Earlier this year, the office of Sen. Jon Husted said the U.S. Senate had budgeted funding to address Wright-Patterson’s aging primary runway in its then-draft defense budget.
But it was unclear whether the House-Senate conference committee’s final version of the NDAA incorporated that funding.
A release from U.S. Rep. Mike Turner’s office on “major wins” for Wright-Patterson in the compromise version of the NDAA did not mention funding for the runway. The House passed that bill Wednesday evening, and it has a date in the Senate, likely next week.
A spokeswoman for Turner, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, declined to comment. A message seeking clarification was left with a representative of Husted’s office Wednesday.
In an interview with the Dayton Daily News in August, Husted recalled voices urging attention to Wright-Patt’s runway while he served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor. Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted to serve in the Senate in January, after J.D. Vance, the previous holder of that seat, was elected vice president as Donald Trump’s running mate in November 2024.
They said, ‘Hey, they’re not going to have a runway out there before long,” Husted said at that time. “It’s deteriorating, and if you don’t have a flight line, how can you be in the Air Force?”
Wright-Patterson at the moment has a single flying mission, the 445th Airlift Wing. Its runway probably would not be considered a high-traffic runway, Jeff Hoagland, president and chief executive of the Dayton Development Coalition, has told the Dayton Daily News.
A continuing resolution funding the federal government until Jan. 30 is in force. The current resolution ended a recent record 43-day lapse in funding of the federal government. Hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense civilians were furloughed, as were more than 8,000 Wright-Patterson civilians. Priorities such as shipbuilding and research languished during the shutdown.
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