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1 1 (2020)

handle is hein.congrec/cbocrddc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: JANUARY 2020 The Cost of Replacing the Department of Defense's Current Aviation Fleet The U.S. Air Force, Army, and Department of the Navy-which includes the Navy and the Marine Corps-operate large fleets of aircraft. The Congressional Budget Office produced three reports about those fleets, projecting the number and costs of aircraft the Department of Defense (DoD) would need to procure to maintain the fleets' current size through 2050.1 In this report, CBO synthesizes the information in the three reports and compares the military services' procurement costs. The Air Force's fleet is much older, on average, than those of the Army and the Department of the Navy. If the Air Force maintained its current fleet size, CBO esti- mates, its costs for procuring aircraft in upcoming years would rise considerably. Those increases would result in an overall increase in DoD's costs for procuring aircraft, CBO projects. Between 2000 and 2018, DoD's annual costs for procuring aircraft averaged about $26 billion (in 2018 dollars); CBO projects that the costs of DoD's pro- curement plans would average $40 billion in the 2030s.2 1. See Congressional Budget Office, The Cost ofReplacing Today' Naval Aviation Fleet (January 2020), www.cbo.gov/ publication/5 5949, The Cost ofReplacing Today Army Aviation Fleet (May 2019), www.cbo.gov/publication/55180, and The Cost ofReplacing Today' Air Force Fleet (December 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/54657. 2. All costs refer to budget authority. To allow comparisons with the Congressional Budget Office's earlier reports in this series on long-term aviation costs, all costs are expressed in 2018 dollars. To remove the effects of inflation, CBO adjusted costs with either the gross domestic product price index from the Bureau of Economic Analysis or with CBO's projection of that index. The years referred to in this report are federal fiscal years, which The Demographics of the Current Fleets As of 2018, the Air Force had about 5,600 aircraft, the Army had about 4,300, and the Department of the Navy had about 4,000. Although each of the military services has some older aircraft in its fleet, aircraft procured in the 1980s (which today are at least 30 years old) and ear- lier are most common in the Air Force (see the top panel of Figure 1). Some of the older aircraft have high replace- ment costs (see the bottom panel of Figure 1). The Air Force's older fleets with high replacement costs include F-15 and F- 16 fighter aircraft and A- 10 attack aircraft procured in the 1980s, as well as KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft and B-52 bombers procured in the 1960s. Budgets for Procuring Aircraft Since 2000 DoD's budgets for procuring aircraft rose through most of the 2000s, peaking at $34 billion in 2010 (see Figure 2). Despite an increase in 2016, the budgets for procuring aircraft have generally trended downward since 2010. However, the smallest budget in the 2010s ($25 billion in 2014) exceeded any budget for procuring aircraft over the 2000-2006 period. Although the Air Force had the largest budgets for pro- curing aircraft of the three departments in the 2000s, the Department of the Navy's budgets for procuring aircraft have been largest in the 2010s. Overall, between 2000 and 2018, the Air Force's budgets for procuring aircraft run from October 1 to September 30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end.

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