In the bureaucratic battles being waged over the US defense budget, the Army is in retreat on all fronts. Its primary function — fighting and winning wars on land — is out of step with a national military strategy that prioritizes the Asia-Pacific, where air and maritime power predominate and large-scale, US-led land wars are less likely.
NATO now has reason to station nuclear forces in front-line member states.
Air Force leadership spent months telling anyone who would listen that their budget would result in a smaller service today in order to afford modernization for tomorrow, and its budget delivered on that promise. But in an attempt to cut as deeply as possible to fund key priorities, the service has left itself in a precarious position as it heads into Congress to defend its decisions.
This week’s rollout of the Defense Department budget prompted as many questions as answers about the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet and the status of future big-ticket jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding.
In 2011, the Army doled out its first contracts to develop new armored vehicles that could carry a full nine-man infantry squad. Building the fleet of 1,800 new vehicles was expected to cost a whopping $29 billion.
Much of what was briefed in yesterday’s budget rollout was discussed by Secretary Hagel and Pentagon leaders in advance of the release. There were, however, a few surprises in the details briefed by the DoD Comptroller, Bob Hale. Slide 11 of his briefing, shown below, lists Army and Marine Corps end strength and the number of carriers projected in the force.[1] The footnote at the bottom of the slide is key to understanding what is actually funded in the budget request. This footnote and Mr. Hale’s discussion of it during the briefing indicate that the FY 2015 budget does not in fact fund the higher end-strength and carrier levels listed in the column labeled “Goal w/o Sequester FY 2019.”
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