ARMOR LACK: WHO’S TO BLAME?

So who’s respon­si­ble for American troops still oper­at­ing in Iraq with­out proper pro­tec­tion? Congress deserves some of the blame, accord­ing to this 60 Minutes report, spot­ted by Steve Gilliard:

Winslow Wheeler, a long time Capitol Hill staffer who spent years writ­ing and review­ing defense appro­pri­a­tions bills, thinks he knows one rea­son why those short­ages exist, after look­ing at the cur­rent Defense bud­get. Army accounts that pay for train­ing, main­te­nance and repairs are being raided by Congress to pay for pork-​​barrel spend­ing.
And buried in the back of this one, Wheeler found a biathlon jog­ging track in Alaska, a brown tree snake erad­i­ca­tion pro­gram in Hawaii, a parade ground main­te­nance con­tract for a mil­i­tary base that closed years ago, and money for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial cel­e­bra­tion…
According to Sen. John McCain, R-​​Ariz., a mem­ber of the Armed Services Committee who speaks out against pork-​​barrel spend­ing, there is a total of $8.9 bil­lion of pork in this year’s defense bill, which would go a long way toward upgrad­ing all the equip­ment used by the National Guard.
“I don’t think that this war has truly come home to the Congress of the United States,” McCain says… “The least sexy items are the mun­dane — food, repair items, main­te­nance there’s no big con­tract there,” says McCain. “And so there’s a ten­dency that those mun­dane but vital aspects of war fight­ing are cut and rou­tinely underfunded.”

True. But if the Pentagon’s top brass made these “mun­dane” items pri­or­ity A1, Congress would fall in line, quick. Instead, these basics for the troops have been pushed back — into “sup­ple­men­tal” fund­ing, while the Defense Department’s main bud­get gets filled with pork and leviathan projects meant to “trans­form” the mil­i­tary for the next cen­tury.
In fact, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker admit­ted in a recent inter­view with Army Times that he sees the Pentagon’s wartime bud­get increases as a “win­dow of oppor­tu­nity” to pour cash into pro­grams like the $117 bil­lion Future Combat Systems ini­tia­tive.

“The level of oper­a­tional tempo that we have is being paid for with the sup­ple­men­tal. The increased con­sump­tion of repair parts and ammu­ni­tion are all being funded by the sup­ple­men­tal. But the issue is that, from a strate­gic per­spec­tive, we have a war to fight and we’re receiv­ing increased dol­lars. I call that the win­dow of oppor­tu­nity these dol­lars that we’re receiv­ing. And we have an Army to trans­form. So what is impor­tant to under­stand and I think what really is the extra­or­di­nary win­dow that we have here is that we can com­bine these two. Combine this momen­tum — the momen­tum from the focus that war gives us, the fund­ing that we’re get­ting from the war, and our trans­for­ma­tional effort…
We dont know how long this will go long or how long sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing will con­tinue to sup­port our wartime effort. But it makes sense to us to lever­age the momen­tum and the addi­tional fund­ing we have so that where we go for­ward to a trans­formed force for the 21st Century. (thanks to Defense Tech reader BH for the catch).

THERE’S MORE: Look, it’s not like Future Combat Systems is a bad idea. The Army should be invest­ing in fight­ing tomorrow’s wars. But there are good sol­diers dying in Iraq now. Today. And pick­ing FCS over armored trucks is like buy­ing life insur­ance when the rent is three monts overdue.

November 1st, 2004 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.