Defense Lobbyists, Contractors Begin to Speculate Where Cuts Will Hit

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS

By Frank Oliveri

As lobbyists and defense contractors comb through President Obama’s new military strategy to anticipate where budget cuts might hit hardest, one key clue is the coming reduction in the size of the military’s ground force.

The Army could face cuts of up to 80,000 troops and the Marine Corps could come down by as much as 20,000, according to several sources.

The pending force reductions make cuts in the services’ acquisition programs — many of which are troubled — more likely, although it is not yet clear how these reductions will ripple through the services’ procurement plans.

The president’s strategy also appears to hedge just enough — emphasizing decisions that would be reversible, for example — to indicate some acquisition programs could be slowed and quantities reduced, rather than terminated outright.

Nonetheless, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter stressed Thursday that every program was carefully scrutinized and many were altered, but he deferred any questions about terminations and reductions to when the Pentagon plans to release its fiscal 2013 budget in a few weeks.

As a result, many defense experts were reluctant to offer any specific details on what might be terminated, reduced or, indeed, increased.

But the president’s new strategy clearly foreshadows decisions to come.

Gordon Adams, a military expert at the Stimson Center whose predictions about handling the builddown have mirrored many of the administration’s moves, noted that unlike after past wars, the Army comes out of the Iraq and Afghan wars with a significantly modernized force. Its fleet of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks and other equipment have been overhauled. The M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles of today are radically improved over their predecessors, which raced across the Kuwaiti desert in 1991.

“The Army’s equipment is in very good shape,” he said.

Those upgrades, however, could mean that other modernization programs planned for the Army, such as the expensive and controversial Ground Combat Vehicle and the Army-Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, each in development, could be slowed, or perhaps even terminated.

Additionally, controversial programs, such as a replacement armored amphibious assault vehicle and the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter variant being built for the Marines, also could be slowed further, or ended entirely.

Carter on Thursday was asked directly about the F-35B variant, which faces even greater challenges than the deeply troubled Air Force and Navy variants, but deferred comment on the fighter until the budget is released.

 

‘Age of Austerity’

Nora Bensahel, a military expert at the Center for New American Security, noted that the new strategy hews very closely to one of the scenarios in an October study she helped author titled “Hard Choices: Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity.”

That scenario, which envisions future spending reductions of about $501 billion over 10 years, relies heavily on naval and aerial forces, and a sizable expeditionary ground force. But it would require fewer weapons platforms and troops to execute a global engagement strategy.

It would focus on protecting U.S. interests in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, the Middle East, the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean basin, while accepting greater risk and longer response times in other regions of the world.

It also would emphasize modernization and upgrades for outdated equipment. But the scenario would suggest significant reductions in the planned purchase of the F-35 fighter, and a reduction in the purchase of the Marines’ coveted V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft.

Bensahel noted that special operations forces, which have seen significant increases over the past decade, will continue to receive strong support within the Pentagon.

But overall the Army would have fewer platforms and fewer troops to meet its global commitments.
Bensahel also suggested that the Army might shift some of its heavier armored combat brigades into the Guard and Reserves, where those capabilities would be maintained in case bigger-scale combat operations are required.

“This strategy was written with a lot of flexibility,” she said.

Adams said, however, that where the procurement budget, and particularly the Army and Marines, could see significant reductions is in areas other than major weapons systems, such as trucks, ammunition, front-end loaders, and other common equipment.

Such equipment represents roughly 60 percent of the overall procurement budget, and according to Adams, who oversaw military budgets under the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget, typically takes a big hit during a budget downturn.

“The reason you do that is politically it’s not as visible and contractors are not as influential,” Adams said. “If what they are saying is we are cutting back on the ground forces — 80,000 from the Army and 20,000 from the Marine Corps — then the actual requirement for that equipment will shrink. That part of the force is driven by the size of the force.”

Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, noted that defense officials could end up cutting the force size even more, which would affect the specific program choices. Indeed, the Pentagon could face additional budget pressure in future years, making this only an opening salvo in what could become a prolonged budget reduction cycle.

The Pentagon was directed via the bipartisan Budget Control Act (PL 112-25) to find about $489 billion in savings, according to defense officials, over the next 10 years. But the failure of a joint committee created to find another $1.2 trillion in federal savings to achieve its goal, has exposed the Pentagon to roughly another $450 billion in automatic reductions over the same period.

Many lawmakers on the right have expressed a desire to legislatively sidestep the prescribed military reductions in future spending, arguing as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta does, that it would devastate the military. Panetta, however, has made it clear that Congress needs to find the savings required by law. The president also has indicated he would block any effort to legislatively avoid further military cuts in lieu of finding $1.2 trillion in federal spending savings.

The political standoff portends a contentious year in which defense policy and fiscal reality run full force into political brinkmanship in an election year.

“I don’t think we’re at the end of this,” Knight said.

Military Faces Historic Shift: Obama Plan Would Slash Army, Limit Ability to Ensure Long-Term Conflict

Julian E. Barnes and Nathan Hodge
Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Thursday proposed a historic shift in the U.S. military's size and ambitions, scaling back its ability to wage the type of war and occupation that just concluded in Iraq as the administration seeks to cut defense spending over the next decade.

Under the proposal, the Army would face a 14% reduction in troops—leaving it with too few to conduct two grueling ground wars at once, long a strategic imperative of the Defense Department. The plan also indicates reductions in the nation's nuclear arsenal and a delay in the Pentagon's most expensive weapons, such as the F-35 stealth jet made by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Overall, the plan envisions shrinking military spending by $487 billion over 10 years, a cut of about 8% in coming years, according to Pentagon figures. While the president has wide latitude to set military priorities, specific cuts the Pentagon will announce in coming weeks must be approved by Congress.

President Obama said the nation was "turning the page" on a decade of war. But the president and Pentagon leaders said they weren't abandoning the U.S. role as the pre-eminent global power

"Our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats," he said in a rare appearance by a president at the Pentagon.

Announcement of the strategy prompted a swift response from Republicans. Sen John McCain (R., Ariz.) said the U.S. couldn't afford a "budget-driven defense strategy" but said he would review the document released by the administration. "I understand the need for reductions in defense spending, but we must also address the broader cultural problem plaguing our defense establishment: the waste, inefficiency, and ineffective programs," Sen. McCain said.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno of the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think tank that often is aligned with the administration, said the plan "fails to address the elephant in the room: whether this strategy can hold up under the weight of further defense cuts," particularly additional cuts contained in the debt-ceiling agreement Congress reached last year.

But Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, which advocates more aggressive defense-spending cuts, said the administration's plans were "only baby steps" toward greater fiscal restraint.

"The first strategic priority of the United States today is to get its economic house in order," he said. "Doing this means spending less on the military in coming years."

Criticism is likely to grow in coming weeks as details of the cuts emerge. Key Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, have proposed increases in defense spending, and have criticized proposed Pentagon cutbacks in the past.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the military still will be able to respond to multiple crises at once, deterring aggression around the globe. "Make no mistake, we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time," he said.

But, he said, "the Army and Marine Corps will no longer be sized to support the large-scale, long-term stability operations that dominated military priorities…over the past decade."

Mr. Obama said he wouldn't repeat the mistakes of past administrations by crippling the military through postwar cuts. But some Pentagon officials—anxious to stave off the possibility of further reductions—said the proposed reductions will be as deep as those after Vietnam and the Cold War when cuts in annual emergency war spending are counted.

Details of the cuts will be announced in coming weeks as part of the Pentagon budget.

Defense officials said the Army, currently at 570,000, likely will shrink to about 490,000.

A strategy document released Thursday said the military will be redesigned to fight one war using air, land and sea forces, while still being able to take on involvements in another region.

Mr. Panetta and defense contractors have argued for months that the planned cuts, while tolerable, are quite steep. But they have contended that an additional $500 billion to $600 billion in cuts over the next 10 years triggered by last year's congressional deal on the country's debt ceiling would be ruinous for the military.

"The capability, readiness and agility of the force will not be sustained if Congress fails to do its duty and the military is forced to accept far deeper cuts," Mr. Panetta said Thursday. "That would force us to shed missions and commitments and capabilities that we believe are necessary to protect core U.S. national security interests. And it would result in what we think would be a demoralized and hollow force."

The strategy document reflects the Obama administration's preference for operations such as the war in Libya, which entailed a large coalition of nations and no U.S. ground forces. The strategy also touts the utility of U.S. special operations forces, which have decimated the leadership of al Qaeda.

Also emphasized in the new strategy are counterterrorism operations—missions using special operations forces that create only a small overseas footprint and work with local forces.

Intelligence and surveillance will take on increasingly important roles, meaning the Air Force fleet of unmanned drones is likely to grow.

A new U.S. emphasis on Asia is reinforced by the strategy as the Pentagon plans to shift its focus and resources away from Europe. The Pentagon sees challenges in China's military modernization and is planning the new military approach to more aggressively counter Beijing's "anti-access" technologies, weapons such as China's DF-21D antiship ballistic missile, used for keeping U.S. ships at greater distances.

Mr. Obama approved a buildup of forces in Afghanistan, but administration officials have always viewed counterinsurgency operations with skepticism. The new strategy reflects the administration's view that counterinsurgency conflicts are too costly, while yielding murky results and incremental gains for international security.

Defense officials said they wouldn't abandon the military's expertise in conducting stability operations, but would move some of the resources to military reserves. That would preserve the ability of the Army to conduct limited counterinsurgency.