Budget priority

Air Force to Shift 2025 Budget Focus to Systems Integration, Officials Say

The U.S. Air Force’s fiscal year 2025 budget will focus on improving the integration between the service branch’s air and space elements and with others in the U.S. joint command, two USAF officials disclosed.

The FY 2026 budget for integration capabilities “will ramp up even more,” Kristyn Jones, acting Air Force undersecretary, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

According to Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, USAF deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, the service’s new program executive office for command, control, communications and battle management exemplifies the integration focus, DefenseScoop reported.

Platforms, such as the Next Generation Air Dominance program, comprise some of the biggest outlays in the DAF’s FY 2024 budget request of about $215.1 billion, the news website noted.

The service’s future budget planning, however, will be “less platform-focused and more effects-focused end-to-end,” Jones, a past Potomac Officers Club event speaker, said.

The Air Force budget shift stems from Moore’s new analysis that the service’s platform acquisition strategy has matured and that integrating the acquired systems now takes priority. The service’s integration initiatives include an architecture for the Joint All-Domain Command and Control that the U.S. Air Force was reportedly developing in August 2023.