The Air Force is hard at work trying to make the right choices to maximize each taxpayer dollar and ensure we can meet our Nation's security needs today and in the future. Today's challenging fiscal environment requires us to reassess our capabilities and capacity to determine how the Air Force will best contribute to achieving U.S. security objectives and foreign policy freedom of action. We are preparing for a wider range of budget contingencies than normal. We need to shrink almost every part of the Air Force as budgets will not keep up with our growing costs for personnel, infrastructure, and weapons maintenance. The Air Force developed a Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 President's Budget (PB) request that is strategy-based, informed by fiscal realities, and balances risk across all mission areas while retaining our Air Force core capabilities.
The Air Force brings five enduring and distinctive capabilities to the Nation's military portfolio: (1)air and space superiority; (2) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); (3) rapid global mobility; (4) global strike; and (5) command and control. These five core missions allow the Air Force to sustain our Nation's military advantage as the joint force becomes smaller and as we face emerging threats in increasingly contested environments. While today's global and fiscal environments have changed, our core missions and focus have not. T he Air Force must continue to be a force capable of deterring conflict, a force capable of projecting power, and a force capable of winning wars. To meet these demands we must ensure freedom of action in air and space. Our ability to assert control in both domains allows the U.S. and Coalition forces to accomplish their missions in different locations without the threat of an adversary's attack from above. The FY 2015 budget request enables the Air Force to meet these needs and offers freedom of action to our joint and coalition partners through our ability to integrate our core missions to provide Global Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global Power.