President Obama’s 2017 Air Force budget would slow the pace of buying F-35s. That’s the new fighter jet slated for Eielson Air Force Base. But Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh still speaks highly of the plan to keep them at the Fairbanks base. Welsh says production and testing of the aircraft is well underway.
“This is not a PowerPoint program anymore. About a year from now, we will have 100 F-35s in our Air Force inventory,” he said. “We’ve already flown 45,000 hours on this airplane, collectively.”
The Air Force chose Eielson as the first base in the Pacific for the F-35, pending environmental review. Welsh gave a brief progress report at a congressional hearing yesterday, at the request of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Gen. Welsh says he expects the aircraft to reach the milestone of “Initial Operating Capability” at the end of the year.
“I’m very excited about getting the airplane to Alaska for two reasons,” Welsh said. “Partners in the Pacific will want to buy the F-35. And we can train with them in Alaska like we can train in very few other places in the world. The range airspace there is phenomenal. And that location, we’ve talked about this before—geography does matter, and Alaska is blessed with it.”
The Air Force is still struggling to find enough maintenance manpower for the F-35, without adding personnel. They’ve been using contractors and taking maintainers from older aircraft, but Welsh says the Air Force needs maintainers capable of deploying.
“As we get closer to full operational capability of this aircraft, and we have more squadrons fielding, we need to get at active duty Air Force maintainers and have them available to stand up operational bases like Eielson,” he said.
The budget the White House released this week calls for buying forty-three F-35s for the Air Force next year. That’s five fewer of the $100-million fighters than planned for 2017.
Murkowski says the budget also includes $295.6 million for Eielson, including seven projects to support the F-35.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
