Operating under another Continuing Resolution (CR) will hurt U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) more than budget cuts forced under possible sequestration, according to SOCOM’s chief.
“The Continuing Resolution…puts a greater constraint on us than I think sequestration will,” SOCOM chief Adm. William McRaven said yesterday at the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) symposium in Washington. “The CR in place now leaves us at fiscal year 2012 spending levels, which means we’ve lost $1 billion of spending capacity.”
McRaven said, as a result, his staff will make sure they “first and foremost” protect warfighting capability.
“It’s a matter of priority,” McRaven said. “Some things of lower priority will, in fact, not be funded because we are going to take care of making sure the guys with the tip of the spear are going to be fully-trained, fully-equipped and ready to go.”
The so-called sequestration cuts, of $500 billion across-the-board to long-term defense plans, are scheduled to go into effect March 1 if Congress can’t reach a deal. An increasing number of lawmakers and analysts have predicted in recent days that Democrats and Republicans won’t agree on plan to stop their implementation (Defense Daily, Jan. 29).
McRaven said SOCOM is rebalancing its manpower to better support its Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) without increasing its budget. McRaven explained TSOCs as “the center of gravity” for special operations forces (SOF) in theater and if the Pentagon wants to adequately address current and emerging challenges with a SOF solution it needs to increase their capability.
“Ultimately, our future of SOCOM lies in how well we support the geographic combatant commanders,” McRaven said. “The best way to do this is to improve our theater special operations commands.”
McRaven also said SOCOM has no plans to expand its U.S. Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation (BICES), which General Dynamics [GD] described as an Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD/I) system that provides U.S. forces, NATO forces and other allies with near-real-time, correlated, situation and order of battle information.