The Pentagon yesterday released its report on how sequestration will affect programs across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, and the cuts the Defense Department says it will need to make will have a dramatic impact on a variety of programs. Here is a rundown of just what programs stand to lose the most…
***DOD***
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — There’s no question the F-35 will take a big hit if sequestration stays in place, but which variant will be hit the hardest? The Pentagon’s report shows that it will be the Air Force F-35A that will be hammered by automatic across-the-board cuts, losing 14 aircraft in fiscal 2016 and an additional aircraft the next year. The F-35C will also lose aircraft, but only both aircraft that were to be procured in fiscal 2016. The Marines, meanwhile, will not lose any of their F-35Bs under sequestration — a good thing for the program, which cannot afford to see another slip in the fielding date of the aircraft.
***ARMY***
UH-60 Black Hawk — Just a month after unveiling its decision to boost UH-60 buys by 101 helicopters over the next four years, the Pentagon’s latest report says that sequestration will chop 57 Black Hawks through fiscal 2018. Such a large cut in UH-60 procurement could raise questions on how smooth the transition will be for the National Guard to go from AH-64 Apaches to Black Hawks in its fleet, already a contentious issue that is likely to get more heated as resources become more scarce.
AH-64 Apache — The Apache will be taking quite a hit as well if sequestration stands up, with the Army expecting to lose 68 AH-64 remanufactures over the next four years. The cut would completely negate the increase in buys the Army had proposed in the fiscal 2015 budget request.
UH-72 Lakota — Due to the Army’s decision to overhaul its helicopter fleet in order to save money, the service resurrected the UH-72 Light Utility Helicopter from the dead, adding 100 more Lakotas this year and next after planning on ending the buys in fiscal 2014 — 55 in fiscal 2015 and 45 in fiscal 2016. Under sequestration, the Army says it will have to dump all of the proposed fiscal 2016 helicopters, ending the buy at 55 this year. “The Army National Guard would be required to transfer 45 aircraft to the Active Component training establishment and there would be insufficient funds to replace them,” the report states.
Joint Light Tactical Vehicle — We raised questions when the budget came out about the aggressiveness of the ramp of Joint Light Tactical Vehicle in the 2015 budget request, and it appears that sequestration will reduce that ramp on its own should it stay in effect, according to the Pentagon. The Marines and Army had hoped to buy 4,391 though fiscal 2019, but sequestration would slash 585 vehicles from the buy, the bulk of which will come in fiscal 2018 when the services had hoped to quickly ramp up from 747 vehicles to 1,364 vehicles. That big one-year ramp will happen in fiscal 2019 instead under the new plan, should it be necessary.
Stryker — You can say goodbye to the double-v hull upgrades to the Stryker vehicle after fiscal 2016 if sequestration takes effect, according to the Pentagon. Buys of the vehicle ended with a purchase of 58 in fiscal 2013, but the Army had been working to upgrade the hulls of the vehicles to improve its safety. Instead of finishing up a buy of a third brigade of double-v hull Strykers and buying a fourth set, the Army will not be able to upgrade the fourth set, the report states.
***NAVY/MARINE CORPS***
CH-53K Super Stallion — More bad news is on the way for the CH-53K Super Stallion if sequestration stays in effect. The Navy announced with the fiscal 2015 budget release that it would bump the beginning of CH-53K buys by a year to fiscal 2017 due to fiscal realities. Now, this new report states that the CH-53K will slide yet another year, with buys beginning in fiscal 2018 at two aircraft. It’s a tough pill for the program to swallow, as it had endured slips in the scheduled fielding of the aircraft earlier in the program due to its own poor performance; now, with the program on track, budget issues are causing it to keep sliding.
H-1 Upgrades — It’s been years since the H-1 Upgrades program has endured a Nunn-McCurdy breach of cost thresholds, and now sequestration may force it to go through that painful process yet again. While overall procurement quantities are unlikely to change at 349 total helicopters, sequestration would bump 11 helicopters out of the Future Years Defense Plan, “increasing per-unit costs and likely triggering a Nunn-McCurdy breach,” the report states. The report comes just a week after the program manager said at the SeaAirSpace conference that the Marines would make up the nine-helo shortfall in the FYDP in fiscal 2020. Now, that shortfall will be 20 aircraft by that time, raising questions about whether the service can make up the ground it is losing in procurement, and what effect that will have on the availability of the light helo fleet.
DDG-51 destroyer / Virginia-class sub — After spending years fighting to stay at two DDG-51s and Virginia-class subs per year to keep Navy fleet numbers from dipping further, sequestration may bury all the efforts of Congress and the Pentagon, the report states. The DDG-51 program has it the worst, losing three ships through the Future Years Defense Plan — one in fiscal 2017, 2018, and 2019. “The resulting large surface combatant force in the post-FYDP period would be smaller and less capable due to the delay of fielding the DDG Flight III’s improved Air and Missile Defense Radar,” according to the report.
The Virginia-class program won’t escape punishment either, with the class projected to lose a sub in fiscal 2016 before returning to two per year in 2017. This would extend the attack sub shortfall in the coming decades by four years, dipping to 40 SSNs — eight below the threshold — in 2029.
CVN-78 carrier — Already struggling with a carrier fleet that has dipped below the 11-vessel threshold, the Navy is now dealing with the possibility that CVN-79 will be delayed by two years should sequestration hold up, the Pentagon argued. Under the new plan, the second ship in the class would be delivered in fiscal 2024 rather than 2022, a savings of $800 million within the FYDP, but at a cost of $2 billion down the road.
P-8A Poseidon — The P-8 program was already hammered in the fiscal 2015 budget request, with the Navy opting to slash near-term buys of the aircraft, reducing the procurement through fiscal 2018 from 56 aircraft to 49. The Navy will lose another six aircraft under sequestration, the Pentagon stated, all of them coming from fiscal 2016’s planned order of 15 aircraft. Those buys would be made up in fisal 2020, but it “would increase the unit cost for P-8 procurement, operational and support costs associated with aging P-3 aircraft, and would delay the transition to an all P-8 fleet,” the report states.
***Air Force***
KC-46 tanker — We noted in our March budget breakdown that the Air Force had indicated in its requet that sequestration would reduce investment in the KC-46, but the document was not clear on what that would mean for future quantities. Now we know: the Air Force would still begin with a seven-aircraft buy in fiscal 2015 and continue with 12 in 2016, but would cut three aircraft in 2017 and two in 2018, before leveling off at the original planned buy of 15 aircraft in fiscal 2019.
MQ-9 Reaper — The Reaper is in for even more pain under sequestration, the Pentagon stated in its report. The Air Force cut 29 aircraft through the FYDP — likely to already be an unpopular move with Congress — and now the service wants to cut all 38 aircraft to be procured in 2018 and 2019, appearing to end the program with a buy of 11 aircraft in 2017. That would mean the Air Force would only buy 45 MQ-9s over the FYDP, compared to the 112 it had planned to buy just a year ago over the same time period.
C-130 Hercules — The C-130 continues to be a fundamental workhorse in the Air Force, and it has served that role for a very long time. That won’t save it from sequestration cuts, however, as the Pentagon projects that it will cut 10 MC-130J aircraft over the FYDP, reducing the buy from 35 to 25 aircraft over that time period.
AIM-120 AMRAAM — The Pentagon had planned for a slight increase in AMRAAM buys toward the end of the FYDP, boosting fiscal 2018 procurement from 283 missiles to 369 for the Air Force and from 170 to 233 for the Navy. Under the new plan however, the Pentagon will slash a whopping 531 missiles over the FYDP, dropping from 2,268 to 1,737. As a result, the services will have access to “fewer high-end, medium-range missiles to combat advanced adversaries,” the report states.
Joint Direct Attack Munition — The JDAM has been a heavily relied upon weapon over the last decade-plus in Iraq and Afghanistan, but sequestration is going to take a big bite out of the program, the Pentagon states. The Air Force had planned to buy 41,358 JDAMs through the FYDP, but that figure has been reduced to 24,263 — a cut of more than 17,000 weapons over the FYDP. In dollar terms, that would be a cut of $327 million — from $1.23 billion to $905 million.