The Marine Corps is “assuming risk” now with equipment modernization and unavoidably will continue to do so during a decade-long period of fiscal austerity, Commandant Gen. James Amos said yesterday.
Amos addressed a Washington think tank two days after voters ensured the nation sticks with President Barack Obama’s defense-spending plans, which include shrinking the Marine Corps’ end strength from a previous level of 202,000 down to 182,000 troops.
The commandant said he sees the Pentagon “about a year and a half, two years in a period of austerity.” Looking at how military spending declined during past post-war times, he said such an austere fiscal climate could last “10 years, give or take a year.”
After anchoring Marine Corps planning around the intended 182,000-Marine end strength, Amos said he asked: “What is it I can do to be able to afford that force in a period of austerity?”
“Am I going to be able to buy all the things I want? No. am I going to be able to modernize the way I want? No,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
He pointed to how the service scaled back plans for the developmental Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), planning to buy 5,500 of them instead of 20,000 of the Humvee-replacement vehicles.
“I’ve turned to the Marine Corps and I said, figure out what’s good enough,” Amos said. “Get the newer-generation Humvees and let’s get them into the depots. Let’s get our 7-ton trucks instead of trying to buy a new one. Let’s get them into the depots, let’s get them refurbished, lets get them rebuilt. That’s good enough.”
“So inside the Marine Corps we’re assuming risk right now with regards to modernization,” he said.
Still, “there’s some things I absolutely have to modernize,” he noted, pointing to the MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft that are replacing aging CH-46 helicopters.
“Those (other) things that we don’t have to modernize we’re accepting risk in, and we’re going to live with them, during that period of austerity,” he said. “And when things begin to turn, and we start going through a period of transition, then we’ll start releasing the controls on that stuff.”
Amos said he tells his generals and senior colonels: “We are in this period of austerity, and damn it you better figure out what’s good enough, because we can’t afford everything.”