Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill is pushing for a secure budget for the 139th Airlift Wing after a recent tour.
In a press release issued Friday McCaskill said she is pushing the Air Force to secure budget certainty for the 139th Airlift Wing in St. Joseph.
According to the release, because the 139th Airlift Wing has tactics development experts working in the same facility as intelligence analysts, changes to policy can be quickly assembled and disseminated to elements in the Active Duty, Air Force Reserve, and National Guard. Currently, the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center and C-130H Weapons Instructor courses—the only ones in the Air Force—are not explicitly programmed for in the budget and are funded year-to-year by either the Air National Guard or the Air Mobility Command, leaving the critically important programs without long-term certainty.
Under the plan proposed by the House of Representatives, McCaskill’s office said the Department of Defense is slated to run out of war funding halfway through the 2017 fiscal year.
“These unique courses, which are not found elsewhere in the Air Force, provide the opportunity for pilots and aircrews from the National Guard, Air Force Reserve, Active Duty and Coalition Partner Nations to train on the most advanced tactics on Mobility Air Force weapons systems,” McCaskill, a senior member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, wrote in a letter to Lt. Gen. L. Scott Rice, Director of the Air National Guard. “Without the stable budgeting and assigned personnel associated with programmatic funding, these courses will struggle to provide the high level of training our fliers deserve.”
This summer, as part of her Security & Defense Tour, McCaskill visited the 139th. McCaskill’s office said last month she raised budget uncertainty concerns she heard on her tour with top Pentagon officials, discussing the role of the base’s Advanced Airlift and Tactics Training Center and weapons instructor course in training fliers from the National Guard and Active Duty, as well as visiting pilots from international partner countries—and why that means it’s critical these courses get long-term funding for their long-term mission.
To read her letters CLICK HERE.