More than $50 million in cuts coming to Air Force in Oklahoma

Big cuts are coming to Oklahoma thanks to the sequester.

Air Force documents obtained by KRMG reveal that more than 10,000 civilians employed by the Air Force in Oklahoma will lose more than $50 million in pay.

That comes in the form of up to 22 furlough days between now and September.

The documents also confirm that no military construction projects in Oklahoma will be affected by sequestration.

In a letter to all Airmen, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III talked about what sequestration means for the service. Welsh says, "March is here, and unfortunately, so is sequestration ... that means the entire Department of Defense, including our Air Force, will experience about a nine percent budget cut across all programs -- starting now, and with no ability to adjust which accounts those cuts come from."

Sequestration, signed into law as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, is a package of mandated cuts to the federal budget, totaling some $1.2 trillion over 10 years of which some $85 billion takes effect in fiscal year 2013.

"The impacts of sequestration will be noticeable, they'll likely affect you, and, in some areas, they'll hurt our mission in a big way," he said. "But we'll hang together and get through this ... and hopefully our nation's leaders can reach agreement and get things back on a more even keel soon."