Air Force FY 2023 Budget Request Highlights

At the end of March, the Biden Administration released its fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget request, the administration delaying its release for weeks as it waited to see how final FY 2022 omnibus appropriations from Congress would impact its current FY 2022 operational budgets as well as plans for the coming fiscal year. The new FY 2023 Air Force budget request reflects high priorities as well as ongoing modernization efforts.

Air Force FY 2023 Discretionary Budget Request

The proposed FY 2023 budget provides $234.1B in total discretionary budget authority to the Air Force. This includes $24.5B for the U.S. Space Force (USSF). The $234.1B in total discretionary funding is a $13.5B (+6%) increase over the FY 2022 estimate of $220.6B and $29.6B (+14%) above the FY 2021 final budget of $204.5B. The three-year budget trend at the Air Force continues to move upward, fueled by global readiness priorities and geopolitical concerns spanning from the far east to eastern Europe.  (See chart below.)

The FY 2023 AF budget is broken out across the traditional five appropriations categories – Operations & Maintenance (O&M); Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E); Procurement; Military Personnel (MILPERS) and Military Construction (MILCON) - plus their Revolving and Management Funds.  

The relative proportions fall in historically predictable ways, although we have seen growing interest in research and development of new capabilities that has propelled the Air Force RDT&E budget ahead of its Procurement budget the last few years. (See chart below.)

Significant growth is projected within the three budget categories that tend to have the highest interest among federal contractors and IT suppliers. Each of these categories is measured against FY 2021 since the FY 2022 data was either not yet available or may not be fully settled, given the late timing of the FY 2022 final appropriations. (See chart below.)

Air Force FY 2023 Information Technology

To date, the Department of Defense has (still!) not released their FY 2023 IT budget artifacts. However, there are some observable IT investments and programs within the wider discretionary budget artifacts, especially the RDT&E and Procurement budgets. Based on identifiable IT-related programs in DoD’s RDT&E and Procurement budgets, dollars may be bucketed into the following four IT categories – Communications, Cyber, Software Pilot and Enterprise IT. Taken together, these categories represent nearly $5.9B in FY 2023 dollars. (See chart below.)

Over the last decade the DoD has been slowly but consistently decreasing public visibility into its IT budget as a growing proportion of this spending has been shifted behind the veil of classified programs. Time will tell whether DoD will release any IT budget information for FY 2023.

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To get a focused look into the current contracting outlook at the Air Force and Space Force, check out our free webinar Air Force & Space Force Strategic Outlook for 2022-2023.

For a deeper dive into the details of the FY 2023 budget, check out our report: FY 2023 Federal Budget Request: Priorities and Opportunities.