Rogers: The President’s Budget Ends the Trade-Off Between Sustainment & Modernization

House Armed Services Chairman Rogers Backs FY27 Air Force Budget, Citing End of Modernization-Readiness Trade-Off

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) delivered an opening statement on May 20, 2026, at a hearing on the Air Force’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, arguing that the President’s proposal corrects years of underfunding and strategic mismanagement in U.S. air power.

Rejecting the Divest-to-Invest Approach

Rogers opened by drawing a sharp contrast between the current budget proposal and what he described as a failed strategy that forced the Air Force to choose between maintaining existing aircraft and acquiring new ones. That approach, he argued, produced the worst of both outcomes — a force with degraded readiness today and modernized replacements still years from delivery.

“This budget puts to an end the old divest-to-invest strategy that has done nothing but pit modernization against sustainment,” Rogers said. “The result of several years of that strategy is an Air Force that suffers from unacceptably low mission capable rates today, while it continues to wait on the delivery of modernized assets that are still years away.”

Rogers cited a range of compounding problems stemming from chronic defense underfunding: insufficient munitions stockpiles, an inadequate inventory of aircraft and autonomous systems, unacceptable declines in readiness, and a defense industrial base that has contracted to the point where it cannot rapidly scale production when needed.

Significant Funding Increases Across the Air Force and Space Force

The chairman expressed strong support for the President’s proposed budget, pointing to two headline figures. Operations and maintenance — the funding stream that keeps legacy aircraft flying and mission-ready — would receive a 23 percent increase under the request. Meanwhile, development and procurement of new capabilities would see a 54 percent increase, allowing the Air Force to accelerate several high-priority programs simultaneously rather than sequencing them due to budget constraints.

Rogers identified several specific programs set to benefit from the modernization investment, including the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program — all described as critical deterrent capabilities.

Space Force and the Growing Importance of Space as a Warfighting Domain

The chairman also highlighted the Space Force budget request, calling it an appropriate recognition of space as an increasingly contested warfighting environment. He noted that the funding would expand the Space Force’s support to combatant commanders and open new mission areas, including active defense of U.S. space-based assets and efforts to disrupt adversarial targeting chains — what Rogers referred to as “breaking red kill chains.”

Rogers warned against complacency in space, noting that U.S. adversaries fully understand the strategic value of space-based capabilities and have been investing accordingly. He framed American space superiority not as a given, but as something that must be actively maintained and defended.

Munitions and the Defense Industrial Base

Rogers also drew attention to increased funding for munitions production and industrial base capacity, calling these areas especially important to restoring American deterrence. He noted that work began in the prior year through reconciliation funding and multi-year procurement authority secured in the National Defense Authorization Act, and said he looked forward to hearing from Air Force witnesses about progress in ramping up production under those authorities.

The chairman closed his prepared remarks by thanking committee members for their participation in the extensive series of hearings and briefings required to shape the annual NDAA, as well as the Department of the Air Force for its cooperation during the oversight process.

What This Means for the FY27 NDAA

The Air Force hearing marked the final posture session in the committee’s FY27 budget review cycle. With the markup process approaching, Rogers’ strong endorsement of the budget request signals that the Armed Services Committee is likely to use the request as a baseline rather than a target for reductions. The dual investment in sustainment and modernization — long seen as a zero-sum competition — appears to be a central organizing principle for Republican defense policy heading into the FY27 NDAA debate.

Source: House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers. Retrieved from armedservices.house.gov.