On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) questioned Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General David Allvin during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Allvin said that the increasing age of airplanes means they are down for repairs and maintenance for longer periods, so the Air Force has fewer aircraft available to fly at any given time.
“One thing that has concerned me since I’ve been here for three years and even before that, we decided to build a new tanker, and we still are not in rapid deployment of that,” Sen. Tuberville said. “And it kind of concerns me that we just can’t overcome problems like that within this committee. But that being said, politics continues to take over. One thing I wanna talk about is I’ve had several calls over the last six, seven months from generals in the Air Force. In recent years, our sorties have decreased to one point five a month, and the Chinese have increased theirs to around four a month. Now, being from a coaching background, I know practice makes perfect. What’s your thoughts about that? We’ve got to be ready to fight, and one point five sorties a month doesn’t sound like a whole lot to me. And you’d know more than me.”
General Allvin responded: “Well, Senator, reps and sets. That is important. And so, ensuring our readiness be able to meet the challenges certainly one of our priorities. One of the challenges that we have along with that is with our flying hours program, which is you don’t have flying hours, you can’t put the pilots in the cockpits. The challenge is we continue to have these legacy systems, so we only have so many dollars to spread across. And when you have reduced aircraft availability rates because they’re old, and they’re finding new and interesting ways to break, and they break for longer periods of time, and they stay in depots for longer periods of time. That removes them from the ability to be able to be flown. So that’s one of the challenges that we have. Also, with some of the maintainers that we want to maintain these new aircraft, we need those Wiley KG maintainers to keep fixing the old ones. So, some of that skill set that we’re looking for seasoned maintainers to transition to some of these fifth-generation platforms have not been available to us. And as they say, you want a ten-year maintainer; it takes ten years to build that. So if we can’t have access to those because they’re still maintaining the legacy platforms, and also those legacy platforms have supply chain issues, all those sorts of things that make it just less efficient. Which is another reason, as we are looking to manage the readiness of today and the readiness of tomorrow, that we have that challenge to be able to meet….meet the needs while still being able to advance to the modernization that we need.”
“So you’re saying this is not a policy, this is a cost problem, an airplane problem, maintenance problem?” Tuberville asked. “This is not a policy that we have to cut back to one point five sorties a month. Are you saying that?’
“Senator, what I would say is where policy could help is as we try and pursue our modernization strategy, if we could have less restrictive language that will allow us to…..to move that along, we will continue to try and manage best the risk of maintaining the current legacy platforms and moving into the new platforms,” Gen. Allvin said.
“So you being in the Air Force and….and being around it for a long time, how many sorties do we need a month to really be prepared to fight somebody like China?” Tuberville asked.
General Allvin answered, “Senator, there’s a great phrase in the weapons school that says, “It depends.” And I know that’s not a satisfying answer, but if I could maybe talk about what it may depend on. We have revalidated throughout our Air Force over the past eighteen months. We have revalidated what we call our mission-essential tasks. Moving from twenty, thirty years of counter-VEO fights, understanding the nature of the environment in which we’re gonna need to fight in the future. We’ve revalidated those tasks. Understanding how what we do on those tasks tells us how many sorties we’re gonna need. We’re also moving into a world where – when I was flying, if you’re in a simulator, you weren’t getting that much training. You need to actually be flying. The advancement of the synthetic environment and the ability to work in some of the key mission areas without actually being in the cockpit changes that equation as well. So I would say – I do believe we could fly more and be better. But to give you a precise amount, I think, would be probably folly because there are other elements with respect to mixing with the live virtual construction environment that will help offset the need for pure airborne flying.”
General Allvin is currently the Vice Chief of Staff for the Air Force. He is awaiting confirmation to become Chief of Staff for the Air Force. Gen. Allvin is one of the nominees affected by Sen. Tuberville’s holds on promotions in his feud with President Joe Biden over the department’s policy of funding travel and additional paid time off for service members and their dependents seeking an abortion.
“Thank you for what you do,” Tuberville told Allvin. “I wish they’d bring you to the floor today. I’d vote for you to be confirmed. Hopefully, that happens in the near future. Thank you very much.”
Tuberville is refusing to give unanimous consent on hundreds of senior-level military promotions. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) could bring the promotions to the floor one at a time to get this matter resolved. He has chosen not to do that, arguing confirming the promotions one at a time could take weeks.
The Congressional Research Service released a memo stating it would take the Senate approximately 700 hours of floor time to process and vote on the promotions individually.
The memo stated, “This total represents approximately 30 days and 17 hours to process all 273 military nominations, assuming the Senate worked 24 hours a day without break or interruption by other business. Alternatively, based on the above assumptions, if the Senate exclusively processed these nominations during eight-hour session days, it would take approximately 89 days to confirm all 273 nominees.”
Tuberville was elected to the Senate in 2020 and faces reelection in 2026.
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