As the House Armed Services Committee was finalizing its version of the 2013 defense budget Wednesday, a traditional input from the military's top brass was noticeably missing this year.
The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps service chiefs decided not to submit to Congress their "wish lists," a rundown of programs and priorities not covered under the current budget that they would like to see funded if extra money was available. Officially known as unfunded priorities lists, this is the first year that all the services have not submitted the documents since the 1990s. An exception is the Special Operations Command, which has submitted one request this year of $143 million for high-definition, full-motion video sensors for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms/.../
The wish list requests have been on the decline since fiscal year 2010, when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates mandated that the services show their lists before submitting them to Congress. That year the services only asked for a combined $3.5 billion, as opposed to 2008 when the lists reached their peak at $38 billion (adjusted for inflation), according to research compiled by Todd Harrison with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments/.../
The lists can also serve as a means to claim pet projects for congressional members' home districts. Harrison said that back when the lists were large, such as in 2008, they allowed members of Congress from both parties to pick and choose things that were important to their constituencies, all the while providing the cover that "this is something the military wanted."