Highlights
News: Senator
Carl Levin has suggested that Congress enact a one-year sequestration
‘patch’ that would nullify automatic cuts to the Pentagon’s budget in
Fiscal Year 2014.
News: As
early as this summer, Boeing will begin testing an upgraded version of
the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which the contractor hopes will be considered
as a cheaper alternative to the F-35.
Project on Defense Alternatives Perspective: Sequester-level
cuts in military spending will have no discernible effect on the
capacity of the U.S. to deter a new Korean war or change the likelihood
of a decisive allied victory if conflict erupts.
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State of Play
More than a month after the onset of
sequestration, neither the White House nor Congress are any closer to
enacting a ‘grand bargain’ that could replace the nine-year sequester in
its entirety or a one-year ‘patch’ that could be used to offset the
FY13 or FY14 sequesters. In fact, the recently unveiled budget request
for Fiscal Year 2014 all but ignored the automatic spending reductions
that impact almost every sector of the federal government. Veteran
defense reporter John Bennett believes
that the recent budget request has but one purpose for the White House,
and that is “constructing the foundation for a ‘grand bargain’ fiscal
deal with Senate Republicans.” As a result, sequestration still seems
here to stay for the immediate future.
This seeming lack of progress has prompted the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), to advocate for a one-year patch to avoid sequestration in Fiscal Year 2014.
Because both the White House and Congress are budgeting to
pre-sequester levels, the military budget faces a more-than $50 billion
cut in Fiscal Year 2014. The FY13 sequester cuts are currently being
implemented by the Office of Management and Budget. If Congress decided
to appropriate at the post-sequester spending levels in Fiscal Year
2014, it could avoid another sequester altogether. Still, it appears as
if Congress will continue to ignore sequestration as it drafts its FY14
spending bills. While Levin remains hopeful that a ‘grand bargain’
will eventually be enacted, he believes that a one-year patch to avoid
the automatic cuts in FY14 is essential. Last year, Levin rejected
similar temporary proposals from Republicans and instead advocated an
annual military spending reduction of $10 billion per year for the next
decade.
Appearing before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense this week, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon is preparing a large reprogramming request
to offset some of the budgetary disruption resulting from the onset of
sequestration. For example, the department is currently facing a $22
billion shortfall in operations and maintenance funding in Fiscal Year
2013. During the hearing, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale noted that
the department is planning on reducing its civilian workforce by five to
six percent between now and Fiscal Year 2018 in order to keep pace with
active duty reductions. Furthermore, Hale asserted that civilian
workforce reductions will need to be coupled with infrastructure
downsizing through the Base Realignment and Consolidation (BRAC)
process. The Pentagon says
that their latest BRAC proposal stems from a 2004 study in which the
department found it had 24 percent excess domestic infrastructure.
Still, Chairman Levin threw cold water on the proposal, saying he doesn’t think the Senate will be any more receptive to domestic base closures this year than it was last year.
In its recent budget submission, the Army
confirmed that the development phase of the new Ground Combat Vehicle
program will be delayed by one year. This delay follows a scathing
Congressional Budget Office report that found alternative options to the
GCV would be both more capable and less costly than current plans. The
new chair of the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and
land forces, Representative Michael Turner (R-OH), recently told reporters
that he’s keeping a close watch on the Army’s acquisition budget, and
especially the Ground Combat Vehicle, to make sure that another
F-35-like boondoggle doesn’t emerge.
Last month, Representative Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced H.R. 1361, the Inefficient Defense Elimination Act of 2013,
which would require the Pentagon to follow through on program
terminations and the retirement of certain military assets that were
included in last year’s budget. This includes cancellation of the
Global Hawk Block 30 drone program, the mothballing of the C-27J Spartan
transport aircraft, and the early retirement of seven aging cruisers
and two amphibious landing ships. The Pentagon has included many of the
aforementioned recommendations in this year’s budget. Meanwhile,
Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has introduced S. 664, the Government Contractor Accountability Act of 2013,
which would require federal agencies to enact the recommendations of
Inspectors General with respect to contractor savings and reforms. “My
bill would ensure [Inspector General] recommendations for cutting costs
and rooting out fraud and abuse are given sufficient consideration by
the federal agencies,” Shaheen said in a statement.
Yesterday, Representative Mike Coffman
(R-CO) sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders
requesting decreased funding for ten military programs as appropriators
begin drafting FY14 spending bills. Among the items recommended for
decreased funding, many of which are included in Coffman’s Smarter Than Sequester Defense Spending Reduction Act,
are the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle, refurbishments for M1 Abrams
tanks, military bands, and active duty Marine Corps and Army personnel.
Coffman wrote, “Our current fiscal situation requires us to identify
spending reductions throughout the budget, including the defense
budget. However, we should do so in a responsible manner, with targeted
reductions in less critically important areas.”
As early as this summer, F/A-18 manufacturer Boeing will introduce an upgraded version of the Super Hornet,
which the contractor hopes will be considered as a cheaper alternative
to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II. The Navy currently plans to buy
260 units of the F-35C variant, a number at risk of being supplanted by
the less expensive Super Hornets. Meanwhile, both USMC Commandant Gen.
James Amos and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert have
reaffirmed their support for the F-35, though both parties acknowledge
procurement is moving slowly: Gen. Amos referred
to the procurement process as “constipated.” Gen. Amos and Adm.
Greenert criticized the increased role of Pentagon program managers and
blamed them for clogging procurement reform. Meanwhile, the Marine
Corps recently announced that its variant of the F-35 should be ready for initial operations as soon as July 2015.
A yearlong Senate Armed Services Committee review
has found that the United States spends more than $10 billion annually
to maintain overseas bases in allied countries. Of this total, over
seventy percent is distributed to Germany, Japan, and South Korea; where
spending is $4 billion, $2 billion and $1.1 billion respectively.
Compounding expenses, co-payments by the host countries are often
accepted as ‘in-kind’ payments of services or facilities instead of
cash. Not only have allied payments failed to “keep up with rapidly
rising U.S. costs,” the report notes, but there is scant congressional
or Pentagon oversight of the construction projects.
Global military spending dropped in 2012 for the first time since 1998. According to a report
prepared by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI), the international community spent $1.75 trillion on its
military, down 0.5 percent from the year before. Defense outlays shrank
in the West, but rose in Russia, China, and the Middle East.
The United States retained the highest percentage at 39 percent of all
military spending. SIPRI experts noted that while Chinese military
spending has increased over the past year, it has not seen a
commensurate improvement in military capability.
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Project on Defense Alternatives Perspective
Last week’s budget release came during the latest security crisis on
the Korean peninsula and, not surprisingly, Pentagon officials sought to
reassure
South Korea that U.S. support would not be compromised by pending
budget cuts. Conservative commenters had already raised the threat of
war in Korea as an example of the ‘danger of defense cuts.’ The
Heritage Foundation’s Nick Zahn writes:
“The bottom line is that as U.S. capability erodes, warfighters will be
unable to provide the necessary credible deterrence to maintain
peace—not just on the Korean peninsula, but elsewhere in the world.”
So, will a cut in the Pentagon’s ten year base budget as deep as 15-18
percent have a serious negative effect on the capacity of the U.S. to
support South Korea should general war break out on the peninsula? Even
allowing for some considerable mismanagement of the coming drawdown at
the Pentagon, it is hard to imagine how the ROK-U.S. alliance does not
decisively win such a war. Although smaller in numbers, the South
Korean military far out-matches the North in capability and the ROK
arguably no longer needs the alliance with the U.S. to defend itself.
When the enormous military strength of the U.S. is added to the picture,
North Korea correctly worries that should general war occur its capitol
city and government will fall to an allied counter-offensive. It is
hard to imagine stronger conventional deterrence of a North Korean
invasion of the South. Given its comparative disadvantage in
conventional war, it’s no wonder that the North wants nuclear weapons.
Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of Korean studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, recently noted:
“If there were to be a war, North Korea would surely lose, and the Kim
dynasty would come to an end. They are most unlikely to launch an
all-out war. They are highly rational, just with a different set of
standards.”
That said, it cannot be ruled out that North Korea might initiate or
stumble into general war with the South. But the likelihood of such a
gravely unfortunate circumstance has essentially no relationship to the
level of U.S. defense spending. Reductions of 25 percent or more in the
U.S. base defense budget would have no discernible effect on ROK-U.S.
military capability regarding deterrence or war.
What does matter in the present crisis is the following:
1) Allied forces optimized for offense feed Pyongyang’s fear of an
allied invasion. The deployment of offense-optimized forces should be
minimized while also reassuring the North through diplomatic channels
that the U.S. will not support offensive operations if the North
restrains itself from war. This is a much needed confidence-building
measure the U.S. can afford from its position of strategic advantage.
2) American and allied leaders need to make an offer of something of
symbolic value (‘face saving’) to Kim Jong-un that will help him
conclude that he can afford to back down from his ill-advised bluster.
3) The United States needs the help of China in restraining Pyongyang
and in preparing the way for the eventual transition to modern
governance in the North and the likely political reunification of the
peninsula. That will require diplomatic moves starting now to
pre-arrange denuclearization and the non-alignment of a unified Korea.
Otherwise China will prefer to keep the communist regime in the north
limping along indefinitely.
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News and Commentary
Foreign Policy: Channeling Bush's Budget Tricks – Gordon Adams
“Now we don't have anything close to a
realistic "suggested" amount for war costs. The Pentagon has let it be
known that it has already underestimated this year's war costs by close
to $10 billion, most of it in the Army. According to Foreign Policy's
Kevin Baron, Comptroller Bob Hale said in testimony: ‘Here there's a
simple story about fiscal '14 OCO budget: We don't have one yet.’ That's
a shame. Thirteen years of war and the Pentagon still can't tell you
what the war costs? Not plausible. Watch out for the OCO budget when it
comes. With sequestration underway and ineptitude showing up in the
planning, it could be a doozy.” (4/17/13)
Stimson Center: Treading Water: National Security in the FY14 Budget – Russell Rumbaugh
“President Obama's budget request was
released last week with some dramatic proposals, including raising taxes
and changing how Social Security is calculated. The dramatic changes
are meant as the framework for a deal to finally resolve the budget
fights that have been running since 2010. But the budgets concerning
national security are not terribly dramatic. Since national security
cannot help drive a deal, the defense and international affairs budgets
are status quo budgets, avoiding changes that might be opposed by the
executive agencies and so open another front in the budget battles.”
Defense News: Senkakus Could Be Undoing of Asia Pivot – Wendell Minnick
“America’s strategic rebalancing toward
the Pacific — known as the ‘Asia pivot’ — could meet its first unwanted
test over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, now being challenged
for control by China… The question many are asking is: Would Washington
fulfill its defense treaty obligations with Japan by taking an active
military role to remove Chinese forces from the islands? Or would the
U.S. hesitate for political and economic reasons to placate China? If
so, what would this mean for regional confidence in America’s
commitments to peace and stability?” (4/16/13)
POLITICO: A reality check for missile defense – Laura Grego
“Our political and military leaders are
deceiving themselves if they believe the U.S. strategic missile defense
system works as advertised, and maintaining this deception will have
implications beyond North Korea. Building more of these systems —
whether they work or not — could provide Russia and China motivation (at
worst) or justification (at best) to modernize their nuclear arsenals,
which would undermine efforts to reduce nuclear weapons worldwide.
Ultimately, the U.S. long-range missile defense system is an expensive
symbolic gesture that may do more to imperil American security than
guarantee it. After 30 years, we must start to deal with reality.” (4/16/13)
The Atlantic: What Exactly Does It Mean That the U.S. Is Pivoting to Asia? – Matt Schiavenza
“More than ten weeks after his
confirmation as the new United States Secretary of State, John Kerry
finally went to Asia. The former Massachusetts senator stopped in South
Korea, Japan, and China over the busy weekend, the first time an
American Secretary of State visited all three nations in the same trip.
Kerry's visit also coincided with the escalating crisis on the Korean
Peninsula, a subject of increasing concern for Washington. But zooming
out a bit, Kerry's visit also provides a fresh opportunity to examine
the ‘Pivot to Asia,’ one of the Obama Administration's central foreign
policy initiatives. Simply put, the pivot is meant to be a strategic
‘re-balancing’ of U.S. interests from Europe and the Middle East toward
East Asia. But what does that really mean, in practice?” (4/15/13)
Cato At Liberty: Your Tax Dollars at Work: Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies – Christopher Preble
“The average American spends $2,300 on
the military, based on the latest data available. That is roughly four
and a half times more than what the average person in other NATO
countries spends. These countries boast a collective GDP of
approximately $19 trillion, 25 percent higher than the U.S. They
obviously can afford to spend more. So why don’t they? Because Uncle
Sucker picks up nearly the entire tab.”
Foreign Policy: Mirage Across the Potomac: The Pentagon's proposed spending and savings are both totally unrealistic – Gordon Adams
“The budget request willfully ignores
reality in three ways: It treats sequestration and deeper budget decline
like the ghost in the closet -- there, but not remembered. It contains a
lot of wishful thinking about the hard choices the Pentagon faces,
asking Congress for things Congress will not provide. And it projects
growth for programs and forces that will not survive in this budget
environment. It is no wonder the mainstream press has generally ignored
the defense budget this year. The reality is that DOD's funds are not at
the center of public attention… Defense budget levels are just
collateral damage in this bigger budget fight, as they have been for the
last two years. They will be adjusted to fit any overall budget deal or
will simply be nibbled away at, year by year over the next decade.” (4/12/13)
U.S. News and World Report: U.S. Soldiers to 'Go Native' on Operations – Paul Shinkman
“America's premier land force faces the
challenge of remaining relevant in a world where enemies no longer send
tank columns to follow up on formal declarations of war. This identity
crisis is further hampered by an excruciating budget season where all
service branches have to accommodate sequestration cuts on top of ever
tightening purse strings. So the Army has adopted a new motto of sorts:
‘Projecting a credibility that prevents conflict,’ to capitalize on the
notion that nobody picks fights with the biggest guy at the bar.” (4/12/13)
Battleland: Obama’s Useless Budget Data…and Improbable Budget Strategy – Winslow Wheeler
“President Obama’s budget presentation
for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities
outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he
and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends
Sept. 30. The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new
thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security
spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that’s
getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and
decisions to increase, not control, costs.” (4/12/13)
Center for American Progress: The Pentagon Must Carry Its Weight - Lawrence Korb, Alex Rothman, Max Hoffman
“In its latest budget proposal to
Congress, the Obama administration has requested $526.6 billion in
baseline funding for the Department of Defense, a $1 billion increase
from the administration’s defense budget request last year. In
accordance with the long-term budget plan it announced last year, the
Obama administration’s FY 2014 defense budget request holds the baseline
defense budget steady at historic highs after a decade of tremendous
growth. This is a missed opportunity to realign our national security
priorities. Unnecessary defense spending does not make us safer; it
diverts resources away from other critical investments here at home that
create jobs and rebuild our infrastructure.” (4/11/13)
Slate: Line Item Warfare: If big military cuts are coming, they haven’t arrived yet - Fred Kaplan
“First, the Pentagon’s managers haven’t
yet figured out where to cut the $52 billion from current programs.
(Furloughing civilians and a scattershot of administrative reforms don’t
quite make it.) Second, these same managers are assuming that, by the
time this new FY14 budget takes hold, everything is back to normal, and
all the funds cut by sequestration have been restored. Certainly there’s
nothing in the FY14 budget that assumes anything cataclysmic has
happened with the FY13 budget.” (4/10/13)
Infinity Journal: What is Strategy
“What are we talking about? The noun and
the adjective, strategy and strategic, are so commonly, indeed casually
employed that it can be shocking to appreciate how frequently they are
misapplied. Given the very high stakes of this subject for national
and international security, misunderstanding and therefore misuse of the
concept of strategy can be dangerous and expensive. Fortunately, such
perils and costs are as easily avoidable as they are gratuitous. For an
efficient definition of strategy, the following has sufficient merit to
serve well enough: ‘Military strategy is the direction and use made of
force and the threat of force for the purposes of policy as decided by
politics’” (4/3/13)
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Reports
Government Accountability Office: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Program Has Improved in Some Areas, but Affordability Challenges and Other Risks Remain (4/17/13)
Senate Armed Services Committee: Inquiry Into U.S. Costs and Allied Contributions to Support the U.S. Military Presence Overseas (4/17/13)
Congressional Budget Office: Snapshot of Spending for Military Retirement Pay (4/17/13)
Congressional Research Service: Trends in Discretionary Spending (4/15/13)
Federal Register: Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies (4/11/13)
Congressional Research Service: Direct Overt U.S. Aid Appropriations for and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2014 (4/11/13)
Congressional Research Service: Sensitive Covert Action Notifications: Oversight Options for Congress (4/10/13)
Congressional Research Service: Next Steps in Nuclear Arms Control with Russia: Issues for Congress (4/10/13)
Congressional Research Service: Covert Action: Legislative Background and Possible Policy Questions (4/10/13)
Congressional Research Service: Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress (4/5/13)
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2012 (April 2013)
