From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Air Force Readiness Description: This podcast explores how the Air Force is handling ageing equipment, missed training requirements, and a shortage of fighter pilots. Related GAO Work: GAO-19-120T: Air Force Readiness: Actions Needed to Rebuild Readiness and Prepare for the Future Released: October 2018 [ Background Music ] [ John Pendleton: ] We think in the near term, the priority needs to be rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet, focusing on the building blocks of readiness. [ Matt Oldham: Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. Over the past few years, GAO has released reports on different aspects of Air Force readiness, as they continue to modernize and plan for future threats. I'm with John Pendleton, a GAO director who recently testified to Congress on how the Air Force is preparing for tomorrow. John, is Air Force readiness where it needs to be? [ John Pendleton: ] Well, thank you, Matt. No, I'm afraid it's not. Air Force readiness has been slowly but steadily declining for more than a quarter century. At this point, they're hoping to make a climb back to where they want to be, but they do have a ways to go. I mean I think the reason is a matter of simple supply and demand. Simply put, the Air Force has gotten a lot smaller over those last 25 years but to demand for its services has continued to remain high. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, what's this mean for national security? [ John Pendleton: ] I think you have to put into context what the Air Force does, the many roles that it has, and they -- because they self-deploy, they fly to the -- to the fight. They're critical in the early days of any conflict. When people think about the Air Force, they think about fighters, but the Air Force does a lot more than that. They have bombers, they provide air cover for ground forces. They bring food, and ammunition, and equipment to the fight, and lots of other missions, like remotely piloting vehicles, unmanned systems, that kind of thing. But at the same time, in terms of what it means to national security, the United States' edge against potential threats has been shrinking over the last few years, as we haven't modernized, but many of them have. And so, many of the Air Force's planes now are really old, honestly. The F16, which comprises much of the fighter fleet, averages 27 to 28 years old. The B-52, the main bomber, it averages 56 years old, and they plan to keep both of those planes into the 2040s. There's going to be 100 B-52's in inventory in a few years. [ Matt Oldham: ] Are there any areas that are particularly challenging for the Air Force? [ John Pendleton: ] We actually described several of those in our work, which was a compilation of a number of GAO reports. One of the big ones you hear a lot about is the pilots. The Air Force is essentially in competition with the airlines for pilots and the gap between what they have and what they need has been growing over the last few years. In 2017, the Air Force was 27 percent short of pilots. That means for every four pilots they needed, they only had three and the best case scenario is that they close that gap in 2023. Another big one is the equipment. The aircraft are aging and so they're broke down more than the Air Force would like, it's a lot of reasons, maintenance bottle bottlenecks, parts that are no longer on the shelf because the planes are no longer being built, or the supplier went out of business. But when you have that smaller fleet, but the same or increasing demand, it strains it and it's kind of been a vicious cycle for a number of years. [ Matt Oldham: ] Something's got to give. [ John Pendleton: ] Right. Exactly. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, this study was based off of prior GAO reports. Did you find any trends over the years? [ John Pendleton: ] Like I said, I think the Air Force is hoping that things are -- have bottomed out and they're going to head upward here. But most the trends have not been in the right direction. I think you can think of it like this, operations have been more or less constant. The size of the Air Force has gotten smaller, the cost to own the aircraft have gone up, and the cost to buy new aircraft have exploded, and pilots are getting out, so readiness has declined. So, many of the trends have been in the wrong direction. Now one bright spot, I think, is the Air Force realizes where it is and they have set readiness rebuilding goals that lay out year-over-year what they're trying to do. And we consider that step in the right direction. We made a recommendation that the Air Force and the entire Department of Defense, as a matter of fact, do just that back in 2016. So, we're monitoring that closely. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] So, it sounds like the Air Force has been facing readiness issues for some time now. Unless those issues are addressed, these challenges could continue to pose problems for the foreseeable future. So, John, are these readiness issues easily fixed? [ John Pendleton: ] It's going to take some time and focused attention, Matt. I mean, that said, it took 25 years to get here, so it's going to take a while to fix it. It's not going to happen overnight. An important caveat to understand about readiness, you have to talk about what we mean by readiness because it means different things to different people. The readiness that I'm talking about is whether the Air Force has the equipment, the people, the training it says it needs. Now whether the Air Force can prevail against a specific adversary in a specific conflict, different question, more complicated, and the answer is classified. But there are some concerns about it. The Air Force has been unable to train for the full range of missions that it would need perhaps to perform against a near-peer adversary, for example, the national defense strategy calls out China specifically. But there's questions from our work about the way it's using its smaller fleet too. The F-22 Raptor, which is highly capable, but pretty scarce. We only bought a little over 180 of them when we -- the Air Force originally wanted over 600. It simply doesn't have time to train, due to all the missions that it's being asked to do. And one of those missions is sitting alert, that is, waiting for a call. So, that ties up the plane and the pilot, which means they can't train across all of those missions, and so basically, you're using your best fighter. If it was a car, it would be a Ferrari, like a fire truck. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, lastly, John, what do you believe is the bottom line of this report? [ John Pendleton: ] The Air Force recently announced a desire to get bigger, quite a bit bigger, about a quarter more operational squadron. That could help readiness in the long term, and it's understandable given the demands on them. But they're going to have challenges, especially getting bigger with our deteriorating fiscal picture across the United States. We think in the near term, the priority needs to be rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet, focusing on the building blocks of readiness, having enough pilots, and maintenance folks, keeping the planes ready to fly, training pilots and what they will need do at a high end fight, and utilizing its small force in ways that enables all this. The Air Force clearly needs to modernize its aging fleet, but I doubt they're going to be able to grow their way out of the problem. Our reports have 14 recommendations in them and I think those should help guide the Air Force as it goes forward. [ Matt Oldham: ] John Pendleton is a Defense Capabilities and Management director here at GAO and he was talking about a GAO study on the state of Air Force readiness. Thank you for your time, John. [ John Pendleton: ] Thank you very much, Matt. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.