CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
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.