For nearly forty years, Fred Kaplan notes, “the Army, Air Force, and Navy… have abided by an informal agreement that gives each of them a roughly equal share of the total military budget… In this way, the chiefs have avoided the interservice rivalries that tore the military establishments apart throughout the 1940s and ’50s.”
But that was before the war in Iraq pushed a slimmed-down Army to the brink, with gear wearing out fast, and units who can’t properly prep for combat. “The Army is clearly in need of a higher share of the budget now. It is the service that’s dominating the fighting, losing most of its troops, and getting most of its equipment chewed up,” Kaplan adds.
There are ways to treat the Army’s ailments without opening the purse strings. [It could stop stuffing R&D projects into its Iraq war budget. -- ed] For instance, [Army chief of staff Gen. Peter] Schoomaker could cancel or postpone the Army’s Future Combat Systems, a $200 billion confabulation that may be way overdesigned for any realistic scenario of future combat. But the FCS is the Army’s only big-ticket weapon system, and the procurement commanders wouldn’t surrender it unless the Air Force and Navy chiefs junked their big fighter planes and submarines, which isn’t about to happen, either.Early on in his regime, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might have had the clout to force such a bargain, but no longer. He has already abdicated his authority, allowing Schoomaker to appeal directly for more money to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. (According to
Army Times, this is another unprecedented move: No service secretary has ever dealt directly with the OMB — all such appeals are supposed to be made through the secretary of defense.)This bureaucratic turbulence only reflects a broader dilemma that higher political authorities will soon have to address, whether they’d like to or not. Schoomaker’s central complaint is that he doesn’t have the money to maintain the Army’s global missions. The president and the Congress can pony up the money (a lot more money) or scale back the missions. To do otherwise — to stay the course with inadequate resources — is to invite defeats and disasters.
UPDATE 11:44 AM: One more quick point on this. Traditionally, the Army has been thought of as the low-tech, low-cost service. That’s no longer so. Back in the day, you could send an infantryman into battle with just a rifle and a helmet. Now, he takes all kind of gear — body armor, night vision goggles, you name it. Equipment costs, per man, have gone from something like $2,000 a soldier during Vietnam to around $25,000 today. It’s another reason why doling out the Army’s traditional slice of the budget pie ain’t gonna work this time around.
The overall defense budget can’t increase forever. If that is case then it makes no sense for the US AirForce and the US Navy to get equal portions.
All of these USN, USAF Cold War wonder weapons need to take a back seat to the Army’s needs. If it has no utility for the GWOT it has to go. I don’t want to hear about some future threats from everyone’s favorite “Communist” nation-state. Everyone knows what I think about that possibility.
The USN and USAF need to get significantly smaller, and cheaper; and the US Army needs to get bigger and better. DOD needs to accept this new reality, and determine what is really important for the GWOT. They can’t have it all.
I always thought economics was all about the study of scarcity and their choices, now it time for DOD and Congress to make the tough choices.
BTW- I saw Congressman Duncan Hunter talking about moving the defense budget to six percent of GDP, so we can afford everything (GWOT and the Cold War toys). He must be smoking something. Just like any other budget in Congress, it will never be enough. Set priorities and make sacrifices.
Good Morning Folks,
A great post that cuts to the chase, at the DoD it’s all about the money and the big defense projects, the men and women filling the boots in Afghanistan and Iraq are a distant secondary consideration.
When U.S.troops come back with stories like I heard lask week at a military reunion from the son of a friend of mine who just got back from his second combat tour with the 10th. Mtn. Div. According to this trooper in the North Eastern part of Afghanistan where he served the troops were on one MRE a day, potable water was rationed to two liters a day and after about a week of on half water many troops had to be put on IV’s to be rehydrated.
These are the guys, the only Americans chasing bin Laden and we as a country can’t even provide the with three MRS’s a day and enought water to keep them heakthy at 7K ft., but can agrure with straight faces that we need any aircraft with a 22 in it’s name, a Missile Defense System that DOESN’T work, the FSC that can’t even provide radio equipment in Afghanistan where as a platoon leader can talk to his company commander.
As the young Sgt. that I talked to said, “This just plain ole sucks.”. Needless to say this soldier who is the son and grandson of Silver Star holders and wanted to make the Army his career also is on his way out the door. I wonder if any of those who support those bloated programs would stand up and take his place?
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
This post is dedicated to Ed and Casey, true American Heros.
I respect Mr. Kaplan to the hilt, but I have a few points to tack on to his piece:
1) The military departments do technically split the defense budget equally three ways, but that is before the Office of the Secretary of Defense skims some money from each service’s piece to fund its own operations.
The problem is that OSD has traditionally taken more from the Army than it has from the other services. Whereas USAF and USN claim about 28-29% of the total DOD budget, the Army only gets 25-26%, which is about a $10-15 billion difference in a $500 billion budget.
2) I’m not buying into Schoomaker’s POM tantrum. Although the Army can’t convert research and development money into operations and maintenance money after it has been programmed by Congress, it can definitely request less of the former and more of the latter.
I deal with both O&M and R&D funded Army offices and the O&M offices definitely ran out of money a few months before Army labs did.
3) The Army is just as guilty as the other services when it comes to pushing bails of money into pedantic weapons systems. USAF may have its Raptors and the Navy has its DD(X), but the Army is trying to push a total force modernization project out the door while it is fighting a war.
Even if the Army is committed to ever piece of FCS, pushing some of it back a few years to make sure our boots on the ground don’t have holes in them seems reasonable.
4) Duncan Hunter is a nutjob that wants to nationalize the defense industry. Don’t listen to him.
As a retired inf. NCO. it seems to me that we should be using an appropriate weapon, that being D-Con. All we have to do is scatter it around, and await the results. Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to scatter some around Capitol Hill.
The biggest difference between this war and any other one that we’ve been in is this; THESE PUPPYS WILL FOLLOW YOU HOME!!!!!
Ol’ Sarge in Amarillo
There is no profit in the regular army – you need mercs for profit. That’s why regular forces are bootstrapped – the money is going to private contractors. Think about that when it’s time to vote.
MERC’s, good idea, I’m all for them. I want people getting it on in the Middle East who can match the enthusiasm and dedication of the Jihadists.
Why send people to a voluntary war if they don’t want to? A 100k+/yr salary, plus life/disability insurance are good deals.
I just wish Halliburton would hurry up and spin off KBR; I don’t want to wait until April 2007. HAL is undervalued; need to pick up a few more shares.
How about a 50%-25%-25% split of the budget, in the Army’s favor.
The truth nobody in the building wants to say: This is an Army war. (And Marines.) It is door-to-door, looking for people whose names and faces we know. The Navy and AF can do some enabling, but GWOT is a grunt war. Jointness is nice, but this war isn’t joint.
The latest QDR even agrees that this is the shape of wars to come. So the money should go where the need is, and where the future lies.
If there is no money now,
What’s gonna happen when the babyboomers start demanding their social security?
FCS is wildly out of control. Have you read the latest Army response to the CBO report that said FCS was unaffordable, growing from $93B to over $300B now? The Army said, basically, we need it no matter what the cost. Someone has to stop the insanity in the Army. The funny thing is that even the Army can’t prove that having an FCS Army in Iraq would not make one bit of difference. That says volumes!
TELL MR. GATES, RANGLE, PELOSI, THAT 40 YEARS IS LONG ENOUGH, THE ARMY/ MARINES NEED NEW EQUIPMENT,BETTER BENEFITS,AND YOU WILL GLADLY CONTINUE TO DEFEND THIS GREAT NATION FOR YEARS TO COME. MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS YOU. MERRY CHRISTMAS