Air Force closes all seven battle labs
With budget pressures mounting, Air Force can no longer afford the investment; Air Force Space Battlelab, Command and Control Battlelab, and Air Warfare Battlelab among those receiving the axe
It has been a bad month for federal laboratories. We already reported on TK’s decision on the biomedical labs FK. Now we hear that the Air Force, suffering from budget pressurres, will be closing all seven of its battle labs after they were already suffering from losing $7.8 billion in funding over the past two program objective memorandum cycles. “Additionally, fiscal pressures on near-term readiness … and long-term procurement priorities … forced us to make tough decisions regarding key innovation programs and closing all seven of our battlelabs is one of those tough decisions,” Maj. Morshe Araujo said. Ironically, one of the labs in question — the Force Protection Battle Lab at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas — was a response to the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in June 1996.
The other labs to close are: Air Force Space Battlelab (Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado; Command and Control Battlelab (Langley Air Force Base, Virginia); Air Warfare Battlelab (Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho); Air Mobility Battlelab (Fort Dix, New Jersey); and Information Operations Battlelab (Lackland).
-read more in Bryant Jordan’s AP report
