Defense chief outlines military spending overhaul

[David]

AP


WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he is overhauling military spending to "profoundly reform how this department does business."

Outlining a $534 billion budget for 2009 that will slash funds for major weapons programs, Gates said Monday his moves amount to an "unorthodox approach" that would shift spending goals to concentrate on "wars we are in today and scenarios for the years ahead."

At a news conference to outline his budget, Gates says he closely consulted with President Barack Obama and top military leaders, but limited outside advice "because of the scope and significance of the changes."

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates is recommending cuts for high-tech weapons programs he calls wasteful or ill-suited for the low-tech tasks of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates was to lay out plans Monday to rearrange the huge Pentagon budget, some $534 billion for the coming year, to better address the wars the United States is fighting now and may fight in the future, Pentagon spokesmen said.

That could mean limiting or turning away from some expensive Cold War-era planes and ships — such as the $140 million-per-plane F-F-22 stealth fighter — that were designed to provide an edge against the Soviet Union and other former enemies.

President Barack Obama's proposed Pentagon budget for the 2010 budget year in February left out specifics on weapons programs, which have recently made up about a third of overall military spending.

The promised emphasis on budget paring is a reversal from the Bush years, which included a doubling of the Pentagon's spending since 2001.

Ahead of an afternoon news conference Monday, the Pentagon released no details on programs that Gates would recommend slashing, eliminating or expanding. Congress will make the final call, and many of threatened programs have strong advocates among lawmakers who will raise arguments about job losses in their home districts.

Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash. said Friday there were "a lot of systems that are going to be terminated. It's going to be a bloody Monday."

Gates himself has already pointed to a few programs, including the F-22 Raptor fighter plane, as examples of weapons that took on a life of their own despite delays and ballooning costs. He is expected to say Monday whether he wants to buy any more F-22s, which cost $140 million each and have yet to see combat.

Critics of the $65 billion program say it is sucking money from more immediate needs. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is under development, is seen by some as more versatile, realistic and cheaper, at about $80 million per plane.

Future funding for the radar-evading stealth fighter could affect nearly 100,000 jobs spread across virtually every state in the U.S.

Gates is on record as hesitant to build more than the 183 F-22s the U.S. is now committed to, but he faces opposition in Congress. A fleet of 750 was originally planned in the late 1980s, when the plane was being developed as a counterbalance to advanced fighters produced or planned by the Soviet Union.

Other programs that may be in for cuts include the Navy's Littoral combat ship and the Army's Future Combat Systems network.

The Government Accountability Office reported last week that 96 of the Pentagon's biggest weapons contracts were over budget by a "staggering" figure of $296 billion.

A bill in Congress would require the Pentagon to do a better job of making sure proposed weapons are affordable and perform the way they should before the military spends big sums on them. The Defense Department has already adjusted its acquisitions policy to achieve some of those goals.

[darrels joy]

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the Pentagon's top weapons priorities that he said will orient the U.S. military toward winning unconventional conflicts like the one in Afghanistan rather than focusing on war with major powers like China and Russia. Here, his remarks as prepared for delivery.

Today, I am announcing the key decisions I will recommend to the president with respect to the fiscal year 2010 defense budget. The president agreed to this unorthodox approach – announcing the department's request before the White House submits a budget to the Congress – because of the scope and significance of the changes. In addition, the president and I believe that the American people deserve to learn of these recommendations fully and in context, as the proposed changes are interconnected and cannot be properly communicated or understood in isolation from one another. Collectively, they represent a budget crafted to reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment. If approved, these recommendations will profoundly reform how this department does business.

In many ways, my recommendations represent the cumulative outcome of a lifetime spent in the national security arena and, above all, questions asked, experience gained, and lessons learned from over two years of leading this department – and, in particular, from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. I reached the final decisions after many hours of consultations with the military and civilian leadership of the department. I have also consulted closely with the president. But, I received no direction or guidance from outside this department on individual program decisions. The chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in complete accord with these recommendations. The chairman is traveling abroad but he has provided a statement that we will distribute at the end of the briefing.

My decisions have been almost exclusively influenced by factors other than simply finding a way to balance the books or fit under the "top line" – as is normally the case with most budget exercises. Instead, these recommendations are the product of a holistic assessment of capabilities, requirements, risks and needs for the purpose of shifting this department in a different strategic direction. Let me be clear: I would have made virtually all of the decisions and recommendations announced today regardless of the department's top line budget number.

The decisions have three principal objectives:

• First, to reaffirm our commitment to take care of the all-volunteer force, which, in my view represents America's greatest strategic asset;
• Second, we must rebalance this department's programs in order to institutionalize and enhance our capabilities to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies.
• Third, in order to do this, we must reform how and what we buy, meaning a fundamental overhaul of our approach to procurement, acquisition, and contracting.

People
With regard to the troops and their families, I will recommend that we:

1. Fully protect and properly fund the growth in military end strength in the base budget. This means completing the growth in the Army and Marines while halting reductions in the Air Force and the Navy. Accomplishing this will require a nearly $11 billion increase above the FY09 budget level.

2. Continue the steady growth in medical research and development by requesting $400 million more than last year.

3. Recognize the critical and permanent nature of wounded, ill and injured, traumatic brain injury, and psychological health programs. This means institutionalizing and properly funding these efforts in the base budget and increasing overall spending by $300 million. The department will spend over $47 billion on healthcare in FY10.

4. Increase funding by $200 million for improvements in child care, spousal support, lodging, and education.

Many of these programs have been funded in the past by supplementals.

We must move away from ad hoc funding of long-term commitments.

Thus, we have added money to each of these areas and all will be permanently and properly carried in the base defense budget. Together they represent an increase in base budget funding of $13 billion from last year.
A Home for the Warfighter

As I told the Congress in January, our struggles to put the defense bureaucracies on a war footing these past few years have revealed underlying flaws in the priorities, cultural preferences, and reward structures of America's defense establishment – a set of institutions largely arranged to prepare for conflicts against other modern armies, navies, and air forces. Programs to directly support, protect, and care for the man or woman at the front have been developed ad hoc and funded outside the base budget. Put simply, until recently there has not been an institutional home in the Defense Department for today's warfighter. Our contemporary wartime needs must receive steady long-term funding and a bureaucratic constituency similar to conventional modernization programs. I intend to use the FY10 budget to begin this process.


1. First, we will increase intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support for the warfighter in the base budget by some $2 billion. This will include:

• Fielding and sustaining 50 Predator-class unmanned aerial vehicle orbits by FY11 and maximizing their production. This capability, which has been in such high demand in both Iraq and Afghanistan, will now be permanently funded in the base budget. It will represent a 62 percent increase in capability over the current level and 127 percent from over a year ago.
• Increasing manned ISR capabilities such as the turbo-prop aircraft deployed so successfully as part of "Task Force Odin" in Iraq.
• Initiating research and development on a number of ISR enhancements and experimental platforms optimized for today's battlefield.

2. We will also spend $500 million more in the base budget than last year to increase our capacity to field and sustain more helicopters – a capability that is in urgent demand in Afghanistan. Today, the primary limitation on helicopter capacity is not airframes but shortages of maintenance crews and pilots. So our focus will be on recruiting and training more Army helicopter crews.

3. To boost global partnership capacity efforts, we will increase funding by $500 million. These initiatives include training and equipping foreign militaries to undertake counter terrorism and stability operations.

4. To grow our special operations capabilities, we will increase personnel by more than 2,800 or five percent and will buy more special forces-optimized lift, mobility, and refueling aircraft.

We will increase the buy of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) – a key capability for presence, stability, and counterinsurgency operations in coastal regions – from two to three ships in FY 2010. Our goal is to eventually acquire 55 of these ships.

5. To improve our inter-theater lift capacity, we will increase the charter of Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) ships from two to four until our own production program begins deliveries in 2011.

6. We will stop the growth of Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) at 45 versus 48 while maintaining the planned increase in end strength of 547,000. This will ensure that we have better-manned units ready to deploy, and help put an end to the routine use of stop loss. This step will also lower the risk of hollow

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1239...googlenews_wsj

[phuloi]

"First, to reaffirm our commitment to take care of the all-volunteer force, which, in my view represents America's greatest strategic asset"

Good luck. With our military conduct being overseen by some nit-witted panel of judiciary in Spain or the Hague, or by the UN or NATO, you can count on lots and lots of retirements and a steep downswing in recruitment. Can`t say that I`d blame them, I mean, who would want to serve a CinC that goes on a world tour and unabashedly runs America into the ground?