The Air Force's fiscal year 2007 budget request totals nearly $105.9 billion and features greatly increased funding for aircraft recapitalization, heavy investment in unmanned aerial vehicles and the initial dollars to replace its aging tanker fleet, according to a service official who was involved in the budget-making process.

“We expect when we're all said and done going through this, we'll be a much smaller force, a lean force,” the official told reporters last week at the Pentagon. “We'll be a more agile force, and we'll have more capability in the future than we do today. And that will allow us to remain the dominant air and space force for the 21st Century.”

Overall, the Pentagon's budget is expected to grow to $439.3 billion, a 7 percent increase over the FY-06 budget request, but still less than the department's projections from last year.

The Air Force's modernization accounts are earmarked for $1.3. billion in FY-07, the most the service has spent in 15 years, the official noted. That figure covers a wide range of initiatives, including the bedding down of new C-17 Globemasters; F-22A Raptor construction; and new dormitories for personnel, he added.

The service is asking for multiyear procurement authority for the F-22A Raptor, extending its production by two years to build an additional four aircraft that will bring the Air Force's total inventory to 183. One of the ways the service plans to finance the new development plan is by retiring its U-2 fleet.

“We're going to retire the U-2 fleet over a phased approach, over the FYDP, beginning with three aircraft next year and replace it with other capabilities” like satellites, UAVs and the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance attributes the next-generation Raptor possesses, the service official told Inside the Air Force last week.

The Air Force is taking a phased approach to retiring the U-2 because new systems, including the Global Hawk, might face “slippages” or delays that could deprive combatant commanders of vital ISR capabilities, the official went on to say.

Meanwhile the Air Force plans to invest $2.3. billion across the future years defense plan for Predator operations. That would give the Air Force 154 of the UAV and allow it to increase of number of orbits the aircraft flies from 12 to 21.

The mammoth buy of both the Predator A and B models will also allow the service to stand up Predator units in Air Force Special Operations Command and the Air National Guard, as the Guard seeks to expand its emerging missions portfolio.

Additionally, the service is increasing the number of Global Hawks fielded to six or seven a year. Right now, the maximum production rate for the Northrop Grumman-manufactured UAV is six a year, but “hopefully we can expand that in the future,” the official said. He did not specify a dollar amount.

The new budget also contains $240 million in research and development funds to begin the service's tanker recapitalization effort, according to the service officials.

Another area the Air Force is looking to reboot with the FY-07 budget is its troubled space portfolio. The official said the service this year will restructure its multibillion-dollar Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program, which has experienced numerous setbacks that have prolonged its development.

“What we're going to, we're going to restructure the program to what we call a block approach,” similar to the development plan used with fighters, the service official told ITAF.

Under the program's new structure, the Air Force will roll out two satellites with “basic capability” that will provide laser communications in space and increased bandwidth, and then launch the effort's final three satellites, which will have full capability.

“By spiraling it out, or phasing it in that way you minimize the risk . . . and you're able to implement the program, in this case launch the satellites earlier than planned,” the official noted, without giving a time line for the launches.

The budget request also includes the Air Force's initial investment in the Light Cargo Aircraft (LCA), a new intratheater airlifter.

ITAF reported last week that the chiefs of the Army and the Air Force recently signed an memorandum of understanding that will allow the service to merge their previously disparate efforts to field a new fleet of intratheater aircraft.

The FY-07 budget request calls for the Air Force to procure the last 12 C-17 Globemasters, bringing the service's total buy to 180 aircraft.

The Air Force also intends to spend about $600 million on recruiting and retention in FY-07. Additionally, the air service is aiming to expand its numbers of tactical air control personnel -- airmen embedded with the Army who call in air strikes and air support -- by more than 1,000.

The official said the Air Force expects to absorb another $560 million cost for Operation Noble Eagle in the coming fiscal year but could not say for certain as the service does not have a supplemental budget request yet.

The Air Force's FY-06 supplemental budget requirement was $13 billion but the service was appropriated about $8.6 billion instead, the official said.