3/25/10

Appearing before Congress yesterday, Secretary Gates again took up the cause of defense budget reform.  Gates singled out two major weapons systems: the costly F-35 alternative engine and the outdated C-17.  He urged Congress to cut funding for these systems or risk a presidential veto.  This builds on the reform efforts begun at the beginning of the Obama administration, and continued by Gates throughout the year when he took such steps as firing the F-35 program manager and withholding $615 million intended to be awarded to Lockheed.  At the same time, defense policy experts agree that Pentagon spending - which has skyrocketed in recent years - remains in need of major reform. 

Reforming defense spending is part of the larger process of establishing a 21^st century military strategy.  The FY 2011, along with the Quadrennial Defense Review that guides it, makes important contributions to this project.  But significant political will is needed to turn these imperatives into real budgetary reform.

Gates to Congress: driven ‘nuts,' "I will strongly recommend that the president veto" a budget that continues out-of-control defense programs. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense to testify about the Pentagon's FY 2011 budget.  Gates assailed several out-of-control defense platforms, urging Congress to do its part in bringing defense spending under control. Gates "reiterated that he would recommend the president veto any legislation that funds additional C-17 cargo planes or a second F-35 power plant."  "I am fully aware of the political pressure to continue building the C-17 and proceed with an alternate engine for the F-35...So let me be very clear: I will strongly recommend that the president veto any legislation that sustains the unnecessary continuation of these two programs," said Gates.  Defense News put Gates' consternation in a historical context: "The Air Force, with the backing of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has for years not requested funds for new C-17s. The Pentagon and service say they have enough of the Boeing-made Globemaster transport planes. Likewise, the Pentagon and Congress have clashed for several years on whether the F-35 fleet needs an alternative engine - as well as whether it is affordable. DoD says no on both fronts; lawmakers have added funds each year to keep the F-136 engine, being developed by GE Aviation and Rolls Royce, alive."  

In addition, "Gates said he was driven ‘nuts' by the revelation that taxpayers were funding 70 percent of the overhead at a plant involved in the increasingly expensive F-35 fighter jet, even though the work used only 6 percent of the floor space," reported Reuters.  As Reuters pointed out, Gates had "fired his F-35 program manager in February and withheld $615 million in Lockheed's potential award fees as part of a restructuring," demonstrating his commitment to wrestling this program under control.  [Defense News, 3/24/10. Reuters, 3/24/10]

Defense policy experts agree: Pentagon spending remains bloated, in need of reform.  Secretary Gates' efforts to rein in elements of defense spending are welcome, but the defense budget remains in serious need of reform. Travis Sharp of the Center for New American Security puts America's defense spending in context: "When including war costs, Pentagon spending has grown by 70 percent in real terms since 2001.  In inflation-adjusted dollars and including war costs, the FY 2011 Pentagon budget request is 13 percent higher than the Korea War peak (624 billion dollars); 33 percent higher than the Vietnam War peak (534 billion dollars); 23 percent higher than the Reagan-era 1980s peak (574 billion dollars); 64 percent higher than the Cold War average (432 billion dollars)...." 

In the near-term, more can be done to control Congressional earmarking - in the FY 2010 budget some 1,720 Congressional earmarks accounted for $4.2 billion in spending.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that delays and performance problems on 95 major weapons systems caused cost overruns of $295 billion between 2001 and 2007.  But getting real value for money in our defense spending over the long term will require tradeoffs and tough choices.  As Larry Korb, Sean Duggan and Laura Conley write in a brief for the Center for American Progress, it is not enough to simply anticipate the challenges of the 21^st century.  These challenges must be prioritized in order for resources to be properly allocated to missions. Korb, Duggan and Conley urged the White House to "redress this imbalance" by releasing the "the NSS [National Security Strategy] as soon as possible so that Congress and the nation can put the 2010 QDR and the FY 2011 defense budget into proper context."  Defense policy experts have weighed in on where future challenges will emerge:

Control mission expansion, which is driving costs upwards.  In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Stimson Center Distinguished Fellow Gordon Adams warned that: "Mission expansion is creating pressure for force expansion. DOD has already added 92,000 to the ground forces and Congress is being asked to fund an additional 22,000 temporary ground forces in this budget. As forces grow, so does the entire budget, for only research and development is spared from this pressure for more overall resources." The forthcoming National Security Strategy should allow for a reasoned debate about what our national security priorities are, and thus where our resources should - and should not - go. [Gordon Adams, 2/23/10]

Plan tradeoffs now so that security needs can weather shifting budgetary winds.  Center for New American Security Research Associate Travis Sharp channels a growing concern among military thinkers:  that military planners should not "rely on American taxpayers' future largesse."  Sharp cautioned that "more hard tradeoffs are still required to ensure that the commitments of the past do not become a strategic drag on overcoming the challenges of the future."  The worst case scenario going forward is that policymakers whistle past the graveyard by avoiding difficult choices today - only to discover five years from now that things have become even less fiscally sustainable and that the United States is still not prepared for the uncertain future that lies ahead." [CNAS, February 2010]

Bring military healthcare costs under control.  Korb, Conley and Duggan write: "It is also critical that Congress work with the Pentagon this year to control the steadily increasing cost of military health care. As Secretary Gates noted in yesterday's budget briefing, premiums for TRICARE, the military's health care system, have not been raised in 15 years, despite the Department of Defense's repeated efforts to institute a modest increase." [CAP, 2/2/10]

[CNAS, February 2010. Preble and Hurlburt, POLITICO, 2/4/10. CAP, 2/4/10]

The 2011 defense budget builds on foundation for 21^st century military strategy, but more work is yet to be done. The Obama administration's 2011 defense budget and the Quadrennial Defense Review that guides it offer first steps toward moving our military to address the dynamics of the 21^st century - and suggests the logic that should underlie the next round of defense spending reform:

Confronting current challenges, with an eye to the future: "The FY 2011 budget continues progress toward a better balance in our defense posture - especially by emphasizing capabilities needed for current conflicts and contingencies. For example, the budget includes robust funding to field more helicopters and air crews, increase Special Operations personnel and equipment, increase electronic warfare capabilities, and procure and deploy more unmanned vehicles." [Department of Defense, 2/10]

Committing to international partnerships:  "The FY 2011 budget requests an increase from $350 million to $500 million for Global Train and Equip (Section 1206) authority to help build the capabilities of key partner nations to fight terrorism and support U.S. stability operations." [Department of Defense, 2/10]

Prioritizing control of deadly weapons: "The FY 2011 budget request funds enhancements for countering WMD including programs for biological and nuclear threat reduction, technical and analytical support to the warfighter, countering biological and chemical agents, and research and development to support arms control verification." [Department of Defense, 2/10]

Recognizing the challenges posed by energy security: Think Progress's Wonk Room reports on efforts by the Defense Department to reduce carbon emissions: "Defense is committing to cutting emissions in non-combat areas by 34%. These non-combat installations and fleet ‘account for around a quarter of Defense's energy consumption and roughly 40% of its emissions,' according to Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Undersecretary for Installations and the Environment: In 2008, the department spent $20 billion on its energy bill, and another $14 billion in 2009 after oil prices slipped." [Brad Johnson, Wonk Room, 1/29/10]

What We're Reading

The United States and Russia have broken a logjam in arms control negotiations and expect to sign the START treaty next month, officials in both nations said Wednesday.

Russia disclosed on Wednesday that Russian and Chinese envoys had pressed Iran's government to accept a United Nations plan on uranium enrichment during meetings in Tehran early this month but that Iran had refused, leaving "less and less room for diplomatic maneuvering."

More than 100 people accused of planning attacks against police and oil installations have been arrested in Saudi Arabia, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN on Wednesday.

Authorities in northern Pakistan are struggling to prevent the bursting of a natural dam formed by a landslide that could affect more than 50,000 people and sever an important trade link with China.

North Koreans who recently fled to China say many of their fellow citizens are losing faith in the regime of Kim Jong Il after a disastrous currency revaluation that wiped out savings and left food scarcer than at any time since the famine of the mid-1990s, when as many as 2 million people died.

Global warming appears to have finally resolved a dispute that gunboats never could: An island midway between India and Bangladesh that became a catalyst for military threats in the 1980s is now submerged under the rising sea.

A car bomb exploded in the Colombian port town of Buenaventura, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens more in an attack authorities blamed on FARC guerrillas or cocaine traffickers.

President Obama pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to give a written commitment to rein in any further settlement building and to move ahead on peace talks with the Palestinians; Netanyahu balked at the president's demands.

Top Vatican officials - including the future Pope Benedict XVI - did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

Human Rights Watch says the Ethiopian government is waging a sustained attack on its opponents in the run-up to an election in May.

Commentary of the Day

Mike O'Connor writes that, despite the attention of a star-studded cast of top U.S. officials, this week's Mexican drug summit exposed a disturbing truth: plan A isn't working and there's no plan B.

Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook point out the "dark underbelly" of Chinese aid: it competes with Western aid but requires none of the good governance standards, and it implicitly buys support for China's often-repressive policies.

Max Bergmann debunks the Right's "naïve missile defense fantasy."

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