Washington Report

House Panel Readies Its Own Threat Analysis As the QDR Moves Forward

As House lawmakers undertake an ambitious review of national security threats and the military capabilities needed to thwart them, congressional observers are questioning the impact such an effort will have on future budgets and weapons programs.

The bipartisan review, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and ranking member Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., parallels the Pentagon’s own strategic assessment that occurs every four years — the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

The forthcoming QDR, due to lawmakers in February, is expected to emphasize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s military transformation plans to build a lighter, leaner and more agile force among the Army and Marine Corps ranks.

Resources for that transformation likely would be funded to the detriment of larger, more expensive platforms, including the Air Force F/A-22 fighter as well as Navy aircraft carrier and shipbuilding programs, a likelihood that has many lawmakers with a stake in such efforts scrambling to ward off any proposed budget cuts.

The congressional Defense Review Threat Panel’s final report is slated for completion in February, coinciding not only with the QDR but with the arrival on Capitol Hill of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2007 budget request.

Hunter proposed the threat-review panel during a full committee hearing on the QDR in mid-September. He noted that such an independent effort would “help us place the Quadrennial Defense Review into context and to form educated opinions about its strengths and weaknesses. More importantly, we will be able to incorporate what we learn in the fiscal year 2007 defense authorization.”

A House aide familiar with the lawmakers’ review said, “Yes, they will address some priorities of the Hill to use in hearings, but [the committee threat assessment] is not there to poke holes in the QDR.”

Observers said the idea is to throw out the notion of resource constraints and consider the need for military capabilities based on future threats. Hunter for years has sought to increase the Pentagon’s procurement coffers in an effort to improve national security.

Christopher Hellman, a defense analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C., said Hunter’s committee is seeking a legitimate alternative review with which to benchmark the QDR.

“And there’s cause to be cynical about that, because while politicians are part of the budget process as an oversight function, and some have a large degree of expertise, they’re politicians,” he said. “When you’re looking at a strategy document, it’s probably best to leave it to the professionals, not the politicians.”

Observers said there is no doubt the congressional report will be more generous toward military platforms than the Pentagon’s QDR, simply because the House will be able to assume a greater level of resources than the Pentagon.

The QDR will be driven in part by projections by the White House Office of Management and Budget for the Pentagon’s top-line spending levels over the next several years, but House lawmakers are not limited by such constraints.

Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, said the committee’s threat assessment will be “critical in shaping U.S. military budgets, service structures and platforms in the coming years,” according to a Sept. 20 committee statement. Along with Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., Turner is co-chair of the Defense Review Threat Panel.

Since September, the panel, composed of volunteer members from the committee’s middle and lower ranks, has held a number of public hearings with defense and security experts in the private sector. Panel members have also conducted closed-door meetings with military and other government officials, including experts from the geographic combatant commands, and taken a daylong field trip to the CIA.

Currently, members are organized in five so-called “gap panels” intended to function as congressional subcommittees to consider how specific capabilities could be employed to address certain threats. The panels are: regional powers, nontraditional military missions and disasters, asymmetric threats, terrorism and radical Islam, and regional conflicts.

Although the House review will serve as a beneficial exercise to improve lawmakers’ understanding of security threats and the military capabilities needed to address them, Hellman said it will not have the impact of the congressionally mandated, professionally executed QDR.

“The QDR fits into the Pentagon’s formula for long-term planning and policy, and this thing doesn’t carry that kind of weight,” he said.

Would Oil and Bullets Mix?

Leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee want to know if offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico would affect military training in the region.

In the past, the Air Force and Navy have opposed drilling in the eastern gulf for fear it would hamper live-fire exercises. During an Oct. 7 committee hearing to consider the nominations of Michael Wynne as Air Force secretary and Donald Winter as Navy secretary, Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said the eastern gulf region “is one of the greatest training areas in the United States.”

Both nominees promised quick, thorough reviews of the issue. Nelson urged expedience, or “you’re going to have oil rigs all over this place.” At press time a firm proposal to open up the eastern gulf was several weeks away. It most likely will come in the form of an amendment to an omnibus budget bill.

Navy Considers Warrant Officer Pilots

The Navy is considering filling some of its cockpits with warrant officers. If the Navy goes ahead, it would be a departure from a decades-old policy of using only commissioned officers as naval aviators.

Capt. Mark Guadagnini, the senior aviation detailer at the Bureau of Personnel, told members of the Tailhook Association convention in Reno, Nev., in September that the bureau was exploring the option of starting a program of promoting qualified enlisted personnel to warrant officer and training them to become naval aviators.

The option has the possibility of reducing manpower costs over the long term and satisfying the desire of many pilots to remain in flying assignments instead of pursuing career-enhancing non-flying jobs. The Army has used thousands of warrant officers as helicopter pilots at least since the 1960s, and has commissioned pilots as well.

The Navy retired its last enlisted pilot in the 1970s. During the 1980s, the service began the Aviation Duty Officer program, whereby commissioned officers could choose a less career-enhancing path with more flying assignments. That decade also marked the beginning of the Flying Limited Duty Officer program, in which enlisted personnel were trained as pilots, commissioned as limited-duty officers, and given assignments in cockpits and on carrier decks. Both programs were phased out as the Navy’s pilot requirements declined in the 1990s.

Virginia Seeks Navy Commitment on Oceana

Top Navy leaders are under mounting pressure from Virginia officials to guarantee the future of the state’s Oceana Naval Air Station pending an effort to halt development around the base and acquire property in potential accident zones by next March.

In letters sent last month to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, said that before state and local governments could commit money and resources to the plan, they need a firm promise the Navy will keep the base open for the foreseeable future.

In September, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission decreed that the state and the city of Virginia Beach should establish a $15 million-per-year program to acquire homes and many businesses surrounding Oceana’s potential accident zones, or risk losing more than 200 Navy fighter jets based at Oceana to the former Cecil Field outside Jacksonville, Fla.

Reporting by Seapower Correspondent Amy Klamper. Managing Editor Richard R. Burgess also contributed to this report.