Pentagon’s 8 percent budget shift will be ‘painful’ for the Air Force

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed Pentagon officials to cut their planned budgets by 8 percent and redirect those funds to new priorities. But the Air Force doesn’t have much to draw funding from, a service official warned. “Let's be frank, the Air Force has gotten smaller. The Air Force has gotten older. As you look at where the Air Force has gone, we've protected the core [missions], which is homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection. So there's no