapitalization effort is funded through initial operational capability, which is now expected in 2024. However, Welsh said the Air Force would like to “pull it back to 2023 for IOC, which means we should be delivering airplanes in ’21 or ’22 at the latest.” Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.) questioned why the Air Force asked for “half as much money” in the Fiscal 2017 budget request and then let the program slip. “As I understand it, this is a non-developmental program. You take an in-use airplane and you put an in-use sensor on it, and people say, “Why does that take 12 years?” asked Crenshaw. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James reiterated the service’s commitment to the program. “It’s an important part of our future. We are going to get going with it. I would love to speed it up if at all possible, and we will be looking to see if we can do that. It’s a little more challenging though than taking an existing platform and putting existing radars on it … because it requires the integration of these things in new ways,” said James. Welsh said it doesn’t make sense to “throw more money at the problem now,” because the service would just be “guessing” until it finishes the risk reduction and technology maturation phase in Fiscal 2018.
Hawaii F-22s Wrap Up Deployment to Japan
April 9, 2021
F-22s and Airmen from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, forward deployed to Japan for almost one month to train with Japanese and U.S. Marine Corps aircraft as part of a “dynamic force employment” operation. The Raptors from the Active-duty 19th Fighter Squadron and Air National Guard 199th Fighter Squadron deployed…