CSBA in the News

A 2010 Pentagon-driven savings initiative prompted the Navy to recommend shutting down 2nd Fleet, which oversees the training and certification of East Coast units, and merging it with ever-growing Fleet Forces Command.

Deep in the Mojave Desert, surrounded by tiers of barbed-wire fence, the nation’s largest defense contractors work in secrecy designing and building the latest military aircraft at Air Force Plant 42.

America has embarked on cost-cutting strategic reviews before. In the wake of the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration took what it called “the new look” at defense.

The question on the minds of those gathered in Tampa was whether the success of the bin Laden raid means more money for special ops. Todd Harrison, of the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says that while funding for Special Operations Command, which includes Navy SEALs, has increased in recent years, much of the money has gone to “expendables,” meaning things such as bullet and bombs. “I think the success of the Bin Laden raid will solidify a lot of support for the increase in funding for special operations equipment and training,” he says.

While trimming the military’s music tab might be an attractive target for Pentagon bean counters, Harrison said there is no shortage of targets within a nearly $700 billion yearly budget, a figure that includes war spending.

Pentagon leaders love to tout the $330 billion they saved by cutting or killing weapons programs over the past two years, but that’s not the whole story. “Even if somehow it does add up to $330 billion in savings that were cut from these programs … it’s not net savings because there’s going to be replacements for a lot these things anyway,” said Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. “These were hypothetical savings anyway, because there weren’t hard programs.”