FY 2011 Defense Budget: Bigger and Worse?

December and January are when the Pentagon, OMB, and the White House put the finishing touches on the defense budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. These months are great because of all the leaks, misinformation, spin, and half-assed speculation that accompany the few nuggets of truly reliable information.

In what appears to be a golden nugget, Defense News last week reported that the Obama administration plans to add $100 billion to the defense budget between 2011 and 2015. This infusion of funds will mean that the defense budget will increase above and beyond the effects of inflation. In contrast, this year’s FY 2010 budget projected future spending increasing only enough to keep up with inflation.

For insight about what this spending increase might mean, Defense News TV yesterday interviewed one of the most informed, least spun, and best connected defense observers in Washington: Gordon Adams, aka “The Don Corleone of Defense Budgets.” Adams was frank about the contradiction between spending increases and acquisition reforms:

As a bottom line, you get no reform when you increase the budget…If the objective here is a real reform in acquisition, or a real reform in management, or a real reform in operations programs, you’re not going to get it when you’re increasing the budget. That’s just an iron law.

Watch it: