The Navy deserves a larger cut of the annual budget to ensure it is prepared for its role in a future conflict with peer adversaries, but must make tough choices and coordinate both Navy and Marine Corps assets to successfully make that case to Congress, a House Armed Services Committee member and former Marine said Jan. 15.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) advocated for the Navy and Marine Corps to adopt a unified concept of operations under the direction of the Navy secretary that would lead to a more cohesive budget plan, and address critical needs in the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility.
The Navy should prioritize shipbuilding accounts and make cuts in areas such as “L-Class” amphibious ships and short-range aviation platforms to do so, he said Wednesday at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in Arlington, Va.
“Accounts like shipbuilding that directly facilitate naval force structure should receive priority,” he said, adding, “At a time when we need to be drawing a fleet with haste, cuts to naval force structure are unacceptable.”
Congress will help the department make “tough choices” that help rebalance budgeting priorities toward systems that will allow the U.S. military to deter China and other foes in the Indo-PACOM region, he said. “I’d offer up L-class amphibs and short-range aviation, both fixed and rotor-wing, as a few examples of where we’re going to have to take a hard look.” The fiscal year 2021 budget is expected to be sent to Congress Feb. 10.
Gallagher also pushed for the U.S. military to develop intermediate-range conventional missiles “as rapidly as possible” and lauded recent tests of ground-launched cruise missiles since the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in August 2018.
“Let’s build on these successes and get them operational ASAP,” he said.
The two services in the department of the Navy must improve their budgeting and planning processes to make sure they are coordinated and integrated from the very beginning, he noted.
“We should therefore pool Navy and Marine Corps programming resources out from their respective service chains of command and co-locate them on equal footing under the SECNAV,” Gallagher said. “The point is that without top-down integration from the earliest steps in planning, programming, budgeting and execution, integration … will never happen.”
“I firmly believe that an integrated Navy, Marine Corps team holds the key to unlocking the National Defense Strategy and is therefore worthy of a disproportionate share of the budget,” he continued.
The Department of the Navy and Pentagon writ large must take lessons learned from recent missile strikes and other conflicts in the Middle East to ensure it is prepared for potential conflict with China, he noted.
The recent strikes on al-Asad Air Base in Iraq and other strikes recently occurring throughout the Middle East that have targeted or killed U.S. warfighters have “dangerous implications” for the U.S. force posture in the Pacific, Gallagher said.
“I believe these incidents all demonstrate an inconvenient truth that our fixed bases are increasingly vulnerable to missile and rocket fire as well as ground attacks,” Gallagher said. “Given the small number of large fixed bases we have in INDO-PACOM, the warning signs are flashing red as weaker adversaries using less sophisticated weapons can catch us off guard in CENTCOM.”
China’s military forces and capabilities are much more advanced than those of Iran, who Gallagher classified as “a very dangerous, but second – if not third-tier adversary.”
“We can’t sanction China’s economy to the brink of collapse,” he said. “Therefore, we all have to up our game. We have to make big changes to our concept of operations, and our programming, our budgets and our bureaucracy.”