“The Air Staff is focused on one thing and it's spelled c-u-t-s,” Maj. Gen. Roger Burg, the service's strategic securities director, said June 28 during an Air Force Association-sponsored conference here. With the FY-08 program objective memorandum build in its nascent stages, Burg said the Air Force faces a budget environment that is “the most challenging that I've seen in 28 years.”

Just over an hour later, in an interview with Inside the Air Force at the same symposium, National Security Space Office chief Maj. Gen. James Armor sounded a similar tone.

“I'll tell ya, it's kind of grim out there. There is a really severe resource crunch,” Armor said. “We may have racked and stacked our priorities . . . but the cut line is getting higher and higher.”

Air Force officials have yet to huddle and discuss which specific space or aircraft programs might be considered for termination or major changes if the service cannot meet the sizable budget reduction level the White House is expected to hand the air service in coming months, Armor said.

As Pentagon officials constructed the FY-07 defense spending plan now being sliced and diced on Capitol Hill, some in Washington predicted the air service would have no choice but to terminate -- or significantly scale back -- a major acquisition effort. Several published media reports, quoting Pentagon officials, went so far as to predict the Air Force was readying to terminate a significant part of its desired Joint Strike Fighter buy.

Those prognostications, however, failed to pan out. Service budget writers and senior decision-makers were indeed forced by the White House's Office of Management and Budget to make deep cuts, but achieved them by trimming personnel and reducing other non-weapons accounts.

Service officials are in the nascent stages of attempting to bob and weave through another round of deep budget cuts without nixing or scaling back a major weapon system, aircraft or ISR program. As they begin their work, Armor hinted service officials face an uphill fight because “it seems worse this year than last year.” He added quickly, however, that every DOD service and agency -- not just the Air Force -- is reviewing its entire capabilities portfolio in anticipation that OMB will order the Pentagon to tighten its financial belt next fiscal session.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley in January said it might be “time to be killing some things” if some service programs continue to experience delays and cost overruns and if federal dollars remain scant for FY-08. When reminded of the air chief's warning and asked if this could be the year the air service has to terminate or substantially pare back a major space program, Armor replied: “Yep -- but I wouldn't limit it just to space programs.”

The service's space programs have experienced turbulence in recent years. The problems are not limited to just one program, they have become systemic, several defense and congressional officials have said.

Lawmakers -- including Senate Armed Services Committee members -- in recent years have come down hard on the military's orbital programs, making sizable budget cuts to a number of initiatives and using sharp language in legislation to voice their concerns.

For example, recent budget cuts to the Transformational Satellite program have triggered schedule changes for the program -- all to the right, according to defense officials and documents. Another example is a move late last year by Pentagon acquisition officials to overhaul the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program after the Air Force informed Congress that the program had exceeded the Nunn-McCurdy threshold for a fourth time -- twice during fiscal year 2005.

What's more, things have gotten so bad for the SBIRS effort that officials have launched an alternative program and may opt to build a third geosynchronous asset under that new project. Yet another example of a challenging program is the Wideband Gapfiller, which recently was delayed by two years due to a faulty fastener. The Space Radar program also has experienced turbulence.

While neither space official pointed to a specific space program that could be hacked during the upcoming budget process, the massive costs associated with developing satellites typically place orbital platforms in the center of budget-cutting debates.