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CBO: Defense Budget Must Increase $33B to Execute Current Plans
Travis | Nov 19, 2009 |
0 Discussing U.S. defense plans with the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, CBO’s Matthew Goldberg echoed a common refrain: we don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do.
Excluding costs for Afghanistan and Iraq, the average annual budget required to carry out current U.S. defense plans will be $567 billion between 2011 and 2028, according to CBO. That funding level is six percent ($33 billion) greater than the Obama administration’s FY 2010 request of $534 billion...
The four factors CBO identified as driving long-term growth are:
- The likelihood of continued real growth in pay and benefits for DOD’s military and civilian personnel;
- The projected increases in the costs of operation and maintenance (O&M) for aging equipment as well as for newer, more complex equipment;
- DOD’s plans to develop and field advanced weapon systems to replace many of today’s military systems that are nearing the end of their service lives; and
- Investments in new capabilities, such as advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems, to meet emerging security threats.
With the added effects of inflation, President Obama would really have to jack up defense budgets in the years ahead to execute current plans. Thankfully for us, however, current plans in this context can more or less be defined as “plans Obama inherited from Bush.” While certain cost drivers such as personnel play a huge role and are here to stay, two opportunities are approaching for Obama to mitigate (or possibly exacerbate) the mismatch between strategy and resources.
In the QDR, the Obama administration can reinterpret U.S. security strategy and the resultant procurement/budget requirements. And in the FY 2011 budget request, which Team Obama will have had a full year to work on unlike the FY 2010 request that was dropped in their laps, the administration can continue the much-needed rebalancing of resources that Secretary Gates initiated this year.
The procurement norm is for the Pentagon to undertake more weapons programs than the future years defense plan can possibly sustain. This is accomplished by low-balling initial cost estimates to secure political buy-in and then citing sunk costs later on as the reason to keep going even after systems have suffered cost growth and schedule slippages.
The norm is not going to be eliminated by the Obama administration, but perhaps it can be ameliorated - to the extent possible with so many stakeholders – by clearly defining strategic requirements and then limiting procurement to weapons programs that support the strategy. Though it sounds simple enough, in practice it becomes a complete clusterf***.
Security Matters, Acquisition, Defense Spending (all tags)
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