The Air Force Reserve is on track to lose nearly half of its fighter jets by the end of the decade, a course its top general warns could sideline the force in conflicts and deepen the military’s pilot crisis.
“It takes us out of the fight,” Lt. Gen. John Healy, chief of the Air Force Reserve, said during an interview at the Pentagon.
From fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2030, the Reserve’s fighter force will shrink by 48 percent, Healy said, with no clear plans for replacement. The Air Force is retiring those and other aircraft to free up money for newer technology and modernization, but active-duty forces are prioritized over the part-time Reserve and National Guard components. And unlike the Guard, the Reserve lacks gubernatorial advocacy, making it more vulnerable.
The F-16 aggressor squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, is to shut down this year. The F-16 unit at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida, and the A-10 units at Davis-Monthan, Whiteman, and Moody Air Force Base are slated to close in the following years, Healy said.
Gutting the Reserve’s fighter units means there will be fewer places for experienced pilots to go when they leave active duty, Healy said, which will exacerbate the total force’s pilot shortage. Over the past two years, 200 pilots left active duty without moving to the Reserve because of a lack of modern aircraft, the general recently told Congress.
Further, Healy said in the interview, it undercuts training capacity, since Reservists fly 67 percent of the instructional flights to help prepare active-duty fighter pilots.
“It’s insane the amount of experience that we provide when we have these forces,” Healy said. “I try to do my part as best I can with the secretary and with the chief, with regard to, ‘Hey, these are opportunities that we can offer.’ It’s just that I know when they start getting to the prioritization, we end up kind of being at the end of [the line].”
Cuts to the Reserve come as the active component’s fighter fleet has also shrunk, meaning the Reserve has become essential to sustaining combat operations and meeting rotational demands, according to Heather Penney, a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute. Continued cuts to the Reserve are “deeply troubling” and will strain units across the total force—“wearing jets out faster, burning out our warfighters, and diluting our global combat power,” Penney said.
As of now, only one Reserve fighter squadron is set to receive new aircraft: the 301st Fighter Wing in Fort Worth, Texas. That unit received its first four F-35s in November, and is slated to have all 26 jets by 2027.
But Healy expressed frustration at the pace. Hundreds of F-35s had already been delivered to active-duty units and allied nations before the Reserve got its first. It’s “pathetic,” he said, and “not proportional or concurrent” fielding.
Some Reserve units will continue to fly “classic association” aircraft—planes owned by the active-duty Air Force and operated by Reserve personnel, such as the F-22s at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.
And there are some efforts underway to protect fighter missions. The F-16 unit at Homestead is funded through fiscal 2027, but the Reserve says they have asked in the 2026 budget proposal to extend operations to 2030.
Healy also hopes to land some of the F-15Es that Congress protected from retirement through fiscal 2027. He’s angling for some of the planes to replace the Reserve’s A-10s at Whiteman, which are slated to retire in 2028.
“This is a perfect example of where we can take something like these F-15 Strike Eagles, and we can manage Strike Eagles at $28 million cheaper than the active duty, [and] provide solution sets to the active-duty force in terms of complying with congressional floors,” he said.
The Reserve’s part-time force is more cost-effective than active-duty, Healy said—a case he hopes will resonate with the new administration, which has emphasized efficiency and is briskly moving money towards new priorities.
“The biggest thing that we’ve always provided is efficiencies, so we’re hoping that this is the audience to listen to us now, with regard to that,” Healy said.
Budget squeeze
The Pentagon has been working on a major reshuffling of the budget—a process the Air Force hopes will result in a larger budget for the service. Penney and other airpower advocates argue that the service’s topline must increase to replace its legacy capabilities and prepare for a future fight.
“The nation cannot afford to cut any more fighters. Congress and DOD should take action to increase the Air Force’s topline to replace these capabilities at a one-for-one rate,” Penney said.
But a full-scale recapitalization of the fleet remains unlikely, since the Pentagon also needs to find money to fund new efforts, such as border operations, the Golden Dome missile defense shield, and nuclear modernization—all with a flat budget.
Healy fears that some recent additions to the Air Force’s purchase list, such as a squadron of F-15EX fighter jets for Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, could take money away from the Reserve.
The addition might have “potential second-, third-order effects to pay for those EXs, and that very likely could come at our expense,” Healy cautioned.
The Reserve is already feeling the budget pinch, he said, after Congress cut $145 million from the component’s 2025 operations and maintenance budget, creating a $26 million shortfall in its flying-hour program. The Reserve is “shaking the cushions right now” to be able to pay for weapon system sustainment and meet necessary flying hours, the general said.
“We’re working through reprioritizing our [operations and maintenance] budget so that we can get to our 63,800 flying hours. In all likelihood, if we can get that money, we’re still going to end up having to stop flying sometime in early September as a result. So big impacts from these marks, especially at this point of the year, the ability to recover,” he said.
With limited resources, Healy said the Reserve is reviewing its portfolio to figure out which missions it can shed, and what “growth industries” will position the force well for the future, such as cyber operations.
There are “a lot of mission sets out there that are very small and very niche, that don’t necessarily provide value from the long-term relevance of the Air Force Reserve. So those are the ones we’re evaluating right now,” Healy said.
Meanwhile, DOD-wide workforce reductions are adding another layer of complexity. Through the deferred-resignation program, the Reserve is preparing to lose about 10 percent of its civilian force, which is on par with cuts across the entire Department of the Air Force, Healy said.
Officials are still figuring out where the effects will be and how the Reserve will manage programs with a smaller workforce.
“That is the question for the next part of this chapter,” Healy said.
Jesus Christ is King
