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Can DOD Measure the Resource Allocation for its Strategic Missions?
Travis | Mar 05, 2010 |
6 You may recall the policy debate over Afghanistan from last year:
Analyst 1: [Counterterrorism] is better. I go on first and clean the [foreign nation].
Analyst 2: [Counterinsurgency] is better. I leave the [foreign nation] silky and smooth.
Analyst 1: Oh, really, fool?
Analyst 2: Really.
[Fracas ensues…]
People feel strongly about other policy debates, too. For instance, some people feel that the United States is focusing too much on counterinsurgency. Others feel that nuclear terrorism has been overhyped.
Feelings are nice things. I enjoy feelings. But what do we spend?
Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously said, “If you broke this [fiscal year 2010] budget out, it would probably be about 10 percent for irregular warfare, about 50 percent for traditional, strategic, and conventional conflict, and about 40 percent dual-purpose capabilities.” He repeated the same breakdown when discussing this year’s fiscal year 2011 budget, remarking in February:
Of our research and development and procurement budget, roughly half of it goes for conventional modernization, unrelated to the current wars…[current war funding] represents somewhere between 7 and 10 percent of the budget. And then dual-capable capabilities, such as the C-17 and various other kinds of equipment, account for about 40 percent.
Mulling over this assessment, I asked DOD Comptroller Robert Hale about it during a conference call briefing in February. Here’s what he had to say:
Q Hi, this is Travis Sharp with the Center for a New American Security. Mr. Hale, thanks for taking the time with us today.
R. HALE: Sure.
Q My question is, for the second year in a row, Secretary Gates has thrown out this estimate where he says that 50 percent of the investment budget goes to conventional modernization, 40 percent goes to dual purpose, and 10 percent goes for irregular or current war operations. I'm interested if your office has any input on that. What's the analytical framework that's used to develop that? Is there any supporting documentation or anything? I've looked around for stuff but I haven't been able to find anything. Thanks.
[snip]
MR. HALE: The secretary wanted -- he wants to make a basic point that it's not as if we're ceasing to invest in a broad array of capabilities, because of his emphasis on today's wars.
[snip]
MR. HALE: But what I can't answer is, I don't know if they've ever actually published anything. I think the answer is probably no. These are internal estimates and you ought to take them as rough estimates because there is a lot of judgment; there's a lot of gray areas, and I know if they were here they would underscore that point.
But it's useful in a broad framework, I think. It's not -- the 10 percent for today's wars. Maybe it's 15 [percent] or 20 percent, maybe it's 4 [percent] or 5 [percent], but it's not 50 percent, and I think that's the point he's trying to get at.
Alright, so that was intriguingly squishy. The United States may spend somewhere between four and twenty percent of its investment budget on current conflicts, according to Hale. Gates’s overarching point is clear—the United States spends a relatively small portion of its budget on Iraq, Afghanistan, and other irregular operations—but there seems to be a lot of analytical wiggle room.
Not surprisingly, Gordon Adams noticed the same thing and spoke on it during his testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last week. Sayeth Adams:
The department itself will tell you that it cannot array its budget data by mission, that they have no way of doing that. That said, the secretary has said that of the procurement request 50 percent of the programs being bought are for long-range missions, 7 percent are closely axed on the war, and 40 percent -- the remaining 40 or 43 percent are dual use.
Frankly, if you can't array your budget data by mission I don't know how he knows that to be true. There is really no way the department can measure it. And when you look at how they are spending money as the GAO has probably repeatedly testified for you, they have said they don't have the budgeting, financial accounting and business systems that enable them to say here's where we're wasting money in the base budget. They simply can't answer the question, the consequence is then we pile next year's budget on top of last year's budget.
It would help the Pentagon, the Congress, defense experts, and the American public if DOD published an analytically defensible record of its spending by strategic mission. Tables 6-4 and 6-5 of the Green Book are the best thing we have, but those cannot present the type of broad resource allocation narrative that Adams thinks is imperative—and that Gates has already invoked two years in a row.
Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY2011 Budget Request (all tags)
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