Getting Ready

Capitol Hill's proposed two-year budget deal would “mitigate” the Air Force's near-term readiness problems, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told reporters today at the Pentagon. “It's at the top of our payback list,” he said.

Air Force Under Secretary Eric Fanning, meanwhile, said service officials have not fully sorted through how the budget compromise, if passed, would impact the Defense Department as a whole.

“What it does for the Air Force, whatever funds become available to us, does alleviate the readiness problems,” he said at the same press conference. “It doesn't fix them, but helps us with them in '14 and '15.”

Further, he said, “it's going to take us a while to dig out of the readiness bathtub that we're in. So we won't face the same problems in '16 that we would without this relief, but we won't have our readiness problem fixed then by any means.”