{"id":84338,"date":"2025-02-26T22:49:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T22:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/02\/26\/general-8-cuts-painful-but-could-bring-fresh-funds-for-air-force\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:16:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:16:43","slug":"general-8-cuts-painful-but-could-bring-fresh-funds-for-air-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2025\/02\/26\/general-8-cuts-painful-but-could-bring-fresh-funds-for-air-force\/","title":{"rendered":"General: 8% cuts \u2018painful,\u2019 but could bring fresh funds for Air Force"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An Air Force two-star general warned Wednesday that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2025\/02\/25\/air-force-budget-cuts-may-open-old-wounds-with-congress\/\" target=\"_blank\">potential 8% cuts to the service\u2019s budget<\/a> would be \u201cpainful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the service\u2019s director for force design, integration and wargaming, expressed hope that the Air Force could still receive additional funding for its top priorities, citing its alignment with the Trump administration\u2019s focus on lethality and deterrence and the potential for redirected funding from cost-cutting measures outside the service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered services to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2025\/02\/19\/white-house-eyes-8-cut-to-defense-budget-to-boost-trump-priorities\/\" target=\"_blank\">review their budgets and find 8%<\/a> of planned fiscal 2026 spending that could be redirected from noncrucial programs toward efforts that make the military more effective. The Air Force has said one avenue it plans to pursue to meet these goals is accelerating its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2023\/03\/13\/us-air-force-pursues-major-aircraft-retirements-in-2024\/\" target=\"_blank\">retirement of older and outdated aircraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kunkel said Wednesday that with the Air Force now smaller and older than at any other time in its nearly 80-year history, \u201cthere\u2019s not many places that we can go for\u201d such cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAn 8% cut to the Air Force, it\u2019s gonna be painful,\u201d Kunkel said at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hudson.org\/events\/adapting-scale-conversation-major-general-kunkel-air-force-director-force-design-integration-dan-patt-timothy-walton\" target=\"_blank\">discussion hosted in Washington by the think tank the Hudson Institute<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna look really, really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Kunkel noted that Hegseth plans to redirect funds within the department and that the military\u2019s budget wouldn\u2019t be cut overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force\u2019s top priorities are protecting the homeland, projecting power abroad and strategic deterrence, Kunkel said. The Air Force will look at all its efforts as part of the \u201c8% drill,\u201d he said, and anything that doesn\u2019t contribute to at least one of those priorities will be reconsidered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force, with its ability to rapidly employ force across the globe, will become even more important in a future conflict, Kunkel said. However, to win such a war, he said, the service can\u2019t continue to operate under the same design, just with updated fighters and bombers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The service will need to fine-tune its capabilities to counter the nation\u2019s threats and protect its ground-based systems needed to launch aircraft or other weapons, Kunkel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force\u2019s effort to create a sixth-generation fighter and accompanying systems, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/air\/2025\/02\/20\/ngad-engines-pass-key-design-reviews-prototype-work-underway\/\" target=\"_blank\">Next Generation Air Dominance<\/a>, or NGAD, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/breaking-news\/2024\/12\/05\/air-force-defers-ngad-decision-to-trump-administration\/\" target=\"_blank\">now on hold<\/a> as the service reconsiders how to tame its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2024\/10\/04\/can-the-air-force-make-its-next-gen-fighter-jet-cheaper-than-the-f-35\/\" target=\"_blank\">high costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kunkel said that when the Air Force studied how a war would play out with and without NGAD in its fleet, \u201cthe fight looks much better when NGAD\u2019s in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But NGAD and its accompanying \u201cfamily of systems,\u201d such as drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft, wouldn\u2019t be able to survive alone, he said. The Air Force will need to invest in survivable bases and refueling tankers that can resist enemy attacks, so the service can generate combat sorties and then keep aircraft gassed up, even under fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the government decides not to pursue NGAD, Kunkel said, the Air Force will continue to be part of the fight \u2014 but the operational risk will be higher and the military may not be able to achieve all the combat goals it sets out to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s a package deal,\u201d Kunkel said. \u201cNGAD remains an important part of our force design, and it fundamentally changes the character of the fight in a really good way for the joint force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere\u2019s not many places that we can go for\u201d such cuts, Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said, with the Air Force smaller and older than it&#8217;s ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":119386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,16,26,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3320],"class_list":["post-84338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"LOA7LSJXIJCCXMCORZQUZSDGBU","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2025\/02\/26\/general-8-cuts-painful-but-could-bring-fresh-funds-for-air-force\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>General: 8% cuts \u2018painful,\u2019 but could bring fresh funds for Air Force - Air Force TImes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cThere\u2019s not many places that we can go for\u201d such cuts, Maj. 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