About $1.5 billion of the U.S. Air Force’s $3.5 billion “unfunded priorities list” (UPL) request to Congress is to buy spare parts for aircraft operation and maintenance, including $564 million for F-16s, $195 million for RC-135 Rivet Joints, and $167 million for B-52 bombers.
The Air Force submitted the UPL to Congress on March 21 in accordance with the Title 10 requirement to do so within 10 days of the fiscal 2025 request, which DoD released on March 11.
The UPL said that the $1.5 billion spares request is to fund “a spare surge” outside of DoD’s working capital fund.
“There has been no prior funding appropriated specifically for spares restock,” the Air Force said. “This is intended to be a single year, single spares restock request with no impact to future FYDP funding lines.”
The UPL also has $612 million in research and development for “fighter force re-optimization,” including $293 million for the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 and almost $144 million for aviation support equipment modernization.
“Re-optimization” is a cloudy catchphrase in recent Air Force jargon–a word selection that does not suggest why the prefix “re” is needed and why an organization would have to “re-optimize,” if it had “optimized,” in the first place.
The Air Force’s “fighter force re-optimization” was “not developed in time for FY25 Program Objective Memorandum (POM) submission since analysis was on-going alongside the USAF’s effort to Re-optimize for Great Power Competition (GPC),” the UPL said. ” This one-time [UPL] requirement would provide the readiness spares packages, aviation support equipment, and munitions support equipment necessary to re-organize the fighter force structure to produce 9 additional mission generation force elements (MGFE) which would make available up to 208 combat-coded fighter aircraft in the existing USAF inventory. Funds for sustaining equipment and aircraft are already funded throughout the FYDP.”
The UPL also includes $266 million for Pacific Air Forces’ biennial, large scale, GPC-focused exercises, which the Air Force also had not outlined in time for the fiscal 2025 POM submission last year. In addition, the Air Force UPL asks for $158 million in military construction for Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) planning and design.
SAOC is to replace the Boeing [BA] E-4B National Airborne Operations Center, possibly with a commercial derivative aircraft. Known as the “doomsday plane,” the E-4B is a militarized version of the Boeing 747-200.