Precision strike weapons will continue to play a critical role in the future but they must be developed to operate across all of the services and on multiple platforms to make them more effective and affordable, the vice director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff said yesterday.
“We can no longer afford to stove pipe expensive, excluded munitions and platforms among the services,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Franklin said at a conference hosted by the Precision Strike Association. The weapons must be designed for compatibility among the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, he said.
“We just can’t have service specific solutions anymore,” Franklin said.
“We are about to enter a new era that will test our ability to adapt,” Franklin said as the Pentagon faces $480 billion in budget reductions over the next 10 years. “The question we have to ask ourselves is ‘how to we achieve our national objectives in an era of fiscal austerity?” he said.
Franklin’s comments come as the Defense Department prepares to unveil its fiscal 2013 budget request early next month. Defense officials are expected later this month to outline which programs will be hit with reductions or cancellations.