Senate budget-writers want to cut tens of millions of dollars in Marine Corps research and procurement funding in the spending plan they unveiled this month after Congress and the White House agreed to significant federal budget cuts.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s (SAC) fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill, which it approved Sept. 15 and is awaiting Senate floor action, would cut $26 billion from the Pentagon’s $513 billion base budget request for fiscal year 2012, granting it the same funding as in FY ’11. It is the only defense-spending plan approved since the Aug. 2 signing of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which Pentagon officials said will bring a minimum in $450 billion in defense cuts over the next decade.
For FY ’12, which starts in October, the SAC’s appropriations bill calls for cutting the Marine Corps’ requested research, development, test, and evaluation funding for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and amphibious-vehicle efforts. The panel also is seeking to make more-modest cuts to Marine Corps procurement efforts including a fire-support system.
The SAC wants to outright eliminate the JLTV, the Humvee-replacement program the service shares with the Army. Three teams have built JLTV prototypes: General Dynamics [GD]-AM General; BAE Systems-Navistar Defense LLC, an affiliate of Navistar International Corp. [NAV]; and Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE.
The SAC’s call for killing the program, now in the Technology Development (TD) phase, would zero out the Marine Corps’ $71.8 million research funding request, which is separate from the Army’s $172 million proposal. The Marine Corps cut would shrink the line item for “Marine Corps Ground Combat/Support System” from the requested $79.8 million down to $8 million, according to the SAC’s report on its bill.
The FY ’12 defense appropriations bill the House passed in July, before the deficit-cutting law was signed, calls for preserving JLTV but trimming the overall request by $50 million.
The SAC’s report cites multiple JLTV concerns, including requirements changes, an extension of the scheduled Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase, and a doubling of projected EMD costs. However, William Taylor, the program executive officer for Land Systems in the Marine Corps, said his service and the Army have agreed on new requirements and cost-savings for the program.
The SAC’s proposed cuts to the Marine Corps’ requested research funding also include a $25 million reduction to the service’s new amphibious-vehicle plans, a cut that is not in the House-passed appropriations bill. The SAC calls for trimming $10 million from the effort to upgrade the legacy Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV), which the service began planning as the result of the Pentagon decision early this year to cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), General Dynamics’ [GD] long-delayed effort to develop an amphibious tractor. The Senate panel’s report calls the $10 million for the AAV “excess to need.”
The SAC’s report also proposes cutting research funding for the Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) effort by $15 million, saying those funds are “ahead of need” for the program that the service envisions involving a nearly off-the-shelf vehicle. The MPC and AAV efforts are being managed along with the nascent Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) effort, for which the service is planning to kick off an analysis of alternatives in October.
The SAC further calls for trimming the Marine Corps’ $45 million share of the Humvee survivability initiative, which it shares with the Army, by $10 million.
The Senate panel, notably, is calling for a $695 million reduction to the Pentagon’s overall request for Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35, which would delay a ramp up in aircraft production for the multi-service jet fighter. For the Navy and Marine Crops, the SAC is calling for slicing $37.9 million from the Navy’s $1.3 billion research request for the F-35.
For Marine Corps procurement, the SAC is proposing cutting $14 million from the Pentagon’s request. The individual cuts include $4.3 million trimmed from the $8.8 million proposal for a fire-support system, a cut the House-passed bill does not support. The SAC says requested funds for the Common Laser Rangefinder were “excess to need.”
The Senate panel’s bill also calls for a $9.7 million cut from the $89.5 million request for radio systems, which it attributes to an even-larger reduction in requested funding for the Joint Tactical Radio System Ground Mobile Radios request. The SAC report says it made the cut because of a delay with the program proceeding to the milestone C stage. The House, by contrast, called for boosting overall Marine Corps procurement funding for radio systems.