By William Matthews
Defense News, 29 October 2007
The 2008 war-funding supplemental, which now tops $196 billion, bulges with spending not directly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The spending request includes more than $3.8 billion for research and development for new weapons, $7.8 billion for buying new planes and upgrading existing Navy and Air Force aircraft, and billions for upgrading Army and Marine Corps weapons.
On Oct. 22, U.S. President George W. Bush added $45.9 billion to his original $150.5 billion request to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism.
Some Democrats in the House and Senate are balking at the new request, which is the largest since Bush began sending war-funding bills to Congress in 2001.
“Every line item will be scrutinized,” vowed Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Hearings will be held to determine the need for this spending request. Tough questions will be asked of this administration. There will be no blank checks.”
The request is in addition to $507 billion the president wants for non-war military spending in 2008.
The size of the president’s war-funding bills have jumped since October 2006, when Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the military services they could start counting many more expenses as “war costs,” a Congressional Research Service (CRS) official told the House Budget Committee Oct. 24.
Since then, the services have added billions of dollars to the supplementals to buy new, more modern equipment and add new technology to existing equipment, officials from the CRS and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told the committee.
Supplementals are a tempting source of money for services seeking to augment their annual procurement accounts because they are not subject to the same federal caps that apply to the regular defense budget.
So instead of simply repairing damaged tanks, the Army uses war funds to have them upgraded, pushing the cost to about $5 million per tank — substantially more than the cost of just repairing them, CBO Director Peter Orszag said.
More than 40 percent of the Army’s most recent requests for “reset” funding — about $14 billion — has not been for repairing or replacing war-damaged gear, but for adding new capabilities to equipment, for buying equipment to relieve shortfalls unrelated to the wars and for buying equipment “whose requirements have not been fully vetted,” the CBO reported.
The Army used 2007 war funds to replace 40 helicopters that were destroyed in operations and accidents unrelated to the wars, the agency reported.
The Air Force, meanwhile, has tried to use war funding to replace F-16s with Joint Strike Fighters and to buy V-22 tiltrotor aircraft. Those items were dropped from the 2007 supplemental after members of Congress objected.
But the 2008 war-funding request includes almost $4 billion for buying and upgrading Air Force aircraft.
In 2007 and again for 2008, the Navy has sought to use war funding to buy EA-18G electronic warfare planes even though the planes are still under development.
After England told the services that supplemental requests could include items deemed necessary for “the long war on terror,” war-funding supplementals have more than doubled in size, CRS defense budget specialist Amy Belasco told the House Budget Committee. They jumped from $72 billion in 2004 to $165 billion in 2007, and to $196 billion requested for 2008.
“A large share of the increase in the supplemental is in procurement,” money budgeted for buying new equipment, Orszag told the committee. That raises questions about how much of the war supplementals is really for the wars, he said.
In a message that accompanied his $45.9 billion add-on Oct. 22, Bush said the money he wants would “provide additional resources for ongoing military and intelligence operations in support of” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “and selected other international activities.”
R&D Funds Requested
The request includes at least $3 billion to be spent on research and development of equipment that may not be available to troops for years.
The Navy, for example, is seeking $131 million to develop a next-generation jammer for its EA-18G. The electronic warfare plane itself is still in the testing phases and won’t be ready for at least two years.
The Air Force wants $202 million to spend upgrading engines on A-10 attack planes and to develop a “massive ordnance penetrator” — an earth-penetrating “bunker-buster” bomb — to be dropped from B-2 bombers.
The bunker-buster request worries some members of Congress, including Rep. James Moran, D-Va., who said he sees little need for such a bomb for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that the president is making the request in order to equip the Air Force to strike targets in Iran.
The Defense Department is also asking for $630 million to develop “wide area service architecture networks” to improve communications for the National Security Agency.
“Always, one of the questions we raise whenever war supplementals come through is: How directly connected to the war is this funding?” said Christopher Hellman, a defense budget analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
“You can argue that some R&D money does belong” in the supplemental, Hellman said. Developing better ways to detect and disable improvised explosive devices [IEDs], for example, is directly applicable to the Iraq war.
The 2008 war-funding request includes $416 million “to expedite completion” of a replacement hospital for Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“That just doesn’t belong in an emergency war-funding bill,” Hellman said — it’s a base-closing expense that belongs in the regular annual military construction bill.
The war-spending bill also includes $950 billion for upgrading Navy P-3 aircraft. The Navy wants to modify the planes, which were built to be submarine hunters, by adding radars that are able to spot ground targets.
Other items in the war-funding bill:
- Five Navy EA-18G aircraft for $375 million.
- A Navy F/A-18E/F Hornet fighter for $54.5 million.
- Three Navy MH-60S helicopters for $102.3 million.
- $22 million for shipboard information warfare and C4I equipment.
- $609 million for Air Force UAVs and modifications to A-10, F-15, F-16 and E-8C aircraft.
The bill also seeks $11 billion for 7,274 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and $3.1 billion to buy armor and other protection against IEDs.
Another $8.8 billion would go toward replacing equipment worn and damaged in the wars and replenishing depleted prepositioned war supplies, and $1.4 billion would be spent building airfields, roads and other facilities. å
Citation: William Matthews. "Bush's Supplemental Request Has Non-War Spending," Defense News, 29 October 2007.
Original URL: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3134494&C=america