The head of a House panel rebuked calls for cutting the Pentagon’s budget yesterday while citing concerns about the readiness of Navy aircraft and ships.
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) highlighted his qualms at the outset of a hearing of the House Armed Services Readiness subcommittee, which he chairs, about a contrast between “our Navy readiness posture due to decreased funding with the increase in military capabilities of many emerging powers,” including China. He noted that recently retired defense secretary Robert Gates said in January that Beijing’s military modernization surprised the intelligence community.
Forbes said he is concerned about proposed defense spending cuts expected to emerge from deficit-reduction talks going on now between congressional leaders and the White House. President Barack Obama in April called for cutting $400 billion in security spending by 2023, though that figure has changed during the still-unresolved deficit negotiations.
Forbes noted press reports that after meeting with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, China’s top general recommended the U.S. reduce military spending.
“While some in Congress may agree (with defense cuts), this is not a position that I am prepared to accept,” Forbes said. He argued the Navy “already has insufficient resources to preserve its current fleet let alone reverse the negative trends of years of underfunding, deferred maintenance, and gaping holes in Navy readiness.”
Forbes noted that the Pentagon’s Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress found the Navy already is struggling with readiness under current levels of funding, with, for example, only 45 percent of deployed aircraft being fully combat ready. He cited other concerns including some Navy vessels being deemed ill-prepared for combat.
“Coupled with manpower shortfalls, an increased number of commanding officers being relieved, greater cannibalization of parts from other vessels, and insufficient training, all of these statistics add up to glaring deficiencies that are nothing short of alarming,” the congressman said.
Testifying at the afternoon hearing, Vice Adm. William Burke, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics, said the service’s fundamental readiness challenge is “the continuing demand for forces exceeds that which we have, which we can provide.”
Burke described the relationship between the Pentagon’s global-force-management process and combatant commanders’ requests for forces.
“When you have these additional deployments, you sometimes impact the maintenance or you impact the training, which will impact the maintenance,” he said. “So what we have is one event cascading into another, and so we don’t get either of them quite right.”
Burke maintained that the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal “balances risk across the entire Navy program.”
Forbes, though, pressed Burke and Naval Sea Systems Command head Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy about whether combatant commanders’ needs truly are being met.
“Shouldn’t we be about saying we’re going to give them all the resources they need to fulfill their mission, or are we saying that we’re making budgetary decisions here today, and we’re making them over at the Pentagon, and we’re not giving them the resources they need to fulfill their mission,” the subcommittee chairman asked.
Burke said that the commanders should have the resources to do their missions, while acknowledging the heavy usage of ships and aircraft.
When Forbes asked, “If we task them with the missions, don’t we have an obligation to make sure they have the resources necessary to fulfill those missions?,” Burke replied: “I think if they don’t have the resources then we would change the mission.”
The Readiness subcommittee hearing continued past press time.
Also yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) leaders announced a new bipartisan panel has been formed to “to address the ongoing challenge of financial management in the Pentagon.” Is it chaired by Reps. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) and Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), who also chaired a special acquisition-reform panel in the last session of Congress.
The HASC said in a statement the new panel will “address broad issues surrounding Defense Department financial management including: the extent to which financial management systems deliver timely, reliable, and useful information for decision making and reporting; the ability of the Department to identify efficiencies and waste utilizing financial management systems; the proficiency of financial management personnel in financial and budgetary accounting in order to manage defense resources; and the effectiveness of the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (FIAR) plan.”