Deficit Proposals Are Right About Need For Defense Cuts, But Full Of Errors On Weapons
The chairmen of the bipartisan deficit-reduction commission have done the political system a big favor by illustrating the kinds of budget cuts that will be needed to bring federal expenses into closer alignment with fiscal resources. They have also removed any illusions that defense spending will be "off the table" when the new Congress turns to dealing with the deficit next year. With roughly 40 percent of federal spending currently being borrowed, items like Medicare and Medicaid would have to be cut in half to balance the budget if defense were left out of the equation. As I said in a Bloomberg Business News story yesterday, that is arithmetically and politically untenable.
The $100 billion in illustrative defense cuts the chairmen propose for fiscal 2015 all make sense, although it will be much easier to implement cuts in procurement than adjustments to military healthcare. Thus, the pattern seen in past defense downturns of weapons programs being cut first and cut furthest is likely to repeat itself again in the years ahead. (Secretary Gates already cut $330 billion in planned weapons spending last year, killing the Air Force's F-22 fighter, the Navy's next-generation destroyer, and the Army's proposed family of networked combat vehicles.)
Where the deficit commission chairmen went wrong on defense, though, was in trying to identify specific weapons programs that are suitable candidates for termination. Their lack of expertise on that subject is readily apparent in the proposals they make. They incorrectly state the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that the Air Force is buying. They understate the cost of alternatives. They mis-identify the under secretary of the Navy and the name of the department's future radio system. They contradict themselves, saying in one paragraph that production of the V-22 rotorcraft should be ended early and then in the very next paragraph that an amphibious vehicle is less important to future warfighting than the capabilities provided by the V-22.
Little mistakes like these bespeak a broader ignorance of military plans and technology that leads the chairmen to exaggerate the savings their proposals would generate. For example, if the Joint Tactical Radio System were terminated as they propose, over dozen different legacy radios -- some of which cannot communicate with each other -- would need to be maintained indefinitely in the joint force. The cost of sustaining these aged devices and working around their numerous inadequacies would eventually come to match if not surpass the cost of fielding the new joint radio. The situation is similar with regard to their proposal for buying fewer F-35s and using more existing planes in the mix. Not only do those existing planes cost more than the commission seems to realize, but all sorts of additional outlays would be required to make them survivable in the environment for which the stealthy F-35 was conceived.
No one should be surprised to see the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or the Army's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle on the chairmen's hit list. The projected unit costs of those systems have made them easy targets for budgeteers. But what the chairmen of the deficit commission don't seem to fully grasp is that when a program meeting a validated warfighting requirement is eliminated, something else has to take its place. In the case of the Marine Corps, there basically isn't any alternative to the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle -- the slow-moving legacy amphibs are deathtraps. In the case of the Army's proposed light tactical vehicle, the alternative is to keep Cold War humvees in service, even though they too have turned out to be deathtraps since insurgents in Iraq discovered improvised explosive devices.
Bottom line: yes, weapons purchases will have to be cut. But the commission should set broad targets and leave the specifics to Pentagon policymakers. Otherwise, it will say foolish things that undercut the credibility of its broader recommendations.