Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel answered most of the big questions about what’s coming up in this week’s budget release in his recent budget preview, but what are the major questions still remaining as we wait for the budget unveiling on Tuesday? We took a look at the programs with the biggest question marks over them…
NAVY
Perhaps the most pressing question when the budget is released will be just what the reduction of the Littoral Combat Ship to 32 vessels will mean for the program, and the fleet overall. One congressional source who spoke on background said his question will be whether the Navy still plans to buy the ship at rates of two per year after the 10-ship block buy is done, or if the service will try to extend the block buys for a couple more years to close out the program.
Hagel’s announcement on Monday cleared up one thing for the source: whether the choice of Bob Work as Pentagon undersecretary – an ardent supporter of the LCS – would make any difference for the program. “I think the answer to that is an unequivocal no, because it’s not [current Undersecretary] Christine Fox saying this, it’s the secretary of defense saying this and laying out how it’s going to be,” he said.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said he also wondered how the Navy will go about purchasing the last eight purchases beyond fiscal 2015. “What’s the form of that? Is it a block buy of eight ships? Is it going to be evenly divided between the two shipbuilders or is it open-ended?” he asked.
“Also, there is a discussion about the industrial base,” he added, “because I think part of the rationale for going to 32 was to keep the industrial base of those two shipyards going for another several years so as to compete for a follow-on ship and not have to shut down in the intervening years.”
In that case, the Navy will need to make sure both the Austal and Lockheed Martin shipyards are building at least two ships per year to stay operational.
The carrier is also shaping up to be a major sticking point. Hagel said during his budget preview that if Congress is unable to remove mandatory cost caps on the budget, the Navy will have to drop down to 10 carriers for the long term, as it will cost billions to keep the USS George Washington (CVN-73) operating – billions the Navy didn’t include in its budget now or in the future.
The congressional source thinks the Navy is practicing a bit of light extortion with this claim, arguing that the service could find other ways to fund the carrier, and by not including funds Hagel is attempting to force Congress to make a move on the cost caps.
“In my opinion, the Pentagon is playing a game of chicken with that ship,” he said. “They say if we’re constrained to lower caps, we’re going to take that out of the budget, daring Congress to change the budget or find money to put back in it. It’s interesting policy.”
Clark, however, believes that the Navy doesn’t have that much flexibility with the carrier, as it’s not easy to find $8 billion lying around to pay for it. “They’ve already harvested all the money,” he said. “They took the money and used it for something else, and now they have to put money back in if they want to keep it.”
The source also called the move 11 cruisers into “reduced operating status” another game of chicken with Congress, noting that the plan to upgrade them and then save them for some point down the road probably wouldn’t happen. “Likely, the administration in charge at the time will just retire them,” he said.
But the major questions for the service don’t just boil down to ships. There’s also the question of whether the Pentagon will stick to its plan to end F/A-18E/F Super Hornet production and continue to rely on the F-35 to take over before the Navy’s strike fighter gap becomes extreme – despite the fact that Hagel said during the briefing that the F-35C carrier variant faces a significant delay should sequestration stay in place.
“That’s an interesting question,” the source said. “Does that mean they continue to buy Super Hornets . . . or they’ll just buy the Growler version, which allows them to keep the line open?”
The Pentagon has stated repeatedly that it intends to move away from the Super Hornet and bank on the F-35 making it to the fleet and on the success of service life extensions for aging F/A-18 fighters. But Congress has pushed back in recent years, arguing that a fighter gap is looming and the Navy would be wise to keep buying Super Hornets in the meantime, even going so far as to add $75 million for advance procurement of 22 F/A-18s in fiscal 2015 in the fiscal 2014 appropriations bill, passed earlier this year. The question is whether the Navy will ignore that money, and if so whether Congress will stick to its guns when it comes time to mark up the bill later this year.
Clark said he is “almost sure” that the Navy has no intention of buying any Super Hornets or Growlers in its budget, mostly because the service failed to get the savings it wanted on the F-35 and thus wouldn’t have the money to spend on F/A-18s. Instead, he believes the Navy is likely to leave it to Congress to “decide if they want to keep another airplane builder by buying some F-18s in the budget,” he said.
AIR FORCE
The two biggest Air Force-related items to come out of Hagel’s presser were the decisions to cut A-10s in favor of F-35 and the U-2 in favor of Global Hawks. “There’s been a lot of discussion over whether those are the right decisions, but they certainly saved a lot of money,” Clark said.
The former of those decisions isn’t likely to sit well with lawmakers, many of whom have already started protesting the decision to mothball the A-10 fleet. But the service believes it has a plan for dealing with the change.
“The idea is that the Air Force will go from the A-10 to the F-35, or B-1s with precision munitions, making multi-mission aircraft do more of close air support,” Clark said.
The second decision marks a reversal of the program, which had originally sought to do away with Block 30 Global Hawks, but now will support them over the U-2. The question is whether the Air Force plans to buy even more of them in the budget.
“It’s a pretty expensive airplane,” Clark said. “Are they going to buy more Global Hawks or are they going to repurpose existing Global Hawks?”
As for retiring the A-10, the budget will help reveal whether the Air Force can achieve the savings it hopes to realize, or whether other factors will come into play.
“They’re supposed to be harvesting all the savings from the program – all the personnel, training pipelines, logistics – everything that goes into those programs is supposed to be harvested,” Clark said. “I want to look to see if some of those are shared with other aircraft programs – are they going to affect them, is there some commonality that would mean savings would not be quite as much as anticipated?”
ARMY
The release of the budget could heighten drama between the Army’s active force and the National Guard. Army leadership wants to restructure how aviation is distributed so the Guard gets UH-60s instead of AH-64 Apaches, as they want attack helicopters in the active component and would rather the Guard gets H-60s to be used in support roles. This doesn’t sit well with the National Guard, which in its mind is an operational reserve that should be in the rotation for combat missions alongside the Army just like in Iraq and Afghanistan, Clark said.
Photo: U.S. Army
“And if there’s no Apaches, they can’t be part of the operational reserve,” he said. “They’re relegated to support missions. They want to be a part of the fighting force. So you’ve got this tension that’s been set up. I’ll be looking at the budget to see if they’ve restructured to see if there’s a stark difference between the two, and how Congress handles that.
Another congressional source that deals with the Army said the cancellation of the Ground Combat Vehicle is the big news for the Army, which could have ripple effects to the rest of the vehicle fleet. The Abrams tank program could be the beneficiary of that move, as it frees up money that could be used to help the Abrams industrial base.
The Army has butted heads with Congress on the program by proposing to shut down production of the tank for a few years, arguing that international orders are more than enough to keep the Ohio factory humming until production ramps up again – a position Congress ardently disagrees with.
However, with money freed up from the GCV cancellation, the Army could reconsider. After all, the Army doesn’t have a follow-on program for the Abrams scheduled, nor has it even allocated research and development money to look into it.