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.
There’s a part of me that thinks this is a good idea…that it’s kinda f-ed up for the Army to get a smaller share than the Air Force or Navy.
But, by the same token, I can understand the argument that Air Force planes and Navy ships are more expensive than most Army gear. And I’m not one of those ascetics that thinks the Air Force should only fly A-10s and F-16s and the Navy should trash its aircraft carriers for small patrol boats.
Lubold continues:
Cooper hopes the study will spark a broader debate about the need to reform national security, with new emphases on cybersecurity and nonmilitary government agencies. The panel isn’t recommending specific changes to the budget as much as it is raising concerns about the Pentagon’s historical aversion to change. More specifically, some services are clinging to a version of warfare the panel believes is dated.
“There should be vociferous support from inside the services, since the military has been left carrying the burden of the failures of our national security institutions,” reads a draft of the report, to be released Thursday. “Instead, our military has resisted change just as they have past efforts at reform. The Air Force and Navy are reemphasizing more traditional threats and downplaying the unexpected
threats we face today.”In fact, the Navy has tried to emphasize its so-called soft-power capabilities to combat terrorism, and senior Air Force officials seek to remind Congress that conventional threats, like those presented by China, still remain.
Congress is asking the same questions that many in and out of uniform have raised for some time. “After seven years of war, that we haven’t budged one inch away from the cold war apportionment of the budget to me is Kafka-esque,” said Robert Scales Jr., a retired Army major general, speaking last week at a think tank. “I just can’t
explain it. I don’t understand.”The Pentagon has begun its own internal review of roles and missions. But with budgetary planners essentially in limbo until a new administration arrives next year, it’s unclear how much impact such discussions will have, says Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at The Lexington Institute, a think tank outside Washington.
It may serve to create a debate in anticipation of the broader effort to review the nation’s strategic planning document, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). But when all is said and done, it’s likely that things will remain largely the same, Mr. Thompson says.
Insofaras Cooper is trying to spark a debate on reapportionment of the DoD budget (one I’m sure the 4-percenters will want in on), it’s a great move and long in coming. I’m a huge fan of Bob Scales and am tracking with him when it comes to budget frustration.
But don’t count the Iron-Triangle out…they don’t want any part of it.
But such talk of budgetary reform can sound like fighting words to some inside the Pentagon, as Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged earlier this month during hearings on Capitol Hill.
“What I worry about in this … is that, not done well, it has a tendency to turn services against each other,” Admiral Mullen said.
And moving money from one service to another can be politically insurmountable. Each service, with its own political constituency on Capitol Hill, carefully guards what belongs to it.
You got that right.
– Christian
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I tend to agree with this action. The thing is they all support each other but right now the Navy isnt doing the hard work, the work thats straining the military. The rail guns they are testing are great for some future war but right now that money could be much more effectively spent on equipment for combat troops.
The AF needs money to buy tankers and replace fighters that are old repair others. Equipment and pay is more than ever and they mone needs to be shifted were its needed, not stay where its traditionally gone.
The Pentagon and for that matter, the entire federal govt needs a major overhaul. Bueacracy has gotten so bad, its killing itself; waste, corruption and lack of oversight is too exceptible these days in he govt.
Please, let’s hope this doesn’t lead to more MRAPs at the expense of, say, badly needed Air Force tankers.
Maybe the USAF could save a small bit of money to buy a couple more F-22s if they made a simple personnel change and started using enlisted pilots instead of officers?
Fund more for our forces in Iraq & less for the DC bureaucrats.
Thanks or Fire the DC bureaucrats.
Win this war NOW.
More armor, more tanks?
More IFVs, drones, UCAV, artillary, Intelligence,
Improved air Recon vs satellite recon.
Move it.
Good Evening Folks,
Talk about money savings for the Air Force.
We have been told that the main justification for the F-22 is the next generation Russian and Chinese fighters. Well here’s a news flash the Russian Su-35 is now in production, 15 off the line so far and it’s for sale at a bargain nasement price of $35 Million each, delivered. India just bought 8 of the first 15.
Why not just buy the Su-35 and stop the F-22 and F-35 programs. This looks like an money saver to me. I don’t want to here about the foreign mafg. of weapons systems the Stryker is made in Canada because U.S. workers make to much money and have to pay for their health benifits.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
I’m all for change. And a review of this sort has been a long time coming.
But I continually wonder whether the Chinese (or even Russian) threats are severely over-hyped.
Even if the world went totally pear-shaped and the US found itself countering military threats from both China and Russia at the same time I can’t see them remaining a threat for long.
The US alone spends more annually on their defence forces than the total combined rest of the world.
The US shouldn’t be getting bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan for this long with no foreseeable direction forward. Sometimes it appears the power brokers choose to ignore or don’t learn from history’s lessons.
There needs to be a major re-think and not continuing to do things the same way just because that’s the way we’ve always done it.
It’s humourous sometimes that at the bottom of the food chain in the mere NCO ranks we’re continually told to remain flexible because plans can and will change.
But the very flexibility that is supposed to be instilled on each of us at the bottom of the pond is not reflected at the top of the same food chain.
The level of bureaucracy is beyond a joke.
This ought to be interesting…
“Cooper hopes the study will spark a broader debate about the need to reform national security, with new emphases on cybersecurity and nonmilitary government agencies.”
Expect a new manual on fighting from the military branches. The Air Force will most likely get more money because of their new commerical. The “Above All” motto now says that the AF focuses on Air, Space, and Cyberspace. The AF will get a bigger budget for cyberspace security, but will most likely have to work with the FBI, CIA, and most likely NSA because of their Internet operations.
@Byron Skinner -
There is a big difference between Canada and Russia and having our military products built in one country or the other.
$515 Billion – Pentagon Budget (without supplementals)
27% – $139,050,000,000 – Army
28% – $144,200,000,000 – Air Force
29% – $149,350,000,000 – Navy
84% – $436,600,000,000 – Total
Where is the other 16% or &78,400,000,000 Billion going? The “nonmilitary government agencies? Or is it going to be distributed among the 3 services, because the above numbers are only what they “asked for?”
@ Crass
$78,400,000,000 is being laundered to the USCG so that they can continue their top secret war against the predator machines that live under the south pole.
Good Morning Folks,
Well the Genie is out of the bottle with the EADS winning the tanker contract. Why not but a superior Russian fighter at one third the price of the F-35?
For Fox three: I guess the reason that U.S. trooprs are not picking up the AK-74 on the battlefield is because other then serving as a prop for bin Laden pgotp ops the only licenced countries to produce the AK-74 are India and South Korea, neither of which Bush has invaded. Also SOF types have been seen in the current wars sholdering AK-47′s. I think the guys who trust their lives to a rifle know sometbning that the DoD swivel chair commandos don’t.
Though I guess you have forgotten Vietnam, maybe you were to young where American ground troops willing exchanged there M-16′s for AK-47′s where ever they could. Or just this past year when a shoot off with two short piston gas operated (AK systems) beat out the M-4 that is Army issue in a 10K test that only went 6K before the M-4 cra**ed out.
Oh Fox Three, don’t bother mentioning the Chinese Type-090 Assualt Rifle.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner