10 U.S.C. § 231a — Budgeting for life-cycle costs of aircraft for the Army, Navy, and Air Force: annual plan and certification

(a) Annual Aircraft Procurement Plan and Certification Within 30 days after the President sends Congress the yearly budget, the Secretary of Defense must send the House and Senate defense committees two things: a plan for buying the aircraft listed in part (b) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force; and a certification that the budget, and the related future-years defense program, actually provides enough money to buy those aircraft on the schedule the plan lays out. (b) Covered Aircraft The plan must cover these kinds of aircraft: fighters; attack aircraft; bombers; aircraft that move troops and cargo between theaters; aircraft that move them within a theater; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft; tankers; remotely piloted aircraft; helicopters and other rotary-wing aircraft; operational support and executive transport aircraft; and any other major support aircraft the Secretary of Defense names for this purpose. (c) Annual Aircraft Procurement Plan (1) The plan should be designed so the resulting aircraft force can support the latest National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy. (2) Each plan must include: (A) a detailed 15-year buying program for the aircraft in part (b), for each military department; (B) a description of what aircraft force structure the national military strategy actually requires; (C) the estimated yearly funding needed to buy each aircraft program, plus an explanation of the buying strategy behind those numbers, both for the whole Department of Defense and for each military department; (D) the estimated yearly funding needed to operate, maintain, and support each aircraft program for its whole life, again both department-wide and Department-of-Defense-wide; (E) for each of those cost estimates: whether it comes from the military department's own estimate or from the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation; if those two estimates differ by more than 5%, an explanation of why; how confident the estimate is; and a certification that it was calculated using the standard cost categories set by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment; (F) the Secretary's assessment of whether the combined Army, Navy, and Air Force aircraft forces actually meet the country's security needs. (3) For any aircraft program that also needs a report under section 4351 of this title, the cost information in the aircraft plan must come from the same Selected Acquisition Report data the Secretary plans to send Congress that year. (4) Each plan must be submitted publicly (unclassified), with a separate classified annex attached. A public summary of the unclassified part must also be made available. (d) Assessment When Aircraft Procurement Budget Is Insufficient to Meet Applicable Requirements If a year's budget doesn't fund enough aircraft to keep the force structure the plan calls for, the Secretary must include, with that year's budget documents, an assessment explaining the funding shortfall and the risks of having a smaller aircraft force. The Secretary must coordinate this assessment with the commanders of the combatant commands beforehand. (e) Annual Report on Aircraft Inventory (1) As part of the yearly plan and certification, the Secretary must also include a report on the Department of Defense's aircraft inventory. (2) Each report must include, for that year: the total number of aircraft in the inventory; the number of active aircraft, broken into primary, backup, and attrition/reconstitution-reserve aircraft (with subcategories for mission, training, test, and other aircraft); the number of inactive aircraft, broken into bailment aircraft, drone aircraft, aircraft being sold or transferred to foreign governments, leased or loaned aircraft, maintenance-training aircraft, aircraft being scrapped for parts, and stored aircraft; and the aircraft inventory levels the Joint Chiefs of Staff have approved as necessary. (3) Each report must list all of this separately for the regular and reserve parts of each military branch, and must break it down by aircraft type, model, and series, matching the future-years defense program tied to that year's budget. (f) Budget Defined In this section, "budget" means the President's budget for a fiscal year, as submitted to Congress under section 1105 of title 31.