The Trump administration has been vocal about its plans for a larger Army and a bigger Navy fleet, but has remained relatively quiet about its plans for Air Force modernization, leaving analysts wondering what that will mean for the Air Force in the fiscal year 2018 budget.
Among the scant details President Trump has revealed about his strategy for military investment are plans to build a 350-ship fleet for the Navy and increase Army active-duty end strength to 540,000 troops -- up from the 450,000 President Obama planned to have in place by the end of next year.
Trump has proposed a modest increase to the Air Force's operational fighter jet inventory, from 1,141 to 1,200 aircraft, but has spent more of his energy targeting some of the service's prominent programs for cuts -- calling for revised requirements to reduce the cost of the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program and pushing for "better deals" on the per-plane price of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Trump even took credit for a recent contract that reflected a 7 percent drop in the F-35's unit cost; that lower price tag had been in the works for several years.
Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Inside Defense he thinks Trump's focus on the Army and Navy could mean less money for the Air Force.
"If the Trump administration is able to put their imprint on the FY-18 budget, it would swing more favorably to the Army and Navy," he said.
However, because Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is the only Senate-confirmed official from the Trump administration, Harrison said he isn't confident the FY-18 request will actually reflect the new administration's priorities.
"More likely is the service chiefs are going to battle this out themselves," he said. "They're going to step into the power vacuum. And if the service chiefs are battling this out, they're more likely to end up with an even division. If the Obama administration holdovers are able to fill the vacuum, then they would probably want to push in the direction the administration was already going, which was more favorable to the Air Force."
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former OMB official, told Inside Defense, "It's premature to get anxious."
"We haven't seen a budget yet," he said. "We haven't seen a service split yet, we haven't seen a statement of policy yet, other than some very high-level statements. So I think it's premature."
Cancian questioned the notion that the Air Force has been overlooked by the administration.
"It's true that there has been a lot of attention to Army end strength and Navy shipbuilding," he said. "There's also been a lot of attention to nuclear modernization. And the Air Force has several big programs in there."
He said he thinks the Air Force will get its "standard share," noting that perhaps more of the service's funding will be tagged for nuclear modernization than conventional programs. Overall, he said, he thinks the service is in good shape.
"I'm not picking up anything that would obviously be a problem for the Air Force at this point," Cancian said.
Trump's focus on the F-35 could also influence the service's budget profile. Air Force leaders have publicly backed the president's push to reduce the cost of the jet, and service officials and F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin have long argued that one of the best ways to bring down the price is to buy more -- and quickly.
The service plans to buy an average of 48 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft annually through fiscal year 2022, and service leaders would like to push that number to 60. During a March 3 briefing with reporters, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein and acting Air Force Secretary Lisa Disbrow said increasing the F-35 buy rate is the service's top acquisition priority.
"We would like to get to 60 F-35s as quickly as we can, and part of this is going to be getting the overall cost down," Goldfein said. "We're working aggressively with that contractor to ensure that we get the price as low as we can, as quickly as we can, so we can get the procurement numbers up."
Although the Trump administration has not weighed in on the pace of F-35 procurement, Goldfein said the need for more fifth-generation capability is very much tied to readiness -- an issue that both Trump and Mattis have made a top priority. Mattis has directed both a near-term readiness review and a broader Defense Strategy Review that will help shape the department's fiscal year 2019 budget request.
"We have to make our case within the department to the secretary who's doing the Defense Strategy Review, and this has got to fit within where he's taking the overall department and all the services relative to how we advance in the case of our near-term readiness," Goldfein said.
Disbrow said Trump's attention to the program and interest in lowering unit cost is in line with the service's goals.
"He's very interested in getting quality at the best price," she said.