Teams of experts at four Washington think tanks, when unveiling "alternatives" to the Pentagon's fiscal year 2015 budget and Quadrennial Defense Review on Wednesday, called for major cuts to the Army while increasing investments in the Air Force.
Analysts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for a New American Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies participated in an exercise using a tool created by CSBA.
Although CSBA purposefully provided the teams choices based on capability areas instead of by services, the teams all called for increased funding for the Air Force over the next 10 years, Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at CSBA, said at the exercise event on Capitol Hill. And comparing the relative change of these budgets, the Army was cut dramatically, in most cases sustaining the largest percentage change, or being second only to defense-wide cuts.
The reason why choices were not organized by service was to prevent respondents from getting into the mindset of distributing cuts equally across the services -- a pitfall that defense officials often fall into, Harrison said.
"There's some consensus here that there needs to be a rebalancing," Harrison said. "And we don't necessarily need to stick to the same service budget shares that we may have become accustomed to over the past decade or so."
Although the exact numbers vary, the four separate think tank teams also proposed decreased investments to the Navy and defense-wide budgets. However, when it came to the Marine Corps, the four teams came up with very different ideas on how to reshape and resize that service. "To me, this looks like an area that's worthy of more investigation," Harrison said.
As part of the exercise, CSBA called for think tanks to elect funding as part of two scenarios: the first follows the Budget Control Act caps as modified by the Ryan-Murray agreement; the second assumes "a more optimistic funding line roughly halfway between the fiscal year 2014 president's budget baseline and full BCA level cuts" in the first scenario, according to a CSBA release.
In a number of cases, teams elected for the same cuts or investments in both budget scenarios. These choices indicate "decisions that are not necessarily budget driven," Harrison said.
For example, the teams in both fiscal scenarios sought the same amount of cuts to Navy nuclear aircraft carriers, as well as for guided missile destroyers. Harrison noted that even when money was restored in the "Half-BCA" scenario, teams did not change their proposed cuts in these areas.
The think tanks also sought the same plus-ups or constant level for nuclear attack submarines regardless of budgets.
And across the board, all the think tanks poured money into the space, cyber and communications domains. When given the choice of putting money into cyber defense or cyber offense, three out of four think tanks called for more money to go toward cyber offense.
And all the think tanks sought funding for both the B61 life extension program and the F-35 nuclear modifications when it came to strategic forces.
Harrison's presentation noted that all the teams also -- in both fiscal scenarios -- sought to retire all active-component A-10s, as well as retire U-2s and restore Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned aircraft.
They also canceled the remaining parts of the Joint Tactical Radio System airborne and maritime/fixed station program, retired F/A-18C/Ds, delayed the Ground Combat Vehicle, and funded a "clean kill" Base Realignment and Closure plan. This plan required that savings from base closures had to cover the upfront costs within five years, Harrison said.
In addition, all the teams cut more than the $330 billion marker so that they could invest in new areas. Harrison pointed to the CNAS proposal, which cut about the same amount in both budget scenarios, but invested in many more new areas in the "Half-BCA" scenario.
Readiness also took a hit, Harrison said, noting that many of the readiness cuts occurred during the first half of the 10-year period. In many cases, the think tanks sought to reinvest that money in readiness during the second five-year period.
Harrison said areas such as compensation reform, acquisition reform and other efficiency initiatives were off the table for the exercise, noting that they are more management decisions than strategic choices. However, he said the "Half-BCA" scenario provides areas where money could be reinvested if the needed savings are found.