The Navy was the clear winner in the post-Asia-pivot defense authorization bill the House Armed Services Committee released Monday, with the Navy procurement account gaining $1.36 billion – more than all of the Defense Department combined, which had a net gain of only $1.28 billion as a result of steep cuts to the Air Force.
The Navy saw several massive add-ins from the committee for projects with clear ties to the Pacific, including $800 million to begin incrementally funding LPD-28. Funding the additional ship is most immediately meant to keep the production line open long enough to determine whether its hull design could be used for the next class of amphibs, the LX(R) dock landing ship replacement. But the Marine Corps has also said it does not have enough ships to spread out across the vast Pacific – where it will eventually have a Marine Air-Ground Task Force-sized presence in Japan, Guam, Australia and Hawaii, plus engagements with other countries – plus keep up its presence in Africa and the Middle East. Having an additional ship in the fleet could mean putting one of its land-based crisis response units on a ship, or it could be used to take the place of ships going in for maintenance without impacting fleet operations.
The sea service gained $450 million for five additional EA-18G Growler electronic attack planes, which would be useful in the Pacific, a much more technologically advanced region than the Middle East, where the military has grown used to operating. HASC also gave $82 million to nearly double the Navy’s buy of Tomahawk cruise missile, and a total of $796.2 million across procurement and personnel accounts for both the Navy’s active and reserve components to keep the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) in the fleet and to begin its refueling and complex overhaul.
In total, HASC chose to add $2.2 billion in procurement for the Navy, while taking out only $872 million – mostly in the form of one Littoral Combat Ship, one training ship, making a $54 million trim to the DDG-1000 destroyer program and a $53-million trim to the MH-60R helicopter multiyear procurement contract.
Helping to fuel the growth in Navy procurement dollars is an effort to trim operations costs. HASC Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) spoke to the Heritage Foundation Tuesday morning to discuss the NDAA and said his bill includes a 5 percent cut to all service and facilities contracts in the military, freeing up more than $800 million to better train and equip the troops.
HASC last year embarked on an acquisition reform effort, and McKeon said the service contracts receive much less oversight than contracts for ships, planes and trucks, despite the Defense Department spending about equal amounts on goods and services.
Asked if he was confident that the military could achieve these savings, given that the acquisition reform effort is still in its early stages and that the HASC spending plan relies so heavily on these cuts to stay within its cost cap, McKeon replied, “if we can’t find 5 percent savings out of that then shame on us. I think we can do that, and I think we can do it very well.”
In contrast to the modest Navy cuts compared to big Navy gains, the Air Force’s procurement request was slashed by $145.5 million. Its KC-46A tanker program was slowed down and cut by $226 million, C-5M transport plane trimmed by $50 million due to program execution delays, and numerous programs penalized for unjustified growth by several million dollars apiece. The only major add-in was $135 million for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle to add competitive launch opportunities.
The Army’s budget would have more closely resembled the Air Force’s if not for an industrial base initiative pitched by the tactical air and land subcommittee that added $292 million in vehicle procurement and upgrades. Without those add-ins, the Army procurement budget would have shrunk quite a bit, with $180 million in unobligated balances taken away from the service and about $100 million cut for being excess to need, ahead of schedule or concurrent to testing.
McKeon said he was most concerned about troop readiness and therefore had to take a hard look at programs to ensure they were a wise use of limited money. “We will do our best to make sure that we get every bit of readiness we can out of this budget,” he said Tuesday, and though he said many of the program cuts and reductions were painful, he said decisions were made based on what provided the most good for troops.