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U.S. Air Force Secretary Nominee Faces Funding Challenges
During his Senate nomination hearing, Meink named “the need for resilient space architectures” as one of three big challenges he would face if confirmed as Air Force secretary.
President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Air Force will take over a department in flux, with ambitions to modernize an aircraft fleet that is the oldest it has ever been and to boost funding for a five-year-old Space Force that is pushing for growth.
Troy Meink, Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Air Force, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing on March 27 that he considers the service’s fleet “probably too small on the fighter and bomber side of the house.”
The confirmation hearing, the last for service secretary nominees, came less than one week after Trump announced Boeing had won the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program with its F-47 crewed fighter. Meink told lawmakers that, if confirmed, he wants to see analysis and projection of Air Force fighter fleets, including NGAD and other systems.
- Troy Meink brings operational space focus
- New aircraft, nuclear modernization bills coming due
“Our fourth-generation aircraft still have an active role to play in all but the densest and most advanced threat environments around the world,” Meink wrote in answers to questions from lawmakers. “Where the threat increases, specifically as we move closer to the Chinese mainland, the integration of fifth-generation capabilities becomes more important. But the question of fighter fleet composition isn’t just about capability; it’s also about managing the overall health of an aging aircraft fleet.”
Several lawmakers raised parochial concerns about aircraft based in their districts, lamenting recent Air Force pushes to retire fighters, such as the F-15, and the slowed recapitalization of its tanker force. In response to questions from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), whose state has F-15Es based at Seymour Johnson AFB, Meink said such fourth-generation fighters will be effective in many environments, but eventually the service needs to look at the cost-benefit analysis of retiring older jets and bringing on fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-35s and sixth-generation F-47s.
For tankers, Meink says the focus needs to be working with Boeing on the KC-46 to bring production rates up and costs down. Current deliveries are on hold as the service evaluates cracks on the aircraft, with 89 of the planned 183 delivered. The service also appears to be punting its Next-Generation Aerial Refueling System plan as it prioritizes NGAD funding.
The Air Force’s biggest cost worry is nuclear modernization, as the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM recently underwent a review prompted by a Nunn-McCurdy cost breach. While the Pentagon reaffirmed the program as necessary for national security, costs have expanded greatly, and the effort is on hold for a rebaseline.
If confirmed, Meink would draw upon an extensive background in national security space, including his current role as principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office. He would come in as the Space Force must make key decisions about its capability development—in an attempt to adhere to a Pentagon-wide directive to reprioritize 8% of each service’s budget—while advocating for increased funding.
During the hearing, Meink called for a shift in space acquisitions away from the “legacy practices of bespoke, siloed systems” to a focus on commercial partnerships by changing top-level requirements to support rapid technological insertion and flexibility.
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said the Space Force needs “$10 billion in the near term, plussing up our current resources” during a March 26 webinar with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Congress approved about $29 billion for the service’s fiscal 2024 budget. The Space Force requested $29.4 billion for fiscal 2025, but Congress failed to approve a budget and instead passed a continuing resolution that will fund the U.S. government through the fiscal year-end.
Saltzman expressed hope that the Space Force will see funding that better reflects its capability development needs for 2026. “Just doing the 3% or 4% inflation increases doesn’t buy us new capability,” he said. “We’re just treading water.”
Meink concurred in his written responses, saying that the service “needs to smartly grow” to respond to threats in space. He cited “the need for resilient space architectures” as one of three significant challenges he would have to tackle as Air Force secretary, calling for the service to prioritize space domain awareness technologies that can hold adversary space capabilities “at risk.”
He expressed support for widely proliferated space capabilities to deter conflict in the domain, noting that the war in Ukraine has highlighted “how dependent joint forces have become on space.”
Meink highlighted international alliances as “force multipliers” to achieving space superiority, as an increasing number of allies and partners are establishing their own dedicated military space organizations. “The scope and scale of the challenges within the space domain [are] too large for any one country—including the United States—to address alone,” he wrote.
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