The defense budget cannot meet sequestration caps without wrecking current force readiness, and either personnel or major acquisition programs will have to be sacrificed to invest in key capabilities for the future, according to a panel of leading think tank researchers who testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
“That wasn’t very cheerful,” committee chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said after hearing the five panelists’ opening statements.
The researchers described a budget game they participated in last year, in which an online tool allowed them to shape 10-year defense spending plans based on their priorities and the levels of risk they were willing to accept–one plan under full sequestration and one under a half-sequester spending limit.
Each team was forced to cut readiness under full sequestration, each retired the Air Force’s A-10 fleet, and each made steep cuts to civilian and contractor personnel, said Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, who hosted the budget game. Each team also reinvested some of the money they cut into areas such as space, cyber and communications after noting insufficient investment by the Defense Department in its current budget plan.
“DoD is not investing in the right things for the future,” Nora Bensahel, who worked at the Center for a New American Security last year during the game. Her team cut $716 billion from DoD’s 10-year plan and reinvested $384 billion under the full-sequester scenario and $509 billion in the half-sequester scenario.
She noted that none of the teams could avoid cutting readiness, leaving troops more vulnerable when they deploy overseas, and said it immoral to send troops into battle without proper training and equipment–especially when readiness could be better funded if other costs were cut.
“It is unconscionable to require the services to continue spending money on facilities that they do not need while the budget caps require them to cut end-strength, training and readiness, which puts American troops at risk,” Bensahel said.
One team, the American Enterprise Institute, created a third budget scenario that was strategy-driven and not restricted by sequestration caps, just to see what dollar amount they would end up needing. The AEI team calculated it would cost $780 billion above sequestration caps over 10 years to reduce risk to a manageable level.
Thornberry asked the panelists to self-critique the budgets they crafted–a year later, with numerous unexpected threats having developed around the world, how do the budget plans from a year ago meet today’s needs?
Bensahel and Ryan Crotty of the Center for Strategic and International Studies both said they had crafted budgets with too-small armies to deal with threats such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which require heavy overseas presence to attempt to deter further aggression. Bensahel said CNAS had intentionally taken risk in the short-term to protect research and development accounts; Crotty, however, said that CSIS had tried to focus on near-term readiness but still couldn’t create a force large enough to deter Russia given the budget constraints the team faced.