Air Force May Lay Off 3,300 Officers to Meet Budget Limits

WASHINGTON —  The Air Force will have to lay off as many as 3,300 junior officers this year and next as it struggles to pare its ranks and reduce its budgets, according to the service’s top general.

The firings would be the first by any of the armed services during the current drawdown, and would mark the first time since the end of the Vietnam War that the Air Force has cut its budget by issuing pink slips to career military officers.

Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff, told The Times that the service has drawn up the extraordinary plans because young officers have shunned a buyout offer in far greater numbers than expected.

“Everybody else in the Air Force will be watching this process,” McPeak said. “We have to come out of this with a little bit of tarnish.”

The Air Force cuts indicate that the service is bracing for even greater pain than the Army, which hopes to lure 28,400 people out of its ranks next year with buyout incentives. Those incentives would give a service member either a lump sum or an annual payment spread over several years, based on the member’s rank and length of service.

By early April, more than 21,000 had applied for the buyout, and the Army has extended the deadline for applications to May 1 in hopes of attracting greater numbers. But Maj. Barb Goodno, an Army representative, said the service does not believe it will have to issue a large number of pink slips to reach the manpower limits Congress has imposed for 1992.

At this point, the only Army personnel who would be affected by the reductions-in-force are a select group of majors, Goodno said. Fewer than 250 such majors--men and women about 35 years old--could be cut from the force early.

“The intent is and has been to provide individuals an option to transition voluntarily to the civilian sector,” she said.

While McPeak said that he believes the Air Force layoffs are now unavoidable, Air Force officials readied plans to lessen the blow by making another appeal for young officers to leave voluntarily.

Officials said the Air Force today will extend the buyouts not just to reserve captains and majors but also to those in the “regular” forces--the men and women with the best prospects for promotion.

Air Force officials said that unless new volunteers are attracted by the offer, between 2,600 and 3,300 captains and majors will be given their walking papers by the end of 1993. Further cuts by Congress, McPeak warned, would result in substantial numbers of additional people being turned out.