Base feels effects of budget impacts

Published April 20, 2007
By Col. Colleen Ryan
88th Air Base Wing commander

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The Air Force has an aging fleet of airframes older than many of us. Parts are hard to find, and maintenance is costly. The Air Force has been at war and in combat for 16 consecutive years. The chief of staff of the Air Force himself has said that the "strain is beginning to take a toll on our people and our equipment."

We here at Wright-Patterson AFB are feeling the effects of the continuous war and recapitalization of our aged aircraft fleet in ways that translate into budget impacts. Additionally, we are becoming a smaller, more efficient force -- Program Budget Decision 720 eliminated a portion of our civilian force and force shaping has impacted our active duty force.

With the savings that come from a smaller force, we will realize money to recapitalize the force so that Airmen a decade or two from now will be able to meet future threats; however, we are in the painful throes of "how do we get there from here?" This wing is facing the same budgetary and manpower challenges along with many other wings in our Air Force, and we are all dealing with those challenges in a way that best supports the Air Force mission, the CSAF's priorities and our own mission and customer priorities.

How do we get there from here? Well, for the 88th Air Base Wing, the host wing for the more than 23,000 people who work on this installation, when budget shortfalls, especially in areas of what we call "must pay" bills hit hard enough and deep enough, we unfortunately find ourselves having to look at cutting customer services - and that is exactly the situation we are in.

Let me start by telling you that as we began looking for ways to pay our "must pay" bills, we did our best to absorb the impact solely within the wing. Temporary duty assignments, training, supplies, overtime and contracts were all on the table, and we redefined our wing mindset by taking serious cuts. We will accept risk in these areas, but it is risk we feel is within acceptable limits; however, even after these efforts, we were fighting an uphill battle when faced with such a significant shortfall. After much agonizing, we came to terms with the fact that there was no way to negate the impact to our installation customers, as I could not absorb the shortfalls all internally.

So we next looked to cut areas with the least impact to you, our customers. What we settled on are rather varied customer service areas that we believe won't have a tremendous negative impact to you and will be something that you can live with as a customer. Details of these cuts are addressed in a related news story, but let me highlight one area of concern. We are going to divert some of the money designated for upkeep and sustainment of base infrastructure to cover our "must pays."

This means that major repairs to buildings, roads, chillers, elevators, etc., may be delayed or a temporary fix put in place until we can find money for the permanent fix. It means that only emergency or critical repairs will be taken care of in a timely manner, while others have to wait.

In no circumstances, will safety be compromised, but you, the customer, may not get the work done that you need because we can't afford to do it. My civil engineers will have to be very good at prioritizing all the competing requirements for work on this huge installation, and they are up to the task, but we need your understanding -- our ability to expedite across the board will be deteriorated.

Honestly, we looked at other options that were considered far too painful to the installation and to our customers and thankfully, my boss, Lt. Gen. Jack Hudson, the Aeronautical Systems Center commander, was able to fund a significant amount of our shortfall, through efficiencies and cuts that they absorbed in ASC. This is a team effort and fortunately the truly egregious quality of life and customer service cuts that we proposed to cover our shortfall, like closing our lodging facility and reducing base wide supply of paper towels, soap and toilet paper, are not going to have to be implemented.

The "nice to haves" are no longer practical, and if the service does not directly fall under our core missions -- operate the base, defend the base, deploy ready Airmen -- quite frankly we cannot afford to do it.

We need to reset customer expectations, not only for the rest of this fiscal year, but very likely for the foreseeable future. We also need to change the culture that thinks "money will come." We are facing a new reality and need to make decisions based on that new reality.

I have encouraged my 88th ABW members to communicate our story to their customers. It is important to us that you understand we are just doing our part to focus on fighting the global war on terrorism, developing our Airmen and recapitalizing and modernizing our aging fleet.