By Emelie Rutherford
The overall size of the defense budget likely needs to be increased to modernize equipment, the heads of an independent panel that critiqued the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) said yesterday.
“We observed that a major recapitalization will be required, particularly when you consider the wear and tear of our equipment during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” William Perry, the co-chair of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, told a House panel.
“The directive of (Defense) Secretary (Robert) Gates for efficiencies in the acquisition field is a good start, but we unanimously concluded it was not sufficient,” he added. “That is, additional top line will be required to meet the needs we have laid out. This will be expensive, but deferring recapitalization will entail even greater expenses in the future.”
That assessment by Perry, who was defense secretary for former president Bill Clinton, and panel co-chair Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to former president George W. Bush, was seized upon by supporters of increasing the defense budget, who are fighting attempts to rein in the Pentagon’s topline funding to help control the federal deficit.
“The panel’s report repudiates those seeking a peace dividend and reaffirms the need to prioritize investment in our national defense,” Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) said at the hearing of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), on which he is the ranking member.
The 20-member, bipartisan panel’s final report, publicly unveiled yesterday, states modernization has “suffered” in the interest of sustaining readiness and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it warns “the modernization bill is coming due.”
The Pentagon, it says, must fix its acquisition process to “to regain credibility, to be able to produce necessary platforms in a timely manner, and to be able to adjust more nimbly to changing technology.”
Still, it warns, such savings will not be enough to fund a “comprehensive modernization.”
“We cannot reverse the decline of shipbuilding, buy enough naval aircraft, recapitalize Army equipment, modernize tactical aircraft (TACAIR), purchase a new aerial tanker, increase our deep-strike capability, and recapitalize the bomber fleet just by saving the $10 billion–$15 billion the (Defense) Department hopes to save through acquisition reform–even if those savings can be achieved and even if they are left in the defense budget,” it says. “Meeting the crucial requirements of modernization will require a substantial and immediate additional investment that is sustained through the long term.”
Though prodded by HASC members, Perry and Hadley declined to weigh in on contentious acquisition-related battles between Congress and the Pentagon, including whether to continue funding a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The QDR panel’s report recommends the Pentagon move away from sole-source contracting and adopt “a strategy requiring dual-source competition for production programs in circumstances where this will produce real competition.”
HASC member Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) unsuccessfully tried to tie this recommendation to the debate over whether to fund the F-35 second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce.
In terms of acquisition fixes, Perry highlighted the panel’s recommendation that the Pentagon set a limit of five to seven years for contractors to build and deliver weapon systems, thus forcing early decisions about how to keep costs and schedules in check.
Perry said this constrained development schedule would change how new and needed technologies are introduced.
“If you limit it to five to seven years, that means the new technology is introduced in the additional mods,” the former defense secretary said. “For example, the F- 16A (fighter jet) is followed by a B, a C, a D and E instead of trying to do all that at the first stage.”
The QDR panel was charged by Congress with assessing the assumptions, strategy, findings, and risks in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s examination of the strategy, forces, and resources needed to address the national-security environment over the next 20 years.
The panel’s report is critical of the Pentagon’s QDR, saying it is too focused on today’s conflicts. And the 157-page document paints a dire picture of defense-spending trends, stating: “The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure.”
The panel’s varied recommendations include increasing the size of the Navy. It calls for Congress to create a single appropriations subcommittee for the Departments of Defense and the intelligence community, and for improving coordination among the congressional authorization committees.
The panel met six times since beginning its work in February, after the Pentagon released the QDR, and consulted with “dozens” of experts in and outside of the government, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, which facilitated the panel’s work.