U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, delivered the following opening remarks at a hearing on the Department of the Air Force's Fiscal Year 2025 budget request.
Chairman Rogers' remarks as prepared for delivery:
Today we continue our FY25 budget hearings with the Department of the Air Force.
I thank our witnesses for being here and for their service to our nation.
The FY25 budget request for the Air Force and Space Force represents about a 2 percent increase over FY24.
But when you account for inflation, that increase is actually a cut.
And that means tough decisions had to be made about what programs to cut and what level of risk to absorb.
And like we heard from the Army yesterday, it means the Air Force and Space Force are being forced to absorb a lot of risk in the near term to try to keep delivery of out-year capabilities on track.
For the Air Force that means hundreds of aircraft are grounded on any given day due to insufficient funding for spare parts.
It means divesting 130 aircraft in FY25 to save operating costs.
And it means cutting the planned buys of new, cutting-edge, fighter aircraft.
For the Space Force it means delays in replacing legacy systems with more advanced and resilient systems.
It means we're not making investments we need to replace current air missions with new more survivable space-based systems.
And it means we're not acquiring the counter-space capabilities at the pace we need to fight and win in space.
That's a problem because China's military modernization isn't slowing down.
They've already outpaced us with a larger navy.
Soon they'll have a larger air force.
And in space, China is rapidly fielding new capabilities designed to prevent our joint force from operating.
It's important we fully understand how much risk your services are taking on as a result of this budget, and what that means for our ability to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries.
General Saltzman, I was glad to see the Space Force release its Commercial Space Strategy.
Since 2013, this committee has been consistent in urging the department to take more advantage of commercial space.
Back then, it was just satellite communications but in the last decade, we have seen an explosion of opportunities in the commercial space sector.
In these times of limited budgets, leveraging those commercial resources will be even more important than before.
It will help us increase our capacity and our resiliency.
I am also interested in hearing more about the plan to move the core space mission from the Air Guard to the Space Force.
Especially how the plan will NOT cause Guard personnel and units to move out of affected states and how the Space Force's new personnel system could benefit those Guardsmen who choose to transfer.
Finally, this committee will be closely monitoring progress on the modernization of our nuclear triad.
While the B-21 and LRSO programs continue to make good progress, the Sentinel program's Nunn-McCurdy breach is very concerning.
This committee understands how unique and challenging this program is – the Air Force hasn't undertaken a project like this since the deployment of the Minuteman missile in the 1960s.
Nevertheless, the Department must do more to anticipate challenges and overcome them early when they emerge.
We need to get this right.
As Chinese and Russian nuclear arsenals continue to grow, the need for a modern and flexible nuclear triad only becomes more acute.
