My for­mer col­league at Marine Corps Times, Gordon Lubold, has a great story that ran a cou­ple days ago in his new paper, the Christian Science Monitor.

He’s taken a look at an ini­tia­tive dreamed up on Capitol Hill to redis­trib­ute the nearly half-​​trillion (if you don’t count wartime sup­ple­men­tals) DoD bud­get away from roughly equal shares and dole out more funds to the ser­vice that deserves them most. 

Lubold writes:

A bipar­ti­san House panel is nudg­ing the Pentagon to begin a con­ver­sa­tion on how to reform itself in many ways. But at the Pentagon, talk of change usu­ally has a bud­getary impact. 

And, despite the past sev­eral years of “nation-​​building” and coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been vir­tu­ally no change in the way the defense bud­get is carved up in at least 40 years, says Rep. Jim Cooper (D) of Tennessee, who chairs the panel. 

“That right there is a sta­tis­ti­cal indict­ment of the process,” Representative Cooper says. “There had to be a year in which there were greater needs in one area or another, and the sys­tem was unable to accom­mo­date it.“ 

The fis­cal 2009 bud­get request released this month, for exam­ple, shows the Army request­ing a 27 per­cent share, the Air Force ask­ing for a 28 per­cent share, and the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, want­ing a 29 per­cent share of the pro­posed $515 bil­lion budget. 

Cooper’s seven-​​member panel is expected to release a study this week on each of the branches’ “roles and mis­sions” that may threaten ser­vices that are seen to per­form more con­ven­tional war­fare. With the focus on the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that makes some in the Navy and Air Force worry. 

(more…)