Emelie Rutherford
Varied observers are picking apart proposals from the heads of the White House’s deficit-reduction commission to cut the Pentagon’s budget by $100 billion partly by cutting an array of weapon systems.
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, last Wednesday unveiled their interim pitches for balancing the nation’s budget, excluding interest payments on debt, by 2015. Their recommendations for $200 billion in federal-budget cuts by 2015, half of which would come from the Department of Defense, still must be approved by 14 of the commission’s 18 members for them to be weighed by Congress.
The bi-partisan commission’s leaders want to reduce Pentagon procurement by 15 percent and cut spending on research, development, test, and evaluation by 10 percent. They proposed: canceling development of General Dynamics‘ [GD] Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV); halting buys of Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]-Boeing‘s [BA] V-22 tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft; substituting Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] F-16s and Boeing’s F/A- 18E jets for half of the Air Force and Navy’s planned buys of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighters; killing the Marine Corps version of the F-35; ending the Navy’s Future Maritime Propositioning Force program; and axing the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Army Ground Combat Vehicle, and Joint Tactical Radio efforts.
Defense consultant Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., critiqued Bowles and Simpson for having errors regarding weapon systems in their 24-page draft proposal.
“Their lack of expertise on that subject is readily apparent in the proposals they make,” Thompson said last Friday. “They incorrectly state the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that the Air Force is buying. They understate the cost of alternatives. They mis-identify the under secretary of the Navy and the name of the department’s future radio system. They contradict themselves, saying in one paragraph that production of the V-22 rotorcraft should be ended early and then in the very next paragraph that an amphibious vehicle is less important to future warfighting than the capabilities provided by the V-22.”
Thompson argued such small errors “bespeak a broader ignorance of military plans and technology that leads the chairmen to exaggerate the savings their proposals would generate.”
While Thompson said defense cuts are likely inevitable, he said the commission co-chairmen failed to grasp “when a program meeting a validated warfighting requirement is eliminated, something else has to take its place.” For example, he argued the Marine Corps really has no alternative to the EFV.
Thompson argues the commission should set broad targets for defense cuts and let Pentagon policymakers do the trimming.
“Otherwise, (the commission) will say foolish things that undercut the credibility of its broader recommendations,” he said.
Meanwhile, the pro-defense-budget-cutting Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) in Washington, D.C., last Friday critiqued the commission leaders’ proposals, arguing they should cut more from Pentagon missile defense and space activities. It argues that “shrinking our nuclear arsenal would allow us to eliminate delivery platforms such as submarines and missiles that would save more than $10 billion per year.” TCS also wants the contract award for the Air Force’s aerial refueling tanker delayed.
TCS said the proposed 15 percent defense procurement cut “will prompt the most howls from parties with stakes in the game, such as defense companies and members of Congress with major facilities in their districts.”
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) trade group, meanwhile, has pushed back on the commission leaders’ recommendations.
“The co-chair recommendations in the defense arena, if implemented, would exacerbate the coming shortage of engineers and undercut the capability of the nation’s defense industrial base to design, build and support complex cutting-edge defense systems,” AIA President and CEO Marion Blakey said in a statement last Wednesday
Lawmakers are expected to make noise about the commission leaders’ proposals when Congress returns to Washington this week for a lame-duck session.
Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), who is expected to become House Armed Services Committee chairman when Republicans take control of the House in January, opposes cutting the Pentagon’s budget now during a time of war.