More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield “the fustest with the mostest,” as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard.

Um.

Beyond that, Schmitt and Donnelly argue for a continuation of most of the programs Gates is cutting, and do so through some curious omissions and outright misstatements. The alternative to the F-22 Raptor jet is  apparently “the 660 F-15s flying today, but which are literally falling apart at the seams from age and use” — not the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that Gates and the generals are actually advocating as a replacement. Stopping the Army’s Future Combat Systems vehicle-modernization program means “future generations of soldiers will conduct mounted operations in the M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles designed in the 1970s,” even though Gates said on Monday that he’s going to “reevaluate the requirements, technology and approach and then re-launch the Army’s vehicle modernization program.” And Gates is somehow “cap[ping] the size of the U.S. ground force,” even though Gates is seeking an extra $11 billion to expand the Army and Marine Corps. (I suppose, to be charitable, they could mean they want an even larger ground force, but that’s hardly clear from the op-ed, which implies that Gates is resisting the very expansion he’s funding.)

Basically, Donnelly and Schmitt’s real beef is that Gates’ budget gets rid of the dry rot in the Pentagon and presumes that the military can’t fund all things for all conceivable threats. As Gates put it:

It is important to remember that every Defense dollar spent to overinsure against a remote or diminishing risk or, in effect, to run up the score in capability where the United States is already dominant is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

American dominance is not so fragile that trading planes is going to eliminate it. But I guess taking advice from Klan leaders leads to all sorts of paranoia.

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…Gates will pour $11 billion into increasing the number of troops in the Army and Marines while halting manpower reductions in the Air Force and the Navy. $2 billion will go towards increasing the number of drones and manned surveillance planes in the skies above Afghanistan and Iraq. Special forces troops will grow by five percent, or 2,800 commandos.

America will still build new ships and fighter jets. But they’ll be less expensive, and come in greater numbers. Production of the Joint Strike Fighter will ramp up to 30 planes next year, from 14 in 2009. Three Littoral Combat Ships — reconfigurable vessels, built for shoreline combat — will be purchased, under Gates’ plan. $900 million will go to proven anti-missile projects.

SAIC’s executive vice president for government affairs, Arnold Punaro, is rumored to be the next Army Secretary. It is my understanding that Punaro is a great American, but frankly, I do not see how his potential nomination overcomes this conflict of interests.

My understanding is the Obama administration still hasn’t found an Army secretary, but who knows — maybe that’s because they’re just taking time to vet Punaro. I won’t pretend to have any great insight into the process. (Punaro is also a retired Marine general, making him an unlikely pick for the job.) But if it’s true, how could the administration hire another top defense-industry lobbyist on top of Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn and still expect to be taken seriously when it comes to reforming the defense budget?

So this won’t help: Inside the Army (subscription-only, grr) reports that the Government Accountability Office is preparing a grim assessment about FCS’s financial soundness. [Update: Hey, now the piece is outside the firewall!]

Advocates of restructuring or cutting back on FCS will find ammunition in the draft report. In it, GAO asserts that FCS is “unlikely to be executed” for the $159 billion the Army says it will cost, a source said, citing the draft.

Moreover, and perhaps more relevant to the current decision-making within the Pentagon, GAO states that the Army has already spent 60 percent of its FCS development funds even though “the most expensive activities remain to be done before the production decision” in 2013.

GAO contends that the funding situation will deteriorate for FCS as the program’s costs will likely grow at the same time as competition for federal funds tightens, a source said.

The report also cites what it calls “actual immaturity” in the program, according to sources. Calling the network performance “largely unproven,” GAO says the Army has failed to convincingly demonstrate that FCS designs will meet their requirements, a source told ITA.

So that’s one step on the front end of procurement costs. Another one comes deep in the bill — page 25 of a printed 31-pager — where it orders the Secretary of Defense to “terminate [the] acquisition” of major defense programs whose costs exceed 25 percent more than the current baseline estimate of how much the program should cost or  50 percent more than the original estimate. The secretary can jump through some hoops to get around this, but he’d have to certify that big and over-budget programs are “essential to national security” and “there are no alternatives to them.” (In other words, he’d invite ridicule.) A caveat: in reality, by the time big programs make it to the big-cost-overrun step, they’re pretty hard to kill, since they have constituencies in Congress, in the services and in the Pentagon.

The bill orders the secretary to develop “mechanisms” for ensuring “trade-offs between cost, schedule and performance are considered” before buying the big stuff.  Those mechanisms aren’t specified, but the bill wants “consideration” given to “fielding major weapon systems through incremental or spiral acquisition, while deferring technologies that are not yet mature.” That’s probably a reference to programs like the Army’s Future Combat Systems — the panoply of programs that represent the Army’s vision of a more tech-enhanced ground force, the cost of which has ballooned from around $88 billion to the point where it’s hard to know how much it will cost when it gets delivered. (Oh, and the delivery date is uncertain, too.)

I’ve reached out to some defense-budget experts to see what they think of the bill. Updates to come.

Update: You know what I should’ve highlighted in my first go-round? How the bill creates a new Director of Developmental Test and Evaluation to rein in sprawling Pentagon research-and-development costs. Because it does.

Some, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, favor money for less conventional warfare. Others, such as Rep. Jack Murtha, (D-Penn.), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, want cash for fancy weapons to fight future conflicts.

However interesting, this debate has little basis in reality. The Pentagon spends an incomprehensible sum of money on both current and “future” wars — and will continue doing so next year, thanks to a 7 percent increase in its budget. The $488-billion spending plan, which does not include money for Iraq and Afghanistan, was passed at the height of the financial crisis, which means that the Wall Street meltdown probably wasn’t a factor in lawmakers’ thinking.

Gates wasn’t much of a factor either, because spending on such programs as Future Combat Systems and F-22 fighters, which he has criticized, increased.

The Journal article liberally quotes from Gates and Murtha as if their competing priorities will force defense appropriators to make a choice somewhere down the road.

But that’s unlikely to happen in the next administration. Both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain wish to increase defense spending. The Pentagon, meanwhile, wants to add $450 billion over the next five years.

And Congress is least likely to go along with any tough spending choices. The defense bill it just passed shows that lawmakers depend on these pricey weapons programs for jobs in their districts.

Pentagon spending has more than doubled during the Bush administration. It’s not clear where the political will to reduce defense outlays will come from.