Lawmakers Will Try to Wrap War Funding Into Defense Budgets

Influential Republicans in the House and Senate are joining the chorus of Democratic calls to abandon emergency wartime supplemental spending bills and instead fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan out of the annual defense budget.

Unless the defense budget top line is dramatically increased, tucking the hefty supplemental into the budget request could further constrain defense dollars just as several big-ticket military transformation programs move into pricey production phases.

The services, particularly the Army, have been paying some of their modernization bills through the multibillion-dollar supplemental packages, which are not subjected to the same rigorous authorization and oversight process as the traditional budget.

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said in a brief interview he would like to begin paying for the war out of the budget in the next fiscal year. Indeed, the Defense Department has already requested a $50 billion wartime “bridge” fund in its fiscal 2007 budget submission, signaling that the process is beginning to take root in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has long said it cannot anticipate war costs — and, as such, cannot plan for them a year in advance. But many in Congress say the cost of the operations is becoming more predictable.

“This is no longer an emergency,” said House Armed Services Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. “We’ve been there for four years.”

Missouri Republican Sen. James Talent, Bartlett’s counterpart in the upper chamber, likewise said paying war bills in the annual budget is a “matter of good practice.”

But as war costs escalate — including multibillion-dollar bills to refurbish and replace equipment used in the field — that could squeeze defense spending for long-term projects. Escalating personnel costs, due in part to health care and other benefits, will exacerbate the problem, lawmakers and analysts said.

“We’re spending money like water going over a dam,” said Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Curt Weldon, who chairs the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee. “When this war winds down, then we’re really going to be facing the music.”

The Navy, for instance, hopes to grow its shipbuilding accounts to an average of $13.4 billion annually to carry out Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen’s ambitious plans for a 313-ship fleet anchored by several expensive, next-generation platforms. The Navy plans to spend $11.2 billion next year on new ships.

Combined with the growing costs of the Army’s Future Combat Systems — now estimated as high as $200 billion — as well as big dollars for missile defense, the Joint Strike Fighter and the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet, defense dollars could be facing stormy waters.

“The foot is not going to fit in the shoe much longer,” said Gordon Adams, former associate national security director at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

Which is precisely why advocates of increasing defense spending have been arguing that defense makes up only 3.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — including the supplemental. During the Reagan administration, defense spending was 6.2 percent of GDP. It was around 9 percent during the Vietnam War.

Their goal, repeated with increasing frequency in committee hearings and during floor debate, is to raise today’s percentage significantly. That plan could be difficult in an era of tightened federal spending restraint. But the result would safeguard programs, allowing service leaders to fulfill their transformation goals.

Several lawmakers maintained the Defense Department should get a larger share of the federal budget pie.

“Long term, I’d like to get a larger percentage of the budget [for] defending America,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

However, it may already be too late.

“I don’t think anything is perfectly safe,” Adams said.

At a March 9 hearing, Senate Defense Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, aired concerns about the ability to sustain defense spending at its current levels.

And Bartlett has argued that war expenses already are eating away at modernization accounts, long considered the low-hanging fruit in the Pentagon budget.

The Navy, for instance, will soon shrink its underwater arsenal from 56 submarines to 48. From 2020-2034, the submarine fleet will dip below 48 boats and bottom out briefly at 40 subs.

“We’re saying we’re going to sink down to 40 subs because we don’t have the money,” said Bartlett, whose subcommittee oversees Navy spending. “I don’t think the American people want us to do that.”

Members Ready to Joust Over Foreign Ship Leases

Shipbuilding advocates are gearing up to battle with the Pentagon once again over long-term leases for used foreign ships, a practice they say is contributing to diminished business for U.S. shipyards.

Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., plans to introduce language this year that would limit leases to two years, compared with the five-year leases allowed under current law. The Pentagon then can renew those leases for another 59 months, bringing the total length of those leases to just shy of 10 years.

Davis, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, successfully ushered similar language through the House last year as an amendment to the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill. But senators, concerned that it could increase costs for the Navy, stripped the language during conference debate on the bill.

This year, Davis continues to attempt to gain support in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. But the shipbuilding lobby also is attempting to find backers on the appropriations committee, in the hopes the amendment could be passed on the defense spending bill.

The Navy, however, continues to oppose it.

“We appreciate the value of U.S. shipyards. However, our concern has historically been that this will have a negative effect on our readiness by limiting potential sources of vessels, forcing us to buy vessels we would rather lease, and ultimately cost us more money than we can afford to spend,” a senior Navy official said.

Transportation Panels OK Coast Guard Funding

The House and Senate transportation committees have agreed to an $8.7 billion bill to authorize fiscal year 2006 funding for Coast Guard programs, including $1.6 billion for the service’s centerpiece Integrated Deepwater System of new and upgraded ships, aircraft and intelligence gear.

“This agreement provides the good men and women of the Coast Guard, who performed so well in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the resources to carry out their vital missions,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young, R-Ala., said in a recent statement.

The committees, however, are requiring an in-depth report on the implementation of Deepwater, which modernizes the Coast Guard’s ships and aircraft used for deepwater missions. The bill also establishes a pilot project for long-range vessel tracking systems.

In addition, the legislation requires the Coast Guard to report to Congress any additional costs associated with their response to Hurricane Katrina. And it permits the Coast Guard to extend temporarily licenses and documents for any mariners affected by Hurricane Katrina.

CNO to Set Up Foreign Training, Civil Affairs

Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, the Navy’s new organization designed primarily to support the global war on terrorism, will gain two new units, as directed by Mullen. The units will be established in Norfolk, Va., in October.

The Expeditionary Training Team will train foreign military, civil and security personnel in their countries to protect their nations and areas of responsibility from enemies.

The Maritime Civil Affairs Group will be assigned the mission of “enhancing the relationship between military forces and civil authorities” and of applying “specialty skills in areas normally the responsibility of the civil government,” according to Mullen’s directive.

New Carrier to Cost Less than Nimitz Ship?

Navy officials claim that $7.3 billion construction cost of the first CVN 21 next-generation aircraft carrier will come in at $200 million less than another Nimitz-class carrier would have cost, in terms of constant 2005 dollars.

Although nonrecurring development costs for the new class will reach $5.6 billion, the development cost will be offset by savings in life-cycle costs, said Capt. Mike Schwartz, the Navy’s CVN 21 program manager.

CVN 21 is “designed with the sailor of the future in mind,” he said. In part because the ship is designed to operate with 1,000 to 1,200 fewer sailors than the manpower-intensive Nimitz carriers, life-cycle cost savings of each CVN 21 hull over 50 years of expected service will total $5.28 billion.

Schwartz also said that reduced maintenance requirements for the new carrier will mean less time spent in overhauls and more time available for operations, contributing to savings in life-cycle costs.

Metals Demand Squeezes Production Schedules

Competition in world markets for specialty metals, such as titanium used in aircraft and ship production, is putting pressure on lead times for ordering the metals to meet production-line schedules.

Capt. “BD” Gaddis, the Navy’s Super Hornet strike fighter program manager, said the program stood ready to add on production of more Super Hornets at the end of the current multiyear procurement should it be required.

But he cautioned that purchases of specialty metals must be scheduled sooner in the process than before.

“Everybody wants titanium, whether you’re a Joint Strike Fighter, F-22, a Super Hornet, a ship, China, India, Russia,” Gaddis said. “Everybody wants these specialty metals. It is a volatile market right now, and it’s causing some of the lead times to start increasing.

“Once you get those materials it only takes 18 months to build the airplane, but the decisions are a little bit closer than some folks think on building more Super Hornets at the end of the line,” he said.

No Interoperability For F-22, Super Hornet?

Despite the Pentagon’s emphasis on joint operations in recent years, there is no requirement for interoperability between the Navy’s Super Hornet tactical aircraft and the Air Force’s F-22 fighter now entering service.

Gaddis, the Navy’s Super Hornet program manager, said Rear Adm. Steven L. Enewold, the Department of Defense program executive officer for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, understands the importance of data connectivity, including intranets, “being interoperable with us.”

Interoperability of the Super Hornet with the F-22, however, remains unknown.

“I have no idea what the F-22 program is doing other than remaining silent in building other intranet systems,” Gaddis said. “Right now there is no operational requirement for us to go back and forth.”

Carrier Fleet May Temporarily Drop to 10

If the Navy’s requested retirement of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is approved by Congress, the Navy’s carrier fleet not only will drop to 11 ships, but for a brief period go down to 10, according to Rear Adm. David Architzel, the program executive officer for aircraft carriers. The gap beginning in 2013 would last no more than two years.

“Because of the age of Enterprise, Kennedy and Kitty Hawk, we’ll be in a period when we’ll have to go to 10 carriers,” Architzel said.

The Navy and Northrop Grumman Newport News are working to restore efficiencies in the carrier midlife refueling and comprehensive overhaul program to reduce the time out of service for the Nimitz-class carriers from 40 months for the carrier currently in overhaul to 36 months, which Architzel said would close some of the gap.

Reporting by Seapower Correspondent Megan Scully and Managing Editor Richard R. Burgess.