Kelly, Bipartisan Colleagues Seek Answers from DoD on Divestment of Legacy Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Capabilities

This week, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) colleagues sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth expressing concerns with the Air Force’s escalated retirement of airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance capabilities and highlighted the necessity of the platforms. Other senators joining the letter are Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Deb Fischer (R-NE), and Tim Kaine (D-VA).  

Over the last couple of years, the U.S. Air Force has begun to rapidly divest legacy airborne ISR platforms without demonstrating how new capabilities can replace them. The rate of investment and divestment leaves the combatant commanders accepting greater risk and provides civilian policy makers with less input to make informed decisions or conduct effective missions.  

“In the pursuit of other modernization efforts beyond ISR, and possibly an overly-optimistic prediction of what space can quickly execute, the Air Force is aggressively retiring its current inventory of airborne ISR platforms without investing in replacement capabilities,” the senators wrote. “At the current rate of investment and divestment, the Air Force will eventually have more lethal tools, but they leave the military with fewer tools to know what they are striking and fewer tools for policy makers to know if they should be striking something at all.” 

The senators said they are concerned by the Air Force’s history of “cutting ISR in order to meet other aspirations” and how it remains “unabashedly committed to divesting its airborne ISR capabilities.”   

The Air Force has retired the MC-12 Liberty, MQ-1 Predator, E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), the RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 20s and 30s, and the MQ-9 Block 1. Further, the Air Force has stopped procuring the MQ-9As, announced the retirement of the U-2 Dragon Lady, and has started to shut down the U-2 training pipeline. Despite these cuts to airborne ISR platforms, there has been no new procurement or announced development of new or modernized capabilities to fill the gap.  

“The importance of ISR cannot be overstated,” the senators continued. “Whether it’s getting President Kennedy the information necessary during the Cuban missile crisis, getting our allies and partners what they need to maintain the peace of the Camp David Accords, or feeding and completing the kill chain against near peer adversaries and Violent Extremist Organizations (VEO), ISR provides the information necessary for the decision makers at every level. It is no accident ISR is listed as one of the Air Force’s Core Functions.” 

“We look forward to your candid assessment of the responsibility the U.S. Air Force has to provide ISR capabilities, and we remain ready to contribute to a meaningful solution,” the senators concluded. 

Click here to read the full letter.