Page:Legislative History of the AAF and USAF.djvu/114

 �This Page Declassified lAW EO12958 Committee, Lt. Gem O. B. Stone, III, Deputy Chief of Staff, USAF (Comptroller), stated that ttus was an internn budgetary request aimed at a 95-wing Air Force. It was not suffiment to put such a force in complete battle-readinessths was to be deferred, pending further review of the world sitno. lion. Nor did this budget attempt to cover the costs of the Korean operation. The total new obligating authority requested was ap- proxhnately $19,784,000,000 of which over 65 per cent was for the procurement of air- craft and other equipment; g2 General Vandenberg told the subcommit- tee that an Air Force of 95 wings could not be considered sufficient to wm a major war by defeating superior strength both in the air rand on the ground. Such a force was intended primarily as a deterrent, and it was hoped that it mght be able to stave off defeat in case the enemy decided to risk all-out war. = These statements nnphed the necessity. for taking under consideration further expansion of the UAF. In 1952 Congress took action in this matter by au- thorizing a 143-wng Ar Force. *4 Congress took favorable action on the Ar Force budgetary request and by the end fiscal year 1952 had granted the Air Force $22,238,985,000 in direct approprmtons and authorizations, an amount closely proaching the wartime peak of $23,665,431,- 000. e These huge appropriations, together wth an unexpended balance of $13,293,- 605,627 brought forward from the previous year, minus certain transfers, made a total of $35,501,988,802 available to the Ar Force. Congress granted the Army $21,599,668,330 in direct appropnahons and authorizations in fiscal year 1952, and gave the Navy $15,618,511,3923 The tremendous sum which became avail- able to the Arr Force at this time must, however, be evaluated in relation to the situation in which the Air Force found itseli in the years after World War II. There had 10 win bF December 1955   result  e reazaisal of strate7 and requiremen bv he Joint hiefs of Staff iu  sll of 1953 the President tn Dcember of at year red  13-winE progrsm Under the new rogrsm e Air rae was to batld up  12 ing by the end of Juae 1956 and to 13 wings by e and cf June 1957 Most of the in- crease was to b tn fighter wings (The Sem[uu$1 e9ert e 5ecretsr of the Air force, Ecal ear 19, eltmlnary , p 1 ) been a steady burial-up of the Air Force (Air Corps and AAF) from 1939 through 1943 while the reverse was true from 1946 th.rough the first half of I950. Thus the ap- propriation of over $22,000,000,000 for the fiscal year 1952, and the unexpended bal- ance carried over from the previous year, had to make up the deficit of the lean years since World War II. It was very difficult to make up flus deficit insofar as it pertained to aircraft production because of the exist- ence of a time-lag of about two years be- tween the date of ordering a plane and the date of delivery. There was also the declining purchasing power of the dollar to be considered. Tins, plus the greater weight of modern jet planes, their multiplicity of oomphcoted de- vines, and their high fuel consumption, made aircraft much more expensive to build and operate than they had been dur- ing World War II3  Then, too, the US/iF was now a truly globaI Air Force wxth the responsibfiity for constructing and main- tinning bases in nearly every country out- side the Iron Curtain, and it furnished the planes and personnel to keep these bases in a state of readiness. Nevertheless the authorization of the 95- wing Ar Force in 1951 (followed by a period of program readjustment, and a reappraisal of mlitary needs which resulted in the ap- proval of the 137-wing program in Decem- ber 1953) and the generous appropriations to begh the implementation of the 95- wing program, presaged the end of the old and erroneous concept of the "balanced force" as a mihtary establishment in whzch the three armed services received approm- mately equal shares of the mfiitary funds and were kept at roughly equal strength. Now, as a new and strategically sound con- cept oi "balanced power" the realization that the United States really had balanced forces when its military budget was allo- cated on the basis of calculating the strength of its forces in relation to the top priority tasks they had to perform--came to have increasing weight the Air Force was accorded its proper place as the key arm of our military establishment. Of these top priority tasks the most important was that THIS PAGE Declassflied lAW EO12958
 * Eerl¾ in I953 there was a shift to ß Drogrnm calling tar