Upgrades Needed For Sustained F-22 Operations During A Crisis In Europe Axed For Border Wall

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The Pentagon says it will defer building various facilities to support rotating
deployments of F-22 Raptors to Germany as part of a larger reallocation of
military funds to support wall construction along the United States'
southwestern border with Mexico. Delaying the planned work, which included
setting up a dedicated repair center that would be able to maintain the
composite structures, exotic coatings, and other elements of the stealth
fighter's sensitive radar-absorbing skin, could have significant impacts on the
Air Force's ability to operate these jets for sustained periods in the region
during a crisis.

On Sept. 4, 2019, the U.S. military announced it would redirect a total of $3.6
billion in funding to wall construction. All of these funds came from spending
that Congress had approved between Fiscal Years 2017 and 2019 to support 127
individual military construction projects within the United States and elsewhere
around the world, including the F-22-related work at Spangdahlem Air Base. The
installation currently hosts a squadron of USAF Block 50 F-16CJ/DJ Vipers.

Back in February 2019, President Donald Trump had declared the situation on the
southwestern border to be a national emergency, which has enabled the Department
of Defense to use provisions in the National Emergencies Act to redirect
military construction funds to support building new border barriers without
Congressional approval.

"I have determined that 11 military construction projects along the
international border with Mexico, with an estimated total cost of $3.6 billion,
are necessary to support the use of the armed forces in connection with the
national emergency," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wrote in a letter to
Representative Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat and present chairman of
the House Armed Services Committee, on Sept. 3, 3019. "The funds being made
available are associated only with deferred military construction projects that
are not scheduled for award until fiscal year 2020 or later."

What Esper's letter doesn't note is that many of the 127 military construction
projects in question have already been in the works for years and that raiding
funds earmarked for those projects will almost certainly lead to significant
delays in their implementation. This, in turn, could have cascading impacts on
the operational plans many of these projects were meant to support.

Case in point, the F-22 projects at Spangdahlem, which Congress enacted funding
for in the budget the for the 2017 Fiscal Year. That year, the Air Force asked
for a total of $21.28 million to support Raptor related construction at the
base. This was broken into three separate projects: a new F-22 low
observable/composite repair facility, upgrading
infrastructure/communications/utilities related to Raptor operations at the
base, and upgrading hardened aircraft shelters there to accommodate the stealth
fighters.


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