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Home » Money Money Money » New Weapons Get Big Cash in Pentagon Request

New Weapons Get Big Cash in Pentagon Request

You might think, with two wars drain­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions from the country’s cof­fers, that the Pentagon would be inclined to slow down its mod­ern­iza­tion efforts. Especially ones that have lit­tle or noth­ing to do with fight­ing ter­ror­ists — or even bat­tling North Korea or Iran. That’d be wrong.
spr02cvr.jpgThe Pentagon fis­cal year 2008 bud­get adds another $8.8 bil­lion to its mod­ern­iza­tion accounts, Defense Department comp­trol­ler Tina Jonas justed noted in a news con­fer­ence. That’ll include “the first sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing” — $3 bil­lion — in the next gen­er­a­tion of air­craft car­rier,” the CVN-​​21. The Joint Strike Fighter fleet will grow from two in FY07, to twelve the fol­low­ing year — includ­ing the first short take-​​off ver­sion. It’ll take $6 bil­lion in 2008, the Pentagon projects. Despite major cost infla­tion, the Defense Department bud­get request “funds three lit­toral com­bat ships and will con­tinue fund­ing for two DDG-​​1000–class destroy­ers and another amphibi­ous assault ship,” accord­ing to a American Forces Press Service arti­cle. “The Air Force F-​​22 Raptor fighter is bud­geted at $3.8 bil­lion for 20 air­craft.“
The F-​​22, it should be noted, was recently deemed “too sen­si­tive… to be use­ful” in places like Iraq. Most of these other sys­tems — big destroy­ers, new air­craft car­ri­ers, and the like — wouldn’t have much to do with an Iraq-​​style sit­u­a­tion. Neither would the $8.8 bil­lion for mis­sile defense (although that is a more than a half-​​billion less than what the pro­gram got last year).
Of the major service’s weapons pro­grams, only the Army’s mas­sive mod­ern­iza­tion effort, Future Combat Systems, seems to have been trimmed. The $3.6 bil­lion requested for FCS is just slightly less than what the Pentagon asked for last year.
One bit of good news is that the Army, after years of requests, is start­ing to get a big­ger slice of the bud­get. “If the bud­get is enacted as sub­mit­ted, the Army will receive $130.1 bil­lion in fis­cal 2008, for an increase of more than 20 per­cent,” the American Forces Press Service says. “The Navy will receive $119.3 bil­lion, up 9 per­cent. The Marine Corps will receive $20.5 bil­lion, up 4.3 per­cent, and the Air Force will receive $136.6 bil­lion; an increase of 8.2 per­cent.“
Bloomberg’s ace Pentagon-​​watcher, Tony Capaccio, has more.
UPDATE 02/​06/​07 4:06 PM: “Any fear that war costs would crimp spend­ing on new weapons evap­o­rated Feb. 5 when the Pentagon unveiled its pro­posed 2008 bud­get,” says Defense News. Check out these stats:


$14.4 bil­lion for new ships, a 29 per­cent increase over 2007.
$6 bil­lion for satel­lites and related equip­ment, a 25 per­cent increase.
$27.4 bil­lion for war­planes, an 18 per­cent increase.
$3.7 bil­lion on the Armys Future Combat Systems, a 9 per­cent boost.

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February 5th, 2007 | Money Money Money | 346115 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/02/05/new-weapons-get-big-cash-in-pentagon-request/New+Weapons+Get+Big+Cash+in+Pentagon+Request2007-02-05+19%3A40%3A34hambling You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

« « Pentagon’s Big-​​Ass Budget | D.O.D.: Iraq Budget “Wrong” from the Start » »

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  1. Robot Economist says:
    February 5, 2007 at 9:48 pm

    Speculation about the Army’s Land Warrior sys­tem has also been put to rest. It’s PE line has a nice “Program Terminated” label next to it now.

    Reply
  2. Murc says:
    February 5, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    Sounds good to me.
    The army really needs to do some­thing about its FCS, its so big…surely they know it will never come to fruiti­tion.
    They need to come up with a few vehi­cles that are hella good at multi-​​missions. Todays Humvee is used for far far far more then it was ever envi­sioned to be, they to pick like half a dozen dif­fer­ent types of vehi­cles, and any other task that they need com­pleted, adapt one of the vehi­cles to that spe­cific role.
    If I was the Army’s head hon­cho, I’d accom­plish a few crit­i­cal things…Like replace the cur­rent (old) gun with some­thing newer and better…they were work­ing on one for a long time (XM8) but axed it in 05′.
    Another thing I’d do is ditch the old kel­var flak jack­ets, and go with dragon skin.
    And a big one, I think would be to replace the humvee, get some­thing that gets bet­ter mileage, is more effi­cient, comes stan­dard armored, and has slanted sides and under­neath to help deflect threats (like shrap­nel from rpg’s or ied’s, or just gun fire.
    Those 3 things I men­tioned SHOULD be at the top of the army’s list.
    BTW, I think the US should axe the future car­rier pro­gram. The car­ri­ers really dont have a pur­pose these days, there all show. If we ever went to war with a major coun­try like China or Russia, One of their first tar­gets (assum­ing this hypo­thet­i­cal war didn’t go nuclear) would be the dozen car­ri­ers we have, they are no stealthy, and can eas­ily be found using sats.
    There fund­ing should then be diverted for more lit­torals, and a few more DDG’s.

    Reply
  3. Joe M says:
    February 6, 2007 at 3:39 am

    Hey Murc,
    i’m new to this!! why so many TLA’s (3 let­tered acronyms) Pleae let me kknow what they met because Your com­ment seemed inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tive..
    Money definetly on New weapons and Intelligence gath­er­ing.. Also I do not see satel­lites Losing there place either Space based Lasers is Still bet­ter than Nuclear, Bio, or chem­i­cal for that fact Perfect on point tar­get­ing and No casualties…

    Reply
  4. BT says:
    February 6, 2007 at 5:14 am

    Murc, I’m with you, the Army keeps try­ing to wish away this night­mare of 4GW, and go with their pork projects.
    I’d choose the Barret 468 6.8mm SPC or some­thing sim­i­lar. Dragon Skin is a must, its NIJ L3 now. The Cougar works as adver­tised no need waste time rein­vent­ing any new vehi­cle; although I’d like to see more Ti, ceramic com­pos­ite and less RHA. We should sup­ply state of the art ther­mal scopes/​goggles for every sol­dier. Passive low-​​light NVG is so yes­ter­day, even the insur­gents have been found using them. Not enough boots walk­ing the beat, where are the armed UGV’s/sentries? Can some­one please cre­ate hyper spec­tral sub-​​surface radar, for those damned IED

    Reply
  5. Haninah says:
    February 6, 2007 at 10:08 am

    @BT:
    Retire the B52?!? Well, there’s a first time for hear­ing every sug­ges­tion, I guess…

    Reply
  6. Dmac says:
    February 6, 2007 at 10:41 am

    DragonSkin failed mis­er­ably in its test­ing at an inde­pen­dent lab — I haven’t the slight­est idea why folks are agi­tat­ing for its adop­tion. The DragonSkin execs do run a good PR cam­paign, I suppose.

    Reply
  7. Murc says:
    February 6, 2007 at 8:00 pm

    Joe M — If your unsure of what the acronym means…either google it, or use wikipedia.
    BT — the cougar is good, but its big…which can be good and bad. The army needs its lighter vehi­cles to, but these lighter vehicles…these days, must be armored. I’m kinda par­tial to General Dynamics humvee replace­ment concept…known as Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV).
    I’m with you on the ther­mal instead of Night vision.
    I’m not to keen on moth­balling subs though, they are the epit­ome of stealth, I think we need to do some work on mak­ing them cheaper, and going diesel/electric…instead of mak­ing the major­ity of them (very expen­sive) nuclear.
    The F-​​35 has a role to play, and with so many coun­tries back­ing it…I dont see it get­ting can­celled. Although a rather annoy­ing thing, is when they talk about what its going to replace…and then they go and spend mil­lions on upgrad­ing what they are plan­ning on get­ting rid of. A prime exam­ple is the A-10…its old, its ugly, but it does a good job and should not and will not be canned. The har­rier it will def­i­nitely replace…and I think the AF is still plan­ning on it replac­ing (at least some of) the F-16’s…and as for the Navy’s hornet.…i dont know…I think its going to replace the hornet…but with sit side by side the super hor­nets.
    I dis­agree about the B-​​52, you shouldn’t get rid of your cheap bomb truck.
    The F-117…yes, its out dated, and its pay­load is very small, this is one air­craft that should be retired…unfortunately, theres Lockheed that keeps rat­tling on and on about how its still great, and that they can out­fit them to be unmanned and ground controlled…I hope they dont receive fund­ing for such a dumb idea.
    Thermopile — Yes, the car­ri­ers do an alright job…but I pre­fer some­thing that makes eco­nom­i­cal sense. I would rather have a fleet of Arsenal Ships, which was a good con­cept. Imagine over a dozen of them…they would sit low, and be stealthy, have a small crew (around a dozen), and carry a cou­ple hun­dred mis­siles, and out­fit it with a EM gun when they come of age.
    There has never being a hos­tile attack on a carrier…I think a rea­son the ter­ror­ist or enemy coun­tries haven

    Reply
  8. ben says:
    February 7, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    Speks is free.

    Reply
  9. Dusty says:
    February 9, 2007 at 1:27 am

    Carriers serve an excel­lent pur­pose, espe­cially when
    putting troops and equip­ment on the ground. When neigh­bor­ing coun­tries refuse to allow US forces to base oper­a­tions in their coun­tries, air­craft car­ri­ers can bring troops on the ground as well as pro­vide air sup­port. Carriers, yes, are by no means stealthy or maneu­ver­able, instead of replac­ing the car­rier with some­thing that can­not ful­fill the same roles, replace and/​or upgrade today’s car­ri­ers with lighter, stealth­ier ones; ones that can ful­full the same capa­bil­i­ties and roles that car­ri­ers play.

    Reply
  10. Greg says:
    February 9, 2007 at 1:33 am

    The Special Operations Forces (SOF) have a few guide­lines regard­ing oper­a­tions, one of them is “Quality is bet­ter than Quantity.“
    America should def­i­nitely try and keep an equal bal­ance, but if nec­es­sary, qual­ity should be the key fac­tor in intro­duc­ing new tech­nolo­gies to the bat­tle­field. Today, insur­gents have the num­bers in a given city, but they must use insur­gent, guerilla tac­tics to wear us down and grad­u­ally increase casu­al­ties, as in a war of attri­tion. Quality or train­ing and qual­ity of tech­nol­ogy is still much more impor­tant than num­bers.
    Focus on bet­ter qual­ity and inno­va­tion rather than how much money can i save.

    Reply
  11. curt w says:
    February 9, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    well, the army is going to get a good bud­get but it will be wasted on that stu­pid land war­rior sys­tem. the man­u­fac­turer is going to reduce the weight to 80 lbs before the army will accept it. well now ad in your body armor and your in the range of 125 lbs of gear. the army should apply some of this bud­get to find­ing a more effec­tive com­bat cal­iber for weapons. make the sol­dier a more effec­tive killer as opposed to a stu­pid look­ing robot that cant move fast on the battlefield.

    Reply
  12. popstalon says:
    January 2, 2009 at 9:17 am

    what is the POTUS? S
    ome­one just recently asked me about it.

    Reply

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