RUMMY’S SLICK SUPPLEMENTAL MOVE

You’d think it’d be a top pri­or­ity for the Army, out­fit­ting troops with new body armor, hel­mets, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions gear. But the Pentagon can’t seem to find the cash in its $420 bil­lion bud­get to pay for the equip­ment.
Instead, the Army is rely­ing on a sup­ple­men­tal spend­ing bill — one that’s meant to fund the fight­ing in Afghanistan and Iraq — to cover the costs.
“I always tell peo­ple, thank God for the sup­ple­men­tal. We would not be able to do any­thing with­out them,” Defense News quotes Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac, the Armys top uni­formed acqui­si­tion offi­cial, as telling an Association of the United States Army con­fer­ence. “If those dont hap­pen, were in a world of hurt.“
Now, last year, the Pentagon used an $87 bil­lion emer­gency spend­ing mea­sure to buy body armor, among other things. At the time, that made some sense the war had dragged on longer, and was of a dif­fer­ent type, than Rumsfeld & Co. had pre­dicted.
But this year is some­thing dif­fer­ent. When the Pentagon was draft­ing its lat­est bud­get, it knew damn well there was going to be a need to get body armor into the field. So what’s going on here?
This is another case of Rumsfeld refus­ing to make a choice between the military’s cur­rent needs and its future, of try­ing to have it both ways. He needs to get gear to the troops in Iraq. But he doesn’t want to sac­ri­fice any of the military’s big ticket items in order to do it. So he pulls a lit­tle trick on Congress. First, Rumsfeld sends law­mak­ers his main Pentagon bud­get, which has lots of line items for projects like the hulk­ing, $117 bil­lion Future Combat Systems. And then, cry­ing poverty, Rumsfeld asks for body armor money which there’s no chance in hell that Congress will deny.
It’s a very, very slick Washington maneu­ver one you’d be tempted to call a form of black­mail. Because G.I.s is the field are now count­ing on that sup­ple­men­tal to keep them safe, Defense News says.

The sup­ple­men­tal will fund much of the work being done by the Armys two-​​year-​​old Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI), whose goal is to equip all deploy­ing units and, by 2007, all active and reserve units with 76 items, includ­ing the Advanced Combat Helmet, body armor, desert boots and moisture-​​wicking T-​​shirts. Yakovac said the pro­gram could cost $5 bil­lion.
Were hop­ing on sup­ple­men­tals to do that, he added.
Roughly 150,000 sol­diers will receive the RFI kits by the end of this year, with another 250,000 troops equipped in 2005, said Brig. Gen. James Moran, the Armys sol­dier pro­gram exec­u­tive officer. 

October 26th, 2004 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.