“FUTURE COMBAT” GETS FUNDS

If there was one part of the Pentagon bud­get that looked for sure like fat, wait­ing to be cut, it was the Army’s $127 bil­lion Future Combat Systems pro­gram, or FCS.
In December, the Pentagon rec­om­mended cut­ting $1.5 bil­lion a year from the hulk­ing mod­ern­iza­tion effort. Congress called the pro­gram — which revamps almost every ele­ment of sol­diers’ lives, from the guns they carry, to the offi­cers they salute, to the armored vehi­cles they drive — beyond unre­al­is­tic. Outside observers saw in FCS a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen.
Nevetheless, FCS hasn’t just escaped the axe in this year’s Pentagon bud­get — it’s grown, from $2.8 to $3.6 bil­lion, Defense Daily notes. The Defense Department has requested $231.6 mil­lion for the Non-​​Line-​​of-​​Sight Launch System, a set of guided artillery shells and loi­ter­ing mini-​​missiles being devel­oped as part of FCS. The Pentagon wants to put another $107.6 mil­lion into the Non-​​Line of Sight Cannon, a 20-​​ton, 155mm, tracked can­non that can blast tar­gets up to 30 kilo­me­ters away.
The Army is also adding $35 bil­lion over 7 years to restruc­ture its forces into smaler, more mobile units — a key com­po­nent of the FCS effort, which sees sol­diers fight­ing in smaller, more mobile groups. And the Stryker light armored vehi­cles, a FCS pre­cur­sor, is slated for $905.1 mil­lion this year to pay 240 more of the per­son­nel car­ri­ers. So much for trim­ming the fat.
THERE’S MORE: The Defense Department may have promised bil­lions in bud­get roll­backs last month. But now, Defense News notes, “even the Pentagon admits it: the 2006 bud­get calls for ‘a healthy increase,’ not a deep cut in defense spending.

At $439.3 bil­lion, the 2006 spend­ing plan would give the mil­i­tary $18.7 bil­lion more than it has for 2005. The Defense Department would get a 4.8 per­cent increase while other fed­eral agen­cies are being held to less than 2.2 per­cent…
And there will be more to come per­haps $100 bil­lion more in the form of emer­gency sup­ple­men­tal appro­pri­a­tions to pay war costs.
The 2006 bud­get Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is send­ing to Congress Feb. 7 “con­tin­ues our strong growth,” a senior Pentagon offi­cial said. It pushes defense spend­ing up 41 per­cent since President George W. Bush took office. 

February 7th, 2005 | FCS Watch | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.