By Emelie Rutherford and Dave Ahearn
The top Senate defense authorizer said missile defense programs are likely to see budget cuts in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) chairman, spoke to reporters at a press roundtable Friday
The senator predicted significant cuts to weapon systems will emerge in the Pentagon’s detailed budget request, and not be delayed until the fiscal year 2011 spending plan. Levin said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have indicated cuts will be made in some areas.
“I think there’s going to be some significant changes that the [Obama] administration’s going to propose,” Levin said. “From what the secretary has said, the chairman has said, I would be surprised if that doesn’t happen.”
He said some lawmakers will not be happy with cuts to defense programs that generate jobs in their districts.
“I’m sure there will be significant angst,” Levin said.
He acknowledged the tension between funding for repairing and replacing equipment damaged and destroyed in the wars, called reset, and funding for procuring new defense hardware, adding that “reset will have to prevail” over procurement.
Levin declined to share his priorities when deciding what to cut in the acquisition budget, but, when asked, suggested missile-defense and shipbuilding programs could be up for consideration.
Missile defense cuts would come just as some still-developing missile defense programs are nearing critical points, such as the Airborne Laser (ABL) system, which this year is to shoot down a target missile for the first time. The Boeing Co. [BA] leads the ABL program and provides the heavily-modified 747-400 jumbo jet aircraft, while Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC] provides the laser system and Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] makes the beam control/fire control system.
Separately, however, Levin said at a hearing that he would be interested in the United States attempting to get Russia to drop its hostility toward the European Missile Defense system that is planned as a shield against Iranian missiles. Boeing also leads the EMD program. (Please see full stories and transcript excerpts in this issue.)
But generally, Levin indicated that with the expense of two wars continuing, as a nosediving U.S. economy means that federal revenues have slumped, this will be a time when defense procurement spending will be whacked.
President Obama has said he wants to focus defense spending increases on areas such as personnel, increasing the number of people in uniform (end strength) to lessen strains on war-weary troops, and on quality of life for personnel and their families, rather than aiming new money at acquisition programs.
Further, there will be major reforms in the way the military buys hardware from contractors, Levin indicated. Those reforms likely would translate into less money flowing from Washington to those contractors.
He said the SASC plans to jump “heavily” into Pentagon acquisition reform efforts early this year, predicting those attempts will be more successful than in the past because of the faltering economy and growing frustration with over-budget modernization programs.
Because the Obama administration isn’t expected to submit a detailed budget request to Congress for approximately two more months, Levin said that as the committee awaits the defense budget the panel will dig into policy matters. Changing the way the Department of Defense (DOD) buys weapon systems was second on a list of priorities he ticked off for reporters, when he said the top priority will be addressing the situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
“Acquisition reform is going to be a major initiative on our part,” Levin said.
A key proposal will be to create an independent office of cost assessment. Levin previously proposed creating the office–which would generate non-biased reviews of the accuracy of cost estimates for major defense programs–but for procedural reasons was unable create it through the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill that Congress passed last fall.
“Cost estimates prove to be far off all the time,” Levin said. “We need an independent office to get into that issue, I think, to weigh all the aspects of cost up front.”
A SASC staffer confirmed the Pentagon had concerns last year about the proposed cost-assessment office. Defense officials told Congress they believed the work the office would do is already provided, the staffer said, adding that the current functions are dispersed at DOD.
“So that’s why we need to concentrate it,” Levin said.
The SASC chairman acknowledged that there likely will be further resistance from the Pentagon to the committee’s next round of proposed acquisition reforms.
“We always expect push back from any change,” Levin said.
The committee also is considering requiring DOD to continue industry competition during the life of major weapon system acquisitions, he said.
Because of concerns that too many contractors perform governmental functions in the acquisition area, Levin talked of having government employees assume those duties.
For example, some military and Coast Guard procurement programs have contractors acting as lead systems integrators, performing oversight, selection and integration work once performed by government aides.
“Acquisition planning, acquisition oversight, financial controls, communications with the public…these are governmental functions, they ought to be performed by government employees,” he said.
The SASC chairman also lamented how defense officials establish requirements for programs and then continue to add additional requirements, resulting in future cost overruns.
“We’ve got to streamline that so that we have some requirements to put in place early and stick to them,” Levin said. The process is called requirements creep.
“It’s understandable (to add requirements) if you want the best and most effective weapon you can possibly produce,” he added. “But it also has to be looked at in terms of delays and in terms of cost, and that has a price in terms of the well-being of our troops.”
Though defense-acquisition reforms have been attempted for decades and cost overruns still persist, Levin said the “real buildup” of two things make this go-round different: exasperation with hundreds of billions of dollars in weapon-system cost overruns, and “the budget situation we’re in.”
The Obama administration is expected to release a basic top-line fiscal 2010 budget request this week, before the detailed submission arrives in approximately two months, Levin said.