By Jen DiMascio
The nation is spending so much to upgrade equipment that had been damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Army could wind up with better equipment after the war than it had going into the conflict, the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told lawmakers yesterday.
The revelation came along with new calculations of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in light of the president’s $42.3 billion amendment to the supplemental budget request. That request will raise the total cost of the war to more than $800 billion, according to the CBO.
Democrats, who pounced on the increase in the cost of the war during a House Budget Committee hearing yesterday attended by few Republicans, urged the administration to begin paying for the war to rein in the impact on the nation’s future economic outlook.
“As the war has gone on, instead of diminishing, the cost of the war is going up and up and up,” said Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, during the hearing.
At least part of that increase is due to reset costs that have risen steadily throughout the war. For instance, the president’s amended budget request adds $10 billion to last year’s request for reset, Spratt said.
A separate CBO report on Army reset delved more deeply into the issue and found that about $14 billion does not repair or replace equipment from overseas but is used to upgrade old equipment, eliminate existing shortfalls or replace pre-positioned stocks.
The fund includes money to recapitalize Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the most current digitized versions.
According to the Congressional Research Service(CRS), lawmakers considering the supplemental request might want to ask whether those upgrades are actually urgent if they take one to three years for delivery.
“Given the lead time to buy such new systems, the Army may rely on its current inventory to provide equipment rotating back with units, which is possible since the Army is generally using 20 percent or less of its inventory in theater and in many cases already has upgraded equipment available to send to the Iraq and Afghan theater,” wrote CRS analyst Amy Belasco in testimony for the committee.
Belasco’s report attributed some of the recent increase to a memo issued last year by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England that broadened the definition of what could be included in a supplemental request.
The revision allowed the services to begin including the cost of repairing equipment damaged or lost in the war and replacement to newer models “when existing equipment is no longer available or repair economically feasible,” the memo said (Defense Daily, Oct. 27, 2006).
The Army has been up front about the need to upgrade its equipment and make its brigades as consistently equipped as possible. The service has sought over the past several years to repair war-torn equipment and to make up for shortfalls in funding that lasted through the 1990s.
Senior service officials have said in the past that the Army and Marine Corps will need $18 billion for reset each year the nation stays in Iraq and for two to three years after major combat operations end.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army’s chief of programs, reiterated the Army’s need for $13 billion for reset earlier this month at the Association of the United States Army conference.