By Emelie Rutherford
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), the head of a key defense panel in Congress, said he plans to push next session for instituting capital budgeting at the Pentagon and making the Air Force’s tanker competition a dual buy.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee also predicted there will be increased budgetary pressure on the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, and that lawmakers in the near future will examine nascent Pentagon plans for a follow-on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP) effort.
Abercrombie talked to Defense Daily Wednesday about his plans for the subcommittee during the congressional session that starts in January, assuming he retains his posts.
Overall, he said he shares the priorities of House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)–including articulating a national-security policy that includes diplomacy and focuses on the war in Afghanistan, and ensuring the readiness of Army and Marine Corps personnel in theater.
“The requirements in that area [of readiness] are so dire right now that immediate action is required,” the Hawaii lawmaker said in a phone interview.
“And that inevitably then will bring to the forefront what has been avoided pretty much up to this time, which is the question of financing weapon systems–FCS, or anything else, I can go to tanker, I can go to F-35s (fighter aircraft), you can go to failure to be able to build ships that are capable of sailing, across the board all these weapon systems that are all cash financed–and the contradiction between capital spending and operational spending can no longer be avoided.”
Abercrombie is hoping in the early days of the new administration the Congress and president will pass legislation bringing about capital budgeting–multi-year planning and funding of non-operational expenses via financing arrangements–or a similar setup. A supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Abercrombie predicted this scenario would be much more likely if Obama is elected president than if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) prevails.
“You cannot continue to cash finance defense,” the congressman said. “There was a fatal contradiction here between operational expenditures and capital acquisitions,” he said, decrying the practice of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through periodic emergency-supplemental funding bills that supersede the regular congressional budgeting process and have limited oversight.
If this continues, he said, “not only will the spending continue to run amok, but…it will have no rational nexus with the actual security interests of the United States.”
Capital budgeting would force the Pentagon to prioritize and adhere to weapon systems plans, he said, lamenting the services’ shifting plans for the FCS program, ships, and fighter jets.
“The numbers bounce back and forth year by year,” he said. “‘We absolutely have to have 383 fill-in-the-blanks.’ And the very next year you say, ‘You know, we can get by with 187.’ And you start saying, ‘Wait a minute, did the strategy change, did the configuration of world threats alter?’ No, the budget altered.”
Key decisions will be made under the next administration about extending the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built F-22 fighter jet and Boeing [BA]-built C-17 cargo aircraft production lines. Abercrombie said that if Obama becomes president “everything’s on the table,” and that he hopes any Pentagon officials who did not give candid recommendations in the past will do so in the next administration.
Focusing more on readiness, he said, means a greater emphasis on investment in troops’ recruitment, training, retainment, and longterm health care.
The Army is giving up too much in terms of readiness to fit FCS–the $160 billion modernization program steered by Boeing and SAIC [SAI]–into its budget plans, Abercrombie maintains.
“Explain to me, for example, how are you going to expand the end-strength and fund FCS at the same time,” he said, adding: “Just in the parts of the services that I have responsibility for, the Air Force and the Army, I can cite for you two or three different things by way of weapon systems or modernization that are adversely impacting the capacity of either of those services to deliver on the readiness quotient that is necessary today, as we’re speaking….The inherent contradictions have now caught up with us.”
Abercrombie noted past congressional support for buying approximately 15,000 MRAPs for troops in theater. He stopped short of predicting Congress will instantly support a new follow-on “MRAP Lite” effort brewing at the Pentagon, for lighter MRAP-like vehicles for Afghanistan.
“I think there’s a predisposition on the part of the Congress, at least the members that are there now, that have had some experience with this, to be very very tuned in to the question of the utility of MRAPs in their variations,” he said. “But to the degree and extent that that’s now appropriate vis-a-vis Afghanistan, I think we have to have that conversation, and I expect we will very, very shortly,” he said, adding a congressional hearing is likely.
Looking ahead to the next session, Abercrombie said he plans to make a concerted push for a dual procurement of the Air Force aerial refueling tanker contract over which Boeing and a Northrop Grumman [NOC]-European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) team are battling.
The Pentagon last month canceled the tanker competition–itself a do-over of an earlier flawed source selection–leaving the next administration to restart it. Current Pentagon leadership opposes a dual buy. Congressional support appears to be increasing, though lawmakers backing Boeing are adamantly opposed.
Abercrombie floated the dual-procurement option months ago. He said there is room for each bidder’s proposed aircraft, which are different sizes and can fly different distances.
“It has legislative appeal because it spreads the wealth, and at the same time allows you to get the job done,” he said. “But the other part of it is that the Congress has stood back and essentially passively watched this take place now for a number of years, two or three iterations. And I told (Skelton), I said I’m not going to do that anymore, I’m the Air chairman, I am not going to have somebody looking at me saying, ‘No, we kept the old tankers in the air. Oh, guess what, one of them feel down. Oh, the guys got killed. Oh isn’t that too bad.’ No, no, no, no, no. We gave them their chance, they didn’t get it done, so now we’ll make the decision. And that’s going to be my view and that’s what I’m going to propose.”