Defense Budget to Reach $380 Billion
The Defense Department’s massive spending increase in fiscal
year 2003 is the biggest boost the Pentagon’s budget has received
since 1982. Most of the $48 billion increase will fund the war on
terrorism, pay raises for the military service members and health
care benefits for military retirees. It also includes a $10 billion
war reserve for contingency operations.
There is, however, a substantial increase—of about $8 billion—for
procurement of new equipment.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the new modernization
funding is badly needed. As equipment continues to age, he said,
“You end up trying to take a 1934 Oldsmobile and prop it up
for another five, six years, and there’s a point beyond which
that doesn’t make good sense.
“We don’t get rewards for having antiques in the military,”
Rumsfeld said.
One Pentagon account that will take a hit this year is military
construction, said a congressional staffer. “That could turn
into a potential bloodbath,” the staffer said. The Bush administration
proposed a $1.5 billion cut in military construction for fiscal
2003. According to the staffer, the cuts were part of an agreement
between the administration and members of Congress who wanted to
postpone BRAC until 2005.
Army O&M Accounts Hard to Track
The most difficult-to-track pot of money in the Defense Department
is the Army’s operations and maintenance accounts, known as
O&M, said a congressional analyst during a recent conference
with defense contractors. O&M is a broad spending category that
pays for everything from day-to-day combat operations to training
and equipment maintenance. In fiscal 2002, for example, the Army’s
O&M funding is $23 billion. “You don’t know who
the people are who spend this money,” the analyst told contractors.
“It’s like the black hole of Calcutta.” The bottom
line for contractors, he said, is that the money has to be spent
by September 30, so companies seeking business opportunities in
the spare-parts and after-market equipment business should get busy.
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Lack of Interoperability Hampers Transformation
There are “fundamental interoperability problems” between
the services, which constitute barriers to the so-called transformation
of the military, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, director
for force structure, resources and assessment on the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. “The focus is still on systems and platform capabilities,
with inconsistent information sources,” he said. “There
are many authorities and stakeholders who are not linked to key
decisions. The objective is to integrate requirements, and bring
together resource planning and acquisition management,” he
said.
“We must define the requirements to improve war-fighting
capability overall. In 2020, potential adversaries will have access
to much of the same technologies that we have, and weapons of mass
destruction raise the risks and political consequences,” said
Carlson. “Broadening and integrating our capabilities will
offer better results than point solutions in single capabilities.”
he said.
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Levin: Storing Nukes is a Risk
By storing rather than destroying nuclear warheads, the administration
is taking a high risk of encouraging further nuclear proliferation,
said Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services
Committee. Levin stated he was disappointed with the Bush administration’s
posture review on the reduction of the nuclear arsenal.
In his opinion, the administration is “simply deciding unilaterally
that we are going to take some weapons off planes and put them in
a warehouse—ready to go back on planes in a matter of weeks
or days. … Proliferation leads to the weapons of mass destruction
in the hands of terrorism.”
The administration’s current “reduction efforts,”
he said, are not true cutbacks in the arsenal, but rather “a
transfer from one place to another. … [This is] very different
from irreversible reduction.”
Mogadishu Veteran Ponders ‘Lessons Learned’
During the Washington, D.C., premiere of the movie Black Hawk Down,
former helicopter commander for the 160th company, Army Col. Thomas
Matthews, told National Defense that, Hollywood hoopla notwithstanding,
there are serious lessons to be learned from the October 1993 battle
of Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 18 American soldiers died.
“I think the lesson to be learned is, when you commit the
military to an operation you need to understand that that is serious
business,” he said. “If you are going to conduct combat
operations you need to be willing to accept the consequences of
using these precious resources—our soldiers—for such
an effort.
“We set out to capture two people that day, and we did,”
he said. “We were conducting combat operations, and when you
do that there is a potential cost for that.” After a 28-year
military career, Matthews retired last February, and now works at
the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Director Ridley Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and actors Josh
Hartnett, Tom Sizemore and William Fichter were present at the event,
but they were largely ignored by the Washington press. Rumsfeld
posed for pictures with Secretary of the Army Thomas White, Reagan
administration Iran-Contra figure Oliver North.