The Air Force’s Fiscal 2014 budget request contains $1.3 billion for military construction; $2.2 billion for facilities sustainment; $813 million for restoration and modernization; and $465 million for military family housing, said Kathleen Ferguson, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment, and logistics. While in Fiscal 2013, the Air Force took “a deliberate pause” in MILCON to accommodate force structure adjustments in line with the emerging defense strategy, the Fiscal 2014 proposal seeks a $900 million increase, she told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s military construction, veteran affairs, and related agencies panel on May 15. Such an increase “returns [the Air Force] to near-historic funding levels; supports the department’s strategic priorities; and supports our top weapons systems modernization programs,” she said. The MILCON funding request also covers new infrastructure for F-35 and KC-46 beddowns, US Strategic Command’s new headquarters, and construction of the new US Cyber Command joint operations center, she said. (Ferguson’s prepared testimony)
The U.S. military needs to wake up to the fact that global dominance is no longer a viable strategy for national defense, because pursuing that unrealizable goal is making the country less safe, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said April 22. Emerging defense technologies like swarms of…