rssDefense Reform Will Have to Wait Until Next Year, If at All
Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 12:44 pm
- 5 Comments
Has all this bated-breath excitement about Defense Secretary Bob Gates scrubbing the fiscal 2010 Pentagon budget, due next month, been for nothing? Is the defense-spending “spigot” remaining open after all? God will I be embarrassed if so; and according to the Pentagon’s deputy comptroller, it might. From subscription-only Inside The Pentagon:
DOD officials intend to cut procurement in the FY-10 budget by 2 percent or 3 percent, according to Kevin Scheid, the Pentagon’s deputy comptroller. However, more substantial programmatic cuts or adds will be influenced by the Quadrennial Defense Review and implemented beginning with the FY-11 request, due to Congress in February 2010.
“The administration will make . . . a partial statement with the FY-10 [budget's] details, but the full statement will be really communicated in the FY-11” budget, Scheid said today during a presentation at an Aviation Week-sponsored conference in Washington.
The procurement budget last year was about $104 billion. Three percent of that is around $3 billion. Change we can believe in!
Snark aside, the challenge now shifts over to the Quadrennial Defense Review. To recall Tony Cordesman’s plea for coordination between budgets and strategy, it makes sense to defer major budgetary choices until a major strategy review is completed. But it’s fair to say that ever since it was established in the 1990s, the QDR process represents hedged bets about what the future of the U.S. defense posture looks like — meaning they contain something for everyone (tech-heavy weaponry; irregular warfare; sea-based threats, etc) and rarely if ever recommend sharp cuts in favored programs. Could this one really be any different? Scheid:
The FY-11 budget will contain “major muscle movements” both “positive and negative” and influenced by the QDR, he said. At the same time, the FY-10 budget request — which is expected to be unveiled the week of April 20 — will not include outyear numbers because QDR work is just beginning. Gates has accelerated the Pentagon’s QDR build.
This would seem to give the defense lobby time to regroup, though.
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5 Comments
Comment posted March 13, 2009 @ 9:03 am
The Defense lobby will wage war using the ultimate weapon, cash. It is undeniable that there are several large programs significantly over cost and schedule with real questions about need or if they can be successfully designed and produced. Other programs are truly questionable in terms of need in the near term. I hope Secretary Gates stands firm but he is up against big money who wraps their argument under the banner of military need and national security.
Comment posted March 14, 2009 @ 4:14 pm
Were any of it needed the republic would have been harmed.
Strategydoes not match the threats. Still see the Red Army. Strategy needs to be rationalized first.
Comment posted March 14, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
Military hardware is developed to defeat a threat and the threat is not political, but rather what hardware could the enemy present to our national security. Many of the weapons now being proposed are marginal increases to performance of existing systems that are already far superior to anything that any other country has.
The Military and their partners (Defense industry) always want to push something new under the guise that it is essential for our military's superiority, it often is not.
Comment posted March 14, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
Were any of it needed the republic would have been harmed.
Strategydoes not match the threats. Still see the Red Army. Strategy needs to be rationalized first.
Comment posted March 15, 2009 @ 1:53 am
Military hardware is developed to defeat a threat and the threat is not political, but rather what hardware could the enemy present to our national security. Many of the weapons now being proposed are marginal increases to performance of existing systems that are already far superior to anything that any other country has.
The Military and their partners (Defense industry) always want to push something new under the guise that it is essential for our military's superiority, it often is not.
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