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As the defense industry rejoices in another record increase in military spending, some Pentagon planners are worried they will be forced to make tough choices about several high-profile defense systems in the not-so-distant future.
The Bush administration’s $515.4 billion request for defense spending in 2009 represents a 74 percent increase from the 2001 budget, according to the White House. The additional billions, however, have still not been sufficient to pay for the panoply of weaponry the services want and say they need.
The administration has leaned on a budget gimmick of sorts, the emergency supplemental, to help fill in holes where funds have come up short of the services’ procurement needs. Money for upgrading force equipment – new Stryker vehicles, C-130Js and, this year, F-22s, for example — has been slipped into the supplemental, which was originally intended to pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a new administration, however, service officials could lose that crutch. That is causing some worry among Pentagon officials and defense lobbyists, even as they celebrate another record defense spending increase.
As the supplemental requirements may eventually move to the core defense budget, they could compete with the services’ force modernization plans unless the overall “topline” is further increased.
In this way, the fiscal year 2009 is being viewed as a transition period—a year of reprieve before a new president, with a new agenda, steps in.
“If the supplemental is cut back we will have some serious problems because we are wedded to it,” said one Pentagon official, who asked not to be quoted by name. “We walk such a fine line here with current operations and modernization and political reality.”
It would be almost impossible to roll the supplemental into the budget without increasing the overall ceiling, the official said.
Defense planners say the 2009 budget begins to shift the supplemental to the base budget. The base request, for example, includes about $183.8 billion for weapon systems like the Army’s Stryker wheeled combat vehicles, the Air Force’s F-22s, and the Navy’s VH-71 helicopters. That total represents a 5 percent increase over current procurement spending levels.
Defense industry lobbyists will work furiously in the coming months in hopes of cementing congressional support for programs at this new higher level. Lobbying on Boeing’s C-17 cargo aircraft and Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor is likely to be particularly intense as the assembly lines that produce both planes are slated to be shut down.
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