Highlights
News: The Congressional
budget committees released their initial budget resolutions this week,
despite the fact that the White House’s Fiscal Year 2014 request is not
expected until April 8. Separately, the Senate is on track to pass an
omnibus appropriations measure that would provide the Pentagon with a
full-year spending bill.
Reports: The Center for a
New American Security (CNAS) has published a new report, authored by
U.S. Navy Capt. Henry Hendrix, which examines vulnerabilities in large
American aircraft carriers.
PDA Perspective: Five
former deputy secretaries of defense have written Secretary of Defense
Hagel urging him to initiate a comprehensive review of the U.S. defense
posture. It is the right time to do this, and Hagel should include in
the process people, ideas and proposals from outside the Pentagon.
|
State of Play
Last week, the House of Representatives
passed omnibus appropriations legislation that would provide the
departments of defense and veterans affairs with full-year
appropriations bills while allowing the rest of the federal government
to fly on autopilot via another six-month Continuing Resolution. The
legislation, H.R. 933, adheres to the Budget Control Act’s
pre-sequestration discretionary spending cap for Fiscal Year 2013 –
before allowing the automatic cuts to take place as scheduled.
This week, Senate appropriators unveiled their version
of the House’s spending measure, which, in addition to providing the
Pentagon with a full-year spending bill, also would include full-year
appropriations for agriculture, commerce, science, and homeland
security. The Senate measure is being sponsored by the chair and
ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Barbara Mikulski
(D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), ostensibly giving the bill a
bipartisan touch. With respect to defense, the Senate bill would
provide $2.3 billion to maintain seven cruisers and two dock landing
ships that the Pentagon proposed terminating in its FY13 budget as well
as $273 million for the TRICARE program “to account for congressional
rejection of proposed fee increases.”
The spending legislation also would pave the way for the Navy to sign a five-year $27 billion contract to purchase nine Virginia-class submarines, reports Inside Defense. However, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert expressed reservations about the quickened pace of Virginia-class procurement, proclaiming
that, under sequestration, it will be “extremely difficult” for the
service to procure two attack submarines while at the same time
purchasing Ohio-class replacement vessels.
Senate Democrats have abandoned
plans to provide the Pentagon and other federal agencies with expanded
reprogramming authority, which would allow them to apply sequestration
cuts with greater latitude. The Pentagon would still have the ability
to transfer up to $4 billion between accounts, which has been standard
practice for some time, though, last year,
Senator John McCain vowed to oppose continued reprogramming requests
until the Pentagon provides additional details about previous
transfers. It remains to be seen if McCain will uphold his commitment
to blocking future reprogramming requests.
According to CQ Roll Call,
Senate Democrats are siding with the White House in its opposition to
providing greater flexibility in how sequestration cuts are applied to
the Pentagon. Publically, the administration says that the magnitude of
spending reductions is so great that providing flexibility is a moot
point because the cuts will be devastating regardless of how they are
applied. Some analysts and reporters, however, believe
that the President is still holding out hope for the possibility of a
‘grand bargain,’ in which the administration would support reforms to
earned benefit programs like Medicare and a rewriting of the tax code in
exchange for nullification of sequestration and an extension of the
debt limit.
The President is now conducting vigorous outreach
to members of Congress in support of a grand fiscal bargain. Still,
Republicans remain solely focused on forcing the President to make cuts
to entitlement programs, and seem less interested in tackling tax reform
or undoing the automatic spending reductions. The Republican leader in
the Senate, Mitch McConnell, recently proclaimed,
“Until we make our entitlement programs fit the demographics of our
country, you can’t save America, you can’t save the healthcare system.
There is no revenue solution, I would say to you.” For his part, the
President says
that without additional revenue, and with only demands for cuts in
earned benefit programs, “we’re probably not gonna be able to get a
deal.”
This week, a series of budget resolutions
and alternative substitutes were unveiled by various factions within
Congress. Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled the House Republican
budget plan, which would achieve budget balance within ten years. According
to American University professor Gordon Adams, Ryan’s resolution would
nullify the sequester of defense funds and allow the Pentagon’s budget
to grow with inflation over the next ten years. According to a statement,
the resolution would authorize “approximately $500 billion more than
will be available absent changes in the Budget Control Act.”
Separately, Senate Democrats led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), unveiled
their version of the budget resolution on Wednesday, which would nullify the defense sequester and replace it with $240 billion in targeted defense spending reductions over the next decade. The ideological and fiscal differences between the two budget resolutions
present such a great divide that it is difficult to see how the two
chambers and political parties will be able to reconcile the differences
in order to produce a concurrent budget resolution.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, led
by co-chairs Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), unveiled an
alternative substitute resolution that would draw almost $900 billion
in savings from the Pentagon budget. The alternative would also reduce
funding for the war in Afghanistan, require an audit of the Defense
Department, and reduce contractor personnel. In a statement,
the co-chairs noted that, “The reapportioned force structure would
reduce expensive modernization requirements, especially for older or
unnecessary platforms designed to fight an extinct Soviet army.”
In a recent GAO report
examining potential future domestic base closures, the watchdog agency
found that the Pentagon did not accurately estimate the costs associated
with carrying out the last BRAC round in 2005. In fact, the Pentagon
underestimated the costs of the 2005 BRAC round by 67 percent. It had
originally estimated that the closures and consolidations would cost
only $21 billion. Last year, the Obama administration proposed two
additional rounds of BRAC, which were roundly rejected by Congress.
Pentagon officials now say that with sequestration taking hold, the need
for additional base closures is even greater than it was last year.
The White House is expected to request another round of BRAC in its forthcoming budget request. Meanwhile, Politico’s Kate Brannen reports that the Pentagon is eyeing base closures in Europe as a means of drumming up political support for new base closures at home.
The Center for a New American Security
(CNAS) has released a report detailing the liability of high-cost naval
assets like aircraft carriers. The report, At What Cost a Carrier,
authored by Navy Captain Henry Hendrix, focuses on the concept that the
supercarrier represents an unsustainable cost in the face of China’s
growing arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles. Hendrix notes that it
costs the United States $6.5 million a day to operate each carrier
strike group. As a result of its high cost and potential
vulnerabilities, Hendrix recommends placing less emphasis on large
carrier strike groups and instead relying increasingly on the use of
unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), the extension of missile
inventories, and a greater use of submarines armed with land-attack
cruise missiles. Hendrix also suggests the Navy abandon the problematic
and expensive F-35C in favor of the F/A-18 Super Hornet.
GAO recently took another look at the
troubled F-35 program, which has seemingly taken a short-term turn for
the better. The agency commended the program for managerial improvements
including production and testing efficiencies. The long-term financial
outlook of the program, however, remains concerning. Carlo Muñoz of The Hill writes,
“From now until 2037, DOD is expected to invest just over $12 billion
annually just to keep the program on pace.” Indeed the GAO report
notes that “the program continues to incur financial risk from its plan
to procure 289 aircraft for $57.8 billion before completing development
flight testing.” The Pentagon currently plans
on increasing F-35 procurement from 29 aircraft in FY13 to 66 aircraft
in FY15, however, it remains to be seen how sequestration will impact
these planned procurement levels.
In light of the GAO findings, top Pentagon officials have reiterated
their support for the program. The GAO analysis follows on the heels
of a recently unclassified Director of Operational Test and Evaluation
(DOT&E) memo raising concerns about F-35 performance training. Project on Government Oversight (POGO) analyst Winslow Wheeler has indexed the faults; most notable of which are software restrictions, aft visibility, and sustainment.
|
Project on Defense Alternatives Perspective
Last week, five former deputy secretaries of defense sent a letter
to Chuck Hagel recommending that he “launch a new, comprehensive review
of our defense posture and take responsibility for proposing a new
defense posture to the President and Congress.” With a Quadrennial
Defense Review (QDR) due next year, one might assume that these men are
talking about getting that QDR rolling now and perhaps getting it out on
the early side. But no, it turns out that they have strong negative
views of the QDR, saying, “After three cycles, the QDR process has
become cumbersome and captured by the interests of the services, defense
agencies, and the many joint program offices of the Pentagon.” They
also think that due to the sequester’s disruption of Pentagon planning
and budgeting Secretary Hagel needs the results of a new review in six
months, making it urgent to start now. They state that “the Secretary
of Defense needs a fresh mechanism, such as the Bottom-Up Review, that
closely links his office to senior military commanders.”
Apparently, given the limitations of the
QDR, a new name is in order. But, it is not clear how changing the name
will keep the institutional interests of the array of participants
(they name the service chiefs, military departments, combatant
commanders, defense agencies, and the intelligence community) from
‘capturing’ the outcome of the review. Getting to a new posture
suitable for changed circumstance will be much more likely if Hagel
includes in his review circle people, ideas, and proposals from less
‘interest-conflicted’ parties outside the military and intelligence
establishments.
The deputy secretaries are particularly
concerned that a new broadly consensual defense posture be realistically
supported by “stable financial resource(s).” For too long, the
department has planned in the absence of effective resource constraints –
to the detriment of our nation’s finances and likely to the detriment
of the armed forces as well. Indeed the legislation mandating the
Quadrennial Defense Review requires that it not consider budget
restraints. Although they don’t explicitly say so, that is one reason
the deputy secretaries call for a different sort of review.
Back in 2010, the Project on Defense Alternatives and a task force of independent analysts advocated
for a new defense posture that would set the U.S. military budget on a
financially sustainable path over the long-term. Recently, PDA further
elaborated such a posture in Reasonable Defense.
We welcome the recognition by five former deputy secretaries that
“lower budgets mean a reshaped defense posture.” Secretary Hagel should
not hesitate to get that project under way.
|
News and Commentary
Washington Post: Military rethinking leads to some hard choices – Walter Pincus
“The sequester may turn out to be a good
thing, at least when it comes to some Pentagon programs. It is forcing
the military services to make hard choices they have avoided even
thinking about while the money freely flowed to the Defense
Department.” (3/13/13)
Salon: Don’t fall for Pentagon spin – Ben Freeman
“Every year for the last five years the
Pentagon has doled out at least $360 billion to contractors. In fact,
every year since the war in Afghanistan began contractors have received
more than half of the Pentagon’s total budget. In other words,
contractors have received more taxpayer money than the Department of
Defense’s civilian employees and nearly 1.4 million active duty military
personnel combined. All that money has really added up. So much so that
Pentagon contractors are sitting on a backlog of contracts worth nearly
as much as the entirety of Pentagon sequestration. In other words, even
if contractors absorbed all of the Pentagon sequestration cuts, they’d
still be on track to receive more than $300 billion a year in new
contracts, which is more than double what any other country in the world
spends on its military. Does any of this sound catastrophic?” (3/12/13)
Foreign Policy: Smaller Is Smarter: Military drawdowns have driven innovation for millennia – John Arquilla
“Embrace the call for defense budget cuts
in the same amount as called for by sequestration, but reject the
meat-ax notion of applying reductions equally, across the board. There
are more skillful ways ahead that will emerge in the wake of reduced
resources -- perhaps a whole new way of war to be revealed… For the U.S.
military, the lessons of recent experience suggest an ever greater
awareness of the need to move from forces made of a few large and
expensive things to a force comprised of many small, nimble, networked
parts. The answers will reveal themselves. All they wait on is the ‘call
for the question’ to be stimulated by the requirement for additional
defense budget cuts.” (3/11/13)
New York Times: Cuts Give Obama Path to Create Leaner Military – David Sanger, Thom Shanker
“‘Sequester is an ugly experience, but it
could grow up to be a budget discipline swan,’ said Gordon Adams, a
former senior budget official in the Clinton administration who is now
at the Stimson Center, which studies defense issues. ‘It could provide
the planning discipline the services and the building have been missing
since 2001.’ The central challenge facing the Pentagon and the White
House, Mr. Adams and several current senior officials said, is this: All
the big, immediate budget benefits come from reducing the size of
active-duty forces. By contrast, cutting new weapons systems and bases
and reducing health care costs can save large amounts 5 to 10 years out,
but it does little in the short term.” (3/10/13)
Washington Post: F-35’s ability to evade budget cuts illustrates challenge of paring defense spending – Rajiv Chandrasekaran
“The reasons for the F-35’s relative
immunity are a stark illustration of why it is so difficult to cut the
country’s defense spending. Lockheed Martin has spread the work across
45 states — critics call it “political engineering” — which in turn has
generated broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Any reduction in the
planned U.S. purchase risks antagonizing the eight other nations that
have committed to buying the aircraft by increasing their per-plane
costs. And senior military leaders warn that the stealthy,
technologically sophisticated F-35 is essential to confront Iran, China
and other potential adversaries that may employ advanced anti-aircraft
defenses. The biggest barrier to cutting the F-35 program, however, is
rooted in the way in which it was developed: The fighter jet is being
mass-produced and placed in the hands of military aviators… while the
aircraft remains a work in progress. Millions more lines of software
code have to be written, vital parts need to be redesigned, and the
plane has yet to complete 80 percent of its required flight tests. By
the time all that is finished — in 2017, by the Pentagon’s estimates —
it will be too late to pull the plug. The military will own 365 of
them.” (3/9/13)
Foreign Policy: The sequester, defense spending, and U.S. grand strategy – Stephen Walt
“The challenge going forward lies in
striking the right balance between engagement and independence -- doing
just enough so that others know they can count on us if needed but not
so much that those with a greater stake take advantage of our
overweening ambition. By the way, that will be primarily a task of
intelligence and diplomacy, not military strategy. And while the
sequester is a pretty stupid way to trim defense spending (i.e., Panetta
was right to call it a ‘goofy meataxe’), it might have a silver lining.
If it accelerates the process of rethinking our overall grand strategy,
then the net effect might be quite salutary.” (3/8/13)
Foreign Policy: It's Not You, It's Me: America's nukes are designed to comfort us, not scare the enemy – Jeffrey Smith
“If the Obama administration intends to
transform U.S. nuclear forces, rather than simply make incremental
reductions, the president has to grapple with this much darker legacy.
The fact that the nuclear enterprise is exempted for now from
sequestration suggests he has not done so. Indeed, the Obama
administration's approach to nuclear disarmament has struck me as
fundamentally backward. Consider the president's stated goal of reducing
our reliance on nuclear weapons: That might feed the president's ego as
a historical figure, but it inflates his role in the process. Moreover,
it suggests further reductions would be unwise. If nuclear weapons play
such an important role in our security right now, why would we choose
to reduce it?” (3/8/13)
ThinkProgress: Defense Spending Myths: Cutting Through the Noise – Lawrence Korb, Lauren Linde
“In deciding on how best to deal with our
deficit crisis, the prospect of cutting the defense budget has been a
point of heated debate. As the federal government grapples with the
effects of sequestration, the House passed a bill this week that will
cushion the effects of the cuts for the Pentagon while leaving other
agencies to bear their full brunt. There are a few highly misleading
ideas that have cropped up in the defense spending debates that detract
from a productive conversation.” (3/8/13)
Foreign Policy: Round One Goes to the Budget Hawks – Christopher Preble
“It is way too early for budget
hawks to declare victory. The neocons won't go down without a fight, and
they will have other chances in the months ahead to ratchet the
Pentagon's budget back up to unnecessary levels. Still, it is
significant that the fiscal hawks prevailed this time around, and it
provides hope to those who believe that the United States can be safe
and secure even without breaking the bank.” (3/7/13)
Wall Street Journal: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Risks – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn
“During the Cold War, the leaders of the
two superpowers sought to reduce the risk of nuclear war. What was
possible among declared enemies is imperative in a world of increasing
nuclear stockpiles in some nations, multiple nuclear military powers and
growing diffusion of nuclear energy. A global effort is needed to
reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, prevent their spread, and ultimately
end them as a threat to the world. It will take leadership, creative
approaches and thoughtful understanding of the perils of inaction.
Near-term results would lay the foundation for transforming global
security policies over the medium and long term.” (3/5/13)
|
Reports
Congressional Budget Office: Additional
information on how CBO allocated the automatic spending reductions
under the Budget Control Act of 2011 in its most recent baseline
projections (3/13/13)
National Security Network: Reshaping Pentagon Spending and Capabilities: Setting Priorities for the Future (3/13/13)
Congressional Budget Office: Information on Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013 and the Effect on those Appropriations of the Automatic Spending Reductions (3/12/13)
Congressional Research Service: China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues (3/11/13)
Center for a New American Security: At What Cost a Carrier? (3/11/13)
Congressional Research Service: Cybersecurity: Authoritative Reports and Resources (3/8/13)
Congressional Research Service: Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy (3/8/13)
Congressional Research Service: Major U.S. Arms Sales and Grants to Pakistan Since 2001 (3/7/13)
Center for a New American Security: Light Footprints: The Future of American Military Intervention (3/7/13)
Government Accountability Office: Department of Defense's Waiver of Competitive Prototyping Requirement for Combat Rescue Helicopter Program (3/7/13)
Congressional Budget Office: Monthly Budget Review (3/7/13)
Government Accountability Office: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Current Outlook Is Improved, but Long – Term Affordability Is a Major Concern (March 2013)
Congressional Research Service: Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs: Status of the Integrated Electronic Health Record (iEHR) (2/26/13)
