Four Washington think tanks agreed the Army should significantly reduce its ground forces and the Navy should retire two to four aircraft carriers while the military overall should boost its space and cyber capabilities, according to the results of a joint strategic and budgetary exercise unveiled Wednesday.
The think tanks–American Enterprise Institute, Center for a New American Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments–had just under two weeks to use an online tool CSBA created to craft two budget scenarios, one being full sequestration and the other splitting the difference between sequestration and the spending path set out in the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request. The tool included about 800 options for capabilities, platforms, personnel and more to cut or add from the FY ’14 baseline to achieve the spending target.
Overall, the think tanks chose to cut readiness over the Future Years Defense Program, or through FY ’19, and then buy back some of that readiness in the next FYDP, or FY ’20 to ’24. They tended to make the same cuts in both budget scenarios and use the extra money in the half-sequester scenario to invest in different capabilities–leading event moderator and CSBA defense budget senior fellow Todd Harrison to conclude the chosen cuts were strategic decisions rather than budgetary ones.
For example, despite all the attention given to aircraft carriers as a visible sign of American overseas presence and power projection, all four groups chose to cut carriers. CNAS and CSBA cut two carriers in both scenarios, CSIS cut three in both scenarios and AEI cut four in both scenarios. Given the additional funding in the half-sequestration scenario, the groups chose to invest in research and development or modernization efforts rather than restoring the carrier cuts. Harrison noted during the presentation that all four groups made these cuts via cancellation of the mid-life refueling and complex overhauls rather than canceling the construction of new carriers, a nod to both the needs of the industrial base and the leap-ahead capability the new class of aircraft carrier brings.
Convincing Congress to approve of cuts to the carrier fleet seems unlikely, however. The House Armed Services Committee in particular has made clear time and time again it would not change requirement for the Navy to maintain a fleet of at least 11 carriers.
Harrison said after the event that there seems to be quite a bit of consensus among analysts in Washington even if Congress and the Defense Department do not agree with the recommendations.
“I think the A-10 probably stands out,” he noted. “All four of the teams in both budget scenarios retired the A-10s from the active component, and that is something that, the trial balloon has been out there and members of Congress are already lining up against it.”
Harrison also noted that all four groups supported retiring the U-2 reconnaissance airplane, which has been in operations since the 1950s, and retaining the Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
“The Air Force has proposed doing the opposite, keeping the U-2s and retiring the Global Hawks,” Harrison said. “So I think that shows there’s consensus on the outside that goes against the grain both ways, both against Congress and with the Pentagon.”
The think tanks came into this two-week exercise with the understanding that their suggestions could fall on deaf ears. But Harrison said he hoped that the eight spending plans from the four groups would at the very least spark some discussion among lawmakers and military officials.
“We’re putting it out there to try to help raise the level of debate and get people to discuss the big issues and where there’s consensus and where there’s not,” he said. “Of course we’re doing this about a month in advance of when the budget and the [Quadrennial Defense Review] would be released, so I’m hopeful that DoD will take notice and it will affect their final review process.”
Other areas of consensus between the four groups were reducing the size of the civilian workforce, cutting Army end strength, canceling the Joint Tactical Radio System program, delaying the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle, retiring the F/A-18C/D fleet, and embarking on a “clean kill” Base Realignment and Closure process that would be limited to changes that would pay for themselves and start producing savings within five years.
AEI took somewhat of a different approach than the other three, choosing to also conduct an unconstrained budget exercise. AEI fellow Tom Donnelly helped write the language requiring QDRs when he worked as a HASC staff member and he said the original idea was to draft a strategic plan free of budgetary constraints. This plan kept the current force size, accepted partial tiered readiness and invested in unmanned systems, space, a slew of aircraft, surface combatants and more. Even in its full sequestration scenario, AEI cut the least of the four groups, choosing to stick to the president’s budget request more closely. It did, however, cut significantly from non-stealthy fighters in favor of more stealthy fighters and favor the steepest cut to the Marine Corps–44,000 Marines in full sequester and 32,000 Marines in half-sequester.
CNAS chose to retire all cruisers in the first FYDP and buy additional destroyers in the second FYDP to create savings up front that would trickle throughout the whole 10-year period. It created more savings by cutting personnel than any of the groups, taking the fundamental position that readiness and personnel needed to be sacrificed in the short-term to allow for more science and technology funding. In the second FYDP, the savings CNAS created early on were actually reinvested into program development rather than basic research, since the plan invested in S&T more early on compared to the other think tanks.
CSBA took the approach of needing to provide credible deterrence over visible presence when considering what assets to deploy overseas. Special operations forces and new weapons like laser guns and microwave guns would be prioritized over aircraft carriers as a result. They took “heavy” capabilities out of the Marine Corps, eliminating what resembled a “second land army,” and they retired legacy tactical air support assets from the Navy and Air Force.
And finally, CSIS put a lot of stock in attack submarines, unmanned underwater platforms and anti-submarine systems for Pacific operations; counterterrorism rather than land war capabilities for the Middle East; and a push to collaborate more with partners and allies via shared acquisition programs and foreign military sales. David Berteau, director of CSIS’s national security program on industry and resources, said his group would “cut the heck out of ground forces” and propose having an 8-carrier fleet as long as two would be forward-stationed rather than the current one in Japan.