f136 (F-35 extra engine) prototype

The saga continues in the fight to fund the F-35 extra engine.  Today, the House voted 233-198 on an amendment that would cancel the program.

The vote split both Republicans and Democrats, with over 100 Republicans and around 130 Democrats voting yes.  Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) took the lead on the amendment, crediting House GOP leaders with allowing a vote on the issue despite Speaker John Boehner’s opposition.

Freshman Republicans in the House were initially hesitant to trim military spending, but have since broken ranks with their party’s speaker to include $16 billion in military cuts in the current spending bill.  Cutting the F-35 extra engine would save an additional $450 million.

House GOP leaders hope to pass the overall spending bill later this week, which would fund the government through the end of the current fiscal year, but the buck does not stop there.  The bill then goes to the Senate.  Funding for the extra engine could be among the many changes that are made.

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, F-35, Extra Engine, FY 2011 (all tags)

Defense geeks are abuzz: A draft version of the Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) was obtained yesterday by Defense News.  The Pentagon’s major planning document, spearheaded by Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, will shape U.S. defense posture around the globe for the next several years and likely influence the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget.  

The document “Acknowledges and puts top priority on succeeding in today’s conflicts,” but also places a major emphasis on the balance between “near and longer-term risks.”  It states that the FY 2011 budget will build on FY 2010, placing additional attention on “key lines of investment.”  These include, “our troops and our people” and “how we buy and operate.”

Gone is the focus on fighting two peer militaries simultaneously, which has existed as a pervasive part of the QDR since the 1990s.  The Pentagon will scrap that concept, “in order to prepare the services for a wider and more complex array of security challenges,” notes Jason Sherman.

Spencer Ackerman points out that this new focus is better because it is centered on existing capabilities: “Not on people. Not on states. Not on specific enemies. But on capabilities that hostile actors have demonstrated to use against the United States and its allies.”

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY 2011, QDR (all tags)

Freeze? What Freeze?

An article in the Washington Independent today, in which I’m quoted, points to one – particularly glaring – problem with President Obama’s proposed spending freeze: Why does the proposal exclude defense spending?

From the piece, by Spencer Ackerman:

But while Obama did not rule out future defense cuts in the speech, many of these defense wonks could not understand why an effort at deficit reduction would explicitly exclude defense spending. “Defense spending is over half our discretionary spending,” Olson said. “It would be crazy not to include it. It begs the question whether this is a real effort.” Shortly before the speech, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the House, told reporters that any spending freeze ought to include defense spending.

[snip]

Still, Todd Harrison, an defense-budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said he believed the combination of massive defense budgets, massive federal deficits and a weak economy would inevitably compel Congress and the president to cut defense. “It’s likely in the future that everything will come under pressure, defense included,” Harrison said. But he conceded that a variable in that calculation is “political will” for such cuts — which is not in evidence in either the White House or, especially, the Congress, which loves to send defense money back home to individual states and districts.

Also today, Fred Kaplan writes that, “If some Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1982, woken up in 2009, and looked at the U.S. military budget as an indicator of what was going on in the world, he would assume that the Cold War were still raging.”  He notes that, while every aspect of the Pentagon’s budget should not be subject to a spending freeze, there is certainly a large chunk that should.

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY 2011, Shameless Self-Promotion (all tags)

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted a meeting with top defense company executives for the first time since 2008, where he stressed the need for a closer partnership and pledged to work with the White House to “secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time.”

Steady growth seems likely, since recent reports indicate that the President’s upcoming defense budget request will increase from $636.3 billion to a record $708 billion in FY 2011. This number does not include an additional $33 billion in supplemental appropriations, set to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But although Gates has called for ‘steady’ growth, he has also vowed to kill many unneeded and troubled programs.  

Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn reiterated the criteria that senior Pentagon leaders have used to determine which weapon programs will be cut or curtailed in FY 2011: “Our criteria for exercising program discipline are clear: programs that are performing poorly, either over budget or behind schedule or delivering less capability than promised, open themselves up to reconsideration.”

In addition, Reuters reports that, “it looks like mounting public concern about federal spending and the sharply widening budget deficit are likely to curb the ability of lawmakers to pump money back into programs targeted for termination as they have in the past.”

Draft budget documents obtained this week show Gates is seeking to end seven weapons programs in FY 2011, including two that were rescued from the eight-item kill list last year -- Boeing Co's C-17 transport plane and a second engine for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet.

Other new terminations are less surprising, including a new Navy cruiser and a program to replace the Navy's EP-3 surveillance plane, while some programs, such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious vehicle being developed for the Marine Corps by General Dynamics Corp that has experienced problems in the past, have apparently escaped the axe, at least for now.

The U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review and FY 2011 budget request will be released one week from today.  Until then, the speculation continues.

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY 2011 (all tags)