Highlights
News: The Pentagon is conducting a “BRAC-like” review of U.S. military assets stationed in Europe.
News: Deputy
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has directed senior Pentagon
officials to begin examining ways to cut department bureaucracy by 33
percent.
PDA Perspective: Charles
Knight discusses the implications of recent polling data, which show
that a strong majority of Americans oppose U.S. military intervention in
Syria.
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State of Play
Ever since it became clear last December
that Congress did not have the political will or courage to enact a
‘grand bargain’ deficit reduction package that could replace
sequestration in its entirety, President Barack Obama has held out hope
that public outcry over cuts to domestic programs would pressure
lawmakers to bridge their political differences and compromise. Public
concern has been mounting for several weeks over Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) furloughs that could have the potential to cause
long delays at airports. Congress responded by passing legislation that
would allow the FAA to bolster its personnel funding – causing consternation
amongst some in Washington who believe the President has given up any
leverage he may have had to enact a grand bargain and protect the
Pentagon from sequestration cuts.
Concern over losing political leverage in the sequester debate was one of the reasons Democrats refrained from providing expanded transfer or reprogramming authority to the Pentagon in the most recently enacted omnibus spending measure. With domestic program advocates now lining up to request their own individual sequester patches, it remains to be seen how proponents of Pentagon spending will react to the latest political developments.
Executive:
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently
met with senior officials who are conducting the Strategic Choices and
Management Review, which Hagel commissioned earlier this year to examine
whether the Pentagon’s earlier Strategic Guidance can be implemented
given the onset of sequestration. According to Inside Defense,
the group is developing options for enacting roughly $500 billion in
reductions to previously planned spending levels over the next decade.
Furthermore, deputy defense secretary Ashton Carter, who is leading the
strategic review, has directed officials to outline ways to cut the
Pentagon and its agencies’ bureaucracies by 33 percent.
The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly chastised
the Pentagon and Congress for utilizing concurrency development in the
acquisition of big ticket weapons systems. Concurrency development
refers to an acquisition practice in which the Pentagon begins procuring
a system before it is mature or has been tested and evaluated by a
third party. As a result, concurrency development often leads to
serious cost-overruns, technology creep, and delays.
Most recently, GAO released a report
highlighting problems in the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) use of
concurrency development in several high-profile programs missile defense
programs. GAO notes that “MDA’s Aegis BMD, GMD, and THAAD interceptor
production have been significantly disrupted during the past few years
due to this concurrency, delaying planned deliveries to the warfighter,
raising costs, and disrupting the industrial base. Program plans for the
Aegis Ashore and PTSS also include high acquisition risks due to
planned premature commitments to production.”
In last year’s National Defense
Authorization Act, Congress instructed the Pentagon to examine reducing
personnel and infrastructure in Europe before advocating any additional
base closures in the United States. At a series of recent hearings,
senior military officials told lawmakers that they are conducting a “BRAC-like” review
of military assets in Europe to determine where downsizing can occur.
The head of U.S. forces in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, recently
noted that the Pentagon has reduced force structure in Europe by some
eighty percent since the end of the Cold War. The United States
currently has 64,000 personnel under European Command and has committed
to withdrawing two combat brigade teams from Europe by Fiscal Year
2014.
Military leaders continue to press Congress to approve a new round of base closures domestically. Appearing
before the House Armed Services Committee last week, Army Secretary and
former committee member John McHugh lamented the fact that the service
is wasting millions of dollars annually maintaining outdated domestic
infrastructure that is “unusable.” He further pointed out that the last
time the Army evaluated its domestic inventory was in 2005, and since
then, Congress has statutorily prohibited the Army from reevaluating its excess domestic infrastructure.
The Army has set a timeline for
development and procurement of its next-generation helicopter platform.
The service plans on awarding four design contracts by the end of
Fiscal Year 2014 and hopes to have two different demonstration aircraft
finished by 2017 in order to fully field the new helicopter by 2030.
“The configurations currently being examined include a tilt-rotor
possibility, like today’s Marine Corps and Air Force V-22 Osprey as well
as various compound configurations such as air vehicles with a
rear-thrusting mechanism and co-axial rotorblades,” reports Defense Tech.
Speaking at a symposium on Capitol Hill, Vice Admiral William Burke warned attendees that if the Navy is required to fund the Ohio-class
replacement submarine out of its shipbuilding budget, then it will have
to lower its fleet goal from 300 ships down “closer” to 250. If
sequestration holds, Burke cautioned that the Navy’s total fleet would
likely drop down to 200 vessels. Meanwhile, the Navy has requested that Congress increase the price cap on the U.S.S. Gerald Ford (CVN-78) aircraft carrier by nine percent, from $11.7 billion to $12.8 billion.
Legislative:
Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, along with fifteen other members, has written
to the head of the defense spending subcommittee, Representative C.W.
Bill Young (R-FL), urging him to include $250 million for the planning,
construction, and implementation of an East Coast-based missile defense
shield. The members asserted that, “in light of the recent cancellation
of the SM-3 Block IIB program, it is incumbent upon the Congress, in
the absence of aggressive action by the President, to deploy an East
Coast site to defend the United States from the rising threat of
ballistic missile development from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The
Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the Pentagon to begin developing plans to locate a missile defense shield on the East Coast.
The Navy still has yet to provide its
annual long-term shipbuilding plan to Congress, though the document’s
delay has not prevented Senator John McCain (R-AZ) from slamming the
service’s plan. Last month, McCain wrote
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus expressing serious concerns about the
service’s shipbuilding plan and demanding answers about its viability
“given the steep drop in defense spending” necessitated under
sequestration. McCain also wants to know if the Navy is developing a
“back-up” plan in light of fiscal constraints. The Congressional Budget
Office has for years scolded the Pentagon for seriously under-estimating the projected costs of its long-term shipbuilding plans.
Separately, McCain was joined by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) in writing Secretary Hagel inquiring as to the Pentagon’s recent efforts at eliminating waste and duplication. The two cited a recent GAO annual report that itemizes duplicative programs in the federal government.
House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) has announced
that his committee will begin a full markup of the Fiscal Year 2014
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on June 5. Subcommittee
markups will be held in the weeks prior to that date. Unlike its Senate
counterpart, the HASC typically conducts its NDAA committee markups in
open hearings. The Senate is expected to conduct its full committee
markup one week after the House.
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Project on Defense Alternatives Perspective
Advocates
for U.S. military intervention in Syria are presently confounded by
wide and deep opposition from the American public to additional military
interventions abroad. A new poll by the New York Times and CBS News finds that by better than two to one Americans think the U.S. doesn’t have
a responsibility to “do something about the fighting in Syria.” In
addition, only 15 percent believe that “North Korea is a threat to the
United States that requires military action now,” while 77 percent
believe that either “North Korea is a threat that can be contained for
now,” or is “not a threat to the United States at this time.”
Such
public opinion is profoundly worrisome to many of Washington’s foreign
policy elites who since the triumphalist days following the Cold War
have been fond of using America’s powerful military instrument to
re-shape the world. John Bolton, a leading conservative diplomat in the Bush administration recently wrote an article
in which he raises alarm about “the specter of isolationism… stalking
the Republican Party.” In 2011, centrist diplomat Nicolas Burns wrote
about “an insidious turning inward by congressional budget leaders
whose Draconian cuts will deny us the ability to lead globally.” Stephen Walt hits back at the isolationism charge here.
In the New York Times
article reporting on the new polling data, Megan Thee-Brenan notes that
“Americans are exhibiting an isolationist streak.” There is indeed a
minority of Americans who are isolationist in the sense of opposing
foreign entanglements and engagements be they military or otherwise.
But when strong majorities hold opinions opposing military intervention
in Syria there is something else going on.
It
seems a majority of Americans are far ahead of Washington in learning
the hard lessons of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Getting militarily
involved in a civil war is almost always a bad idea. Military power is a
blunt instrument and its use has many adverse effects. Using that
instrument in someone else’s war will as easily make things worse as it
will make things better. Alliance commitments are one thing, but
voluntarily taking sides in a civil war is generally a fool’s errand and
majorities of Americans understand that.
What
about the responsibility to protect (R2P)? Nowhere is it written that
this is primarily an American responsibility. Rather, it is an
international responsibility. No recent U.S. administration has done
much of anything to increase the international capacity to protect
endangered non-combatants through the United Nations or any other
institution. Secretary of State John Kerry should be busy organizing
broad international commitments to help protect non-combatants, in
places like Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a minimum
use of force.
At any
rate, joining a civil war as a contestant and feeding its flames
actually contravenes the spirit of R2P. Establishing and underwriting
well-protected and fully-demilitarized civilian zones on non-contested
territory would be more to the point -- if the aim was actually
"protection" and not regime change. Washington
elites should restrain their reflexive urges to intervene militarily on
one side of the civil conflict in Syria. Fortunately, majorities of
Americans find that stance sensible, moral, and pragmatic.
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News and Commentary
TIME Battleland: Who Knew the Pentagon Had Bad Habits - Mackenzie Eaglen
“Time’s up for Pentagon officials to talk
more and think harder. The time has come for definitive action and real
change. Congress must insist that the Defense Department floor the
accelerator into this new budget reality where detailed sequestration
planning is complete and public. This would speed up the requirement for
defense leaders to offer specific reforms and tangible solutions to the
government’s biggest bureaucracy. By continuing to let the Pentagon
ignore sequestration, Congress is letting defense leaders postpone and
push off the need for comprehensive change.” (5/2/13)
Stars and Stripes: DOD health office loses control of electronic record project – Tom Philpot
"After five years and an estimated $1
billion spent trying to build a single integrated electronic health
record system with the Department of Veterans Affairs, defense health
officials have been taken off the project, sources confirm. Wielding the
hook was Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who signaled disappointment with
his management team to a House panel this month, saying he halted a
solicitation for bids from commercial electronic record designers
because ‘I didn’t think we knew what the hell we were doing.’” (5/2/13)
National Defense: Debate Over Army’s Future Vehicle Raises Question: Why Heavy Armor? – Sandra Erwin
“On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are
increasingly doubting the Army’s buying strategy for the GCV. Budget
analysts have challenged the Army’s decision to pursue a new GCV design
instead of opting for existing, less costly, alternatives. And military
experts are raising more fundamental questions about the GCV’s raison
d’être. They wonder why the Army is spending billions of dollars on
heavy armor for an era that presumably will be dominated by
cyberwarfare, surgical-strikes and low-intensity conflicts.” (5/1/13)
The Nation: Barney Frank Talks Common Sense - Katrina vanden Heuvel
“When it comes to confronting military
bloat, are we finally reaching a turning point? ‘We are on the verge, I
think, of some major progress,’ says Barney Frank… Frank sees greater
grounds for bipartisan bridge-building than we’ve had in years: liberals
increasingly recognize that tackling defense spending is a necessary
condition for preserving social progress, and some principled
conservatives are applying their cost-cutting philosophy to the
military-industrial complex.” (5/1/13)
CNN: Nuclear deterrence could restrain N. Korea, Iran – Barry Blechman
“Throughout the Cold War, the United
States relied on the theory of deterrence for protection against nuclear
attack… In retrospect, this arms race was incredibly costly, wasteful
and dangerous. If war had started, the two superpowers would have
destroyed each other and probably all of humanity. But deterrence did
work. And the U.S. never attacked the Soviet Union or any other nation
to stop them from becoming nuclear powers. So, why does it seem that the
U.S. has a different strategy toward North Korea and Iran?” (4/30/13)
Huffington Post: Is War Good for the Economy? – Michael Lofgren
“Military spending may at one time have
been a genuine job creator when weapons were compatible with converted
civilian production lines, but the days of Rosie the Riveter are long
gone. Most weapons projects now require relatively little touch labor.
Instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned into high-cost R&D
(from which the civilian economy benefits little), exorbitant management
expenditures, high overhead, and out-and-out padding, including money
that flows back into political campaigns. A dollar appropriated for
highway construction, health care, or education will likely create more
jobs than a dollar for Pentagon weapons procurement. A University of
Massachusetts study claims that several alternative projects would
produce anywhere from 35 percent to 138 percent more jobs than spending
the same amount on DOD.” (4/30/13)
Associated Press: Army says no to more tanks, but Congress insists – Richard Lardner
“Lawmakers from both parties have devoted
nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years
to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams. But senior Army
officials have said repeatedly, ‘No thanks.’ It's the inverse of the
federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are
leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether.” (4/29/13)
Washington Post: Defense cuts pose an economic quandary for liberals – Zachary Goldfarb
“Liberals are increasingly facing a
conundrum as the Pentagon experiences the deepest cuts in a generation:
The significant reductions in military spending that they have long
sought are also taking a huge bite out of economic growth. Liberal
lawmakers and others on the left have argued for years that the military
budget is bloated and should be dramatically scaled back. At the same
time, they have been major advocates of government spending to help
drive economic growth and create jobs.” (4/28/13)
TIME Battleland: Repeating Hi$tory – Chuck Spinney
“How can we reduce the defense budget to
free up the funds needed by both the private and public sectors to
reinvigorate our economy? Clearly, President Obama’s most recent budget
provides no answer — he has placed defense off limits. Moreover, the
President and Congress are clearly maneuvering to neuter the effects of
the budget sequester on the Pentagon’s weapons boondoggles by focusing
on furloughing people, cutting back on training, reducing spare parts
purchases, etc. Over the years, my colleagues and I have written
extensive diagnoses of the Pentagon’s institutional problems, together
with many recommendations about how to correct its dysfunctional
behavior. Over time, our central conclusion has remained the same: it is
not only possible to reduce the defense budget, but budget reductions
are a necessary step in reforming the Defense Department’s wasteful
management practices to produce a more effective military.” (4/26/13)
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: War Spending as Sequester Replacement? Just Don't Do It
“With news yesterday that the Senate
might consider a bill to replace the sequester for 2013 with a drawdown
of war spending, CRFB reacted in a press release, decrying the gimmick
for what it is. The bill would specifically put caps on war spending for
FY 2014 through 2016 at the levels called for the President's budget --
drawing down war funding from $97 billion this year to $37 billion in
FY 2016. Since these caps would only codify existing plans to draw down
the wars, they would not represent new deficit reduction. Claiming that
they would generate new savings would be incorrect.” (4/25/13)
Center for Public Integrity: Pentagon claims $757 million overbilling by contractor in Afghanistan – Richard Sia
“The Pentagon allowed a private firm
providing food and water to U.S. troops in Afghanistan to overbill
taxpayers $757 million and awarded the company no-bid contract
extensions worth more than $4 billion over three years, according to the
Pentagon’s chief internal watchdog and congressional investigators. The
deal represented one of the largest U.S. military contracts in
Afghanistan. But the Defense Logistics Agency, which was overseeing the
contract, failed repeatedly to verify that the contractor’s invoices
were accurate, an official in the Defense Department inspector general’s
office said.” (4/24/13)
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Reports
Government Accountability Office: Security
Force Assistance: More Detailed Planning and Improved Access to
Information Needed to Guide Efforts of Advisor Teams in Afghanistan (4/30/13)
Government Accountability Office: Missile Defense: Opportunity to Refocus on Strengthening Acquisition Management (4/26/13)
Congressional Research Service: Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues (4/26/13)
Department of Defense: DoD Counterfeit Prevention Policy (4/26/13)
Congressional Budget Office: A Tour of the Federal Budget and Possible Changes in Budget Policy (4/26/13)
Department of Defense: DoD Executive Agent for Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW), and NLW Policy (4/25/13)
Department of Defense: Use of Excess Ballistic Missiles for Space Launch (4/25/13)
Congressional Research Service: Multiyear Procurement (MYP) and Block Buy Contracting in Defense Acquisition: Background and Issues for Congress (4/25/13)
Department of Defense: DoD Nuclear Weapons Surety Program (4/24/13)
Department of Defense: Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight (4/24/13)
Congressional Research Service: The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Terrorism Investigations (4/24/13)
Congressional Research Service: U.S. Air Force Bomber Sustainment and Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress (4/23/13)
Congressional Research Service: Intelligence Issues for Congress (4/23/13)
Congressional Research Service: Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses (4/4/13)
