The Senate Armed Services Committee, as promised, is pushing to keep the A-10 flying, and wants to direct the Air Force to find maintainers for the F-35 in other ways, including grounding F-16s and cutting back on headquarters staff.

The committee in the last week of May released its report on its version of the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which blocks any A-10 retirement and calls for the Air Force to maintain a minimum of 171 combat-coded A-10s.

The Air Force has warned that if it is required to keep A-10s flying, it would not have enough maintainers available to work on the F-35 and enable that jet meet its initial operating capability deadline of summer 2016.

To address this, the lawmakers call on the Air Force to stand down 24 F-16s at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and transfer those people and resources to the F-35. This proposal is similar to plans outlined by the Air Force in a memo to the House Armed Services Committee; the Air Force later rescinded the memo.

In addition, the lawmakers want the Air Force to cut back on its headquarters staff request by 2,200 billets and use positions in headquarter and defense agency staff to free up maintenance billets.

"The committee believes that combat capability, not headquarter staffs, should be the priority of the service leaders," the committee says in its report on the bill.

The service has 54 fighter squadrons this year, with 49 proposed for 2016 if five A-10 squadrons were allowed to retire. Less than half of these would be combat-ready, so the committee wants to block any reduction while the Air Force is still fighting abroad.

"The committee believes further reductions in fighter force capacity, in light of ongoing and anticipated operations in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, coupled with a potential delay of force withdrawals from Afghanistan, poses excessive risk to the Air Force's ability to execute the National Defense Strategy, causes remaining fighter squadrons to deploy more frequently, and drives even lower readiness rates across the combat forces," the report states. "The committee expects the Air Force to execute the fiscal year program in accordance with the spirit and intent of this provision."

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While the bill would provide some manpower for the F-35, the committee is looking to limit the amount of 2016 funds for F-35 buys. The Air Force could not spend more than $4.3 billion until Defense Secretary Ash Carter certifies to Congress that F-35As delivered in fiscal 2018 will have full combat capability with Block 3F software packages.

The bill dives into the close air support debate, by calling on the Army and Air Force secretaries, along with the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to conduct a demonstration of persistent close air support, including showing at least two platforms that the Air Force would use to conduct ground support missions.

The Air Force has said to a skeptical Congress that other aircraft will pick up the close air support coverage currently provided by the A-10 and that the majority of these missions are flown by aircraft such as the F-15E, F-16 and B-1B.

The committee wants to see operations featuring joint terminal attack controllers using two-way digital exchanges of situational awareness data, video and calls for fire without modifying aircraft flight programs. The goal would be to show how future Air Force air support missions could reduce the risk of fratricide.