I may need it. What was the name-Truckmasters?
The appeal of driving an 18 wheeler grows every time I read something like this:
OBAMA CAMP COULD ROCK MILITARY’S FY-10 BUDGET WITH BIG CHANGES
Military officials who expected President Barack Obama’s team to make only minor revisions to the Bush administration’s fiscal year 2010 defense budget plan could be in for a shock, according to a Pentagon source and internal documents reviewed by sister publication Inside the Pentagon. The armed services’ FY-10 budgets could face far more radical changes than previously imagined, including major cuts, as the Defense Department prepares to start the Quadrennial Defense Review next month, driven by Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ recent call to rebalance DOD’s budget plans.
The shifting mood is evident in a Jan. 14 internal Navy bulletin that was issued to officials in Naval Network Warfare Command, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command and the N6 division of the office of the chief of naval operations, which handles net-centric requirements.
Citing recent meetings, the Navy bulletin warns officials that all bets are off and the service’s FY-10 budget plans — known as the program objective memorandum, or POM-10 for short — could soon see big adjustments.
“As you know, our original planning assumption was that the POM-10 we submitted would undergo only minor changes,” the message states. “That may no longer be accurate.”
The Office of the Secretary of Defense “is not as heavily invested in POM-10 product as submitted,” according to the message, which adds, “There is now an anticipation of significant change to POM-10 and about a two month cycle to re-build it.”
A Pentagon source similarly told ITP that “major changes” are in store for DOD’s FY-10 budget plans. It is not possible to do an entire QDR in a few months, so DOD will likely start working on a bunch of issues, some of which will be decided in time for the FY-10 budget submission to Congress this spring and the remainder will be enacted in the FY-11 budget after the QDR is completed, the source said.
Guidance from the Office of Management and Budget regarding the Pentagon’s FY-10 topline is expected soon, the source added.
Gates penned a recent Foreign Affairs essay that argues DOD must focus less on traditional, major platforms and more on specialized gear tailored for to’s irregular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is widely understood from the article that DOD will add more low-end capability for stability operations, the Pentagon source said.
“What’s unclear is what the unpaid bills are on the low end,” the source added, noting defense officials are having a hard time coming up with options to spend more money. On the other hand, simply cutting high-end programs to meet whatever budget target OMB gives DOD — while it would technically rebalance the budget toward the low end — is unlikely to be satisfying, the source said.
Another complication is that cuts that are likely to be weighed, such as line closures for the Air Force’s F-22 and C-17 programs, are also job cuts in the near term and it is unclear how that will play out, the source said. The Bush administration left it up to the Obama team to decide whether to shut down the F-22 and C-17 production lines. A new sign emerged last week that the latter program might be continued. A position paper posted to the White House’s Web site Jan. 20 included the C-17 in a list of programs that “need greater investment.”
William Lynn, Obama’s choice to be deputy defense secretary, pledged to scrub the FY-10 defense budget during his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing.
“At a time when we face a wide range of national security challenges and unprecedented budget pressures, acquisition reform is not an option, it is an imperative,” he said. “It is time to improve all aspects of the department’s acquisition and budget processes so that every dollar we spend at the Pentagon is used wisely and effectively to enhance our national security.”
The Navy bulletin says service officials have no handle on how much change is coming. “It is expected that some part of POM-10 will revert to PB-09 plus inflation,” the message states. “The picture is cloudy at best.”
The bulletin says the new time line has not been fleshed out, but it looks like the Obama administration intends to send the FY-10 president’s budget to Congress in April, as ITP reported last month. This will impact the schedule for the FY-11 program review — also called PR-11 — because Obama’s FY-10 defense budget will form the foundation for the PR-11 process.
According to the message, it will be challenging for service officials to begin work on PR-11 without knowing what baseline to use. The PR-11 time line is not yet clear, but it is “expected it will be very tight and therefore be limited in scope,” the bulletin says. PR-11 is likely to be limited only to fact-of-life changes, meaning price changes due to contractual factors or inflation, appropriations shifts between different kinds of accounts, safety fixes, schedule changes due to external pressure, or to support warfighting needs, according to the message.
The message warns that serious cuts will likely be considered. The bulletin asserts the Navy mulled the idea of an eight-carrier Navy prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that during the 1990s there was one year when the Navy bought only 43 aircraft, as opposed to the 180 to 220 that were needed. When “things get lean, everything goes on the table,” the message counsels, adding, “There will be very few sacred cows.”
Those who work on high-tech information operations, networks, intelligence and space capabilities must advocate for their high-tech programs by tying them to warfighting and using language that warfighters who are not information technology specialists can understand, the bulletin advises. — Christopher J. Castelli
“The world needs ditch diggers too, you know”-Judge Smails.