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Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008
by Lt. Col. John Paschall
Somewhere from the deep, dark recesses of the memories of my youth, I recall my father singing a popular song of the Great Depression, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The song’s lyrics describe how quickly our society and people’s fortunes changed during the Depression: from an abundance of jobs to standing in a bread line; from a life of great accomplishment to a life of poverty; from fighting heroically in World War I to being cast aside by friends to fend for yourself. Although too young to have fought in The Great War, my father came of age during the Depression, struggling just to help his parents and siblings make ends meet. He picked up work wherever he could find it, and for him and many others of his day, any source of income was a real blessing in that time of scarcity and deprivation.
By now you may be thinking, “Gee, John, that’s, uhh, really nice to know about your Dad, but why are you writing about him in an Inside AFIT article, and what does that have to do with AFIT…and me?”
The thread here is the scarcity of finances—of income—the Air Force has faced as an institution over the past 20 years or so. We emerged from the 1980’s having seen development of the F-22, the B-2, the C-17, the E-8, and the V-22, as well as an active duty end strength over 600,000 strong. That Reagan-era financial prosperity is long gone, having been replaced by an ever-aging inventory of aircraft, Reductions in Force, Force Shaping, and Selective Early Retirement Boards. Now we struggle mightily just to fund one or two major system developments, to the point of having sacrificed precious end strength to free up investment dollars.
Well, there’s a flicker of light at the end of the financial tunnel—and it’s not a train. Course development in AFIT’s School of Systems and Logistics is a booming business, with significant budget growth expected in the foreseeable future. In FY08 we will have executed about $3.3M in Acquisition Professional Development Program (APDP) and AETC funds. On top of that $3.3M, we received $850K from SAF/AQX (RDT&E funds, a watershed course development event for LS!) to begin development of seven additional courses in support of the CSAF’s AFSO21 initiative called Develop and Sustain Warfighting Systems, and we received an additional $750K from various other sources to develop five more classroom and web-based courses.
Our FY09 budget looks even more robust. At a budget review last month, SAF/AQXD actually increased our FY09 budget request from $3.0M to $3.2M, primarily to help accommodate the near-50% increase in the number of initial skills students projected to attend LS badging courses next year. We expect our “baseline” budget alone to be over $4M, a 21% increase from FY08. We also expect upwards of an additional $3.5M to begin or continue development of courses, as well as bring aspects of the Logistics Readiness Officer Course to AFIT from Lackland, and begin offering our Fundamentals of Acquisition Management course to the hundreds of non-mandatory military officers and civilians new or fairly new to the acquisition workforce. We expect our FY10 budget to continue that growth trend, with even more course development and full funding of our LOG X99 courses.
The School of Systems and Logistics has turned the corner on our financial depression. Thanks to the quality of our current and previous work and the reputation we’ve established, we have more paying customers and sponsors than ever before, and what looks like a steady stream of new course developments to pursue over the next few years. So although we may have been singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” just a year or two ago, the response we’re getting from our customers is a resounding “Sure, in fact, here’s a quarter!” My father would be proud!