What, exactly, has the Air Force been doing to merit such micro-management?

In yet another series of moves designed to constrain the Air Force from making independent decisions on managing its aircraft inventory, the HASC Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces takes a few whacks at Air Force leadership.

This is on top of prohibitions on retiring aircraft in both the SASC version of the NDAA and the HASC Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces that TCS pointed out earlier in this rolling blog. This subcommittee does allow the Air Force to reduce its B-1 inventory from 36 to 24 airframes.

But the latest restrictions include:

• Prohibiting funding through FY23 to be used to retire KC-135s
• Requiring the maintenance of 50 primary mission KC-10As in FY21, 38 in FY22 and 26 in FY23
• Prohibiting the reduction in the total inventory of tactical airlift aircraft to drop below 292

Again, we’re not sure what the Air Force did to merit these controls on aircraft inventories. But this has turned into a giant game of “Mother May I?”

And the answer is, “No, you may not.”