GUARDIANO: Undo Obama’s defunding

OPINION:

COMMENTARY:

There is one notable exception to the massive Washington spending orgy, and it is weapon-systems acquisition, which is being cut. The rationale for the cuts is procurement “reform.” However, “reform” sounds more like public relations spin designed to put lipstick on a pig in order to sell the American people a bill of goods.

Consider: The Army’s only top-10 Defense Department weapon-acquisition program, Future Combat Systems (FCS), is being eviscerated. FCS is a poorly understood and much maligned program, but it essentially involves giving our soldiers and Marines the same advanced networking capabilities that we civilians take for granted.

For example, we civilians have cell phones, digital cameras, GPS navigation and the consequent ability to transmit voice, text and pictures instantaneously in real time. Why shouldn’t soldiers and Marines have these same capabilities in combat?

Having those capabilities can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. The technical challenge lies in developing operationally secure and mobile networked systems in distant and austere environments with little or no infrastructure.

That’s easier said than done - especially because the Army is burdened mostly with antiquated combat vehicles, which employ 1970s-era design technology. Antiquated Army combat vehicles are electronically overloaded and thus cannot accommodate most 21st-century networking technologies. That’s why the Army has been building a fleet of new FCS vehicles, designed specifically to accommodate 21st-century information technologies.

With its vastly greater situational awareness and battle command capabilities, a networked force is “exactly what is required for irregular warfare, where information [or battlefield intelligence] is the coin of the realm,” Army Col. John Buckley wrote in the March 2 Defense News.

My own operational experience as a Marine is relatively modest (I served in Iraq in 2003), but I agree.

(Full disclosure: I am employed by L-3 Communications Corp., where I provide planning support services to the Army. However, I am not a spokesman for the Army or L-3 and thus do not speak for either. I speak only for myself and, I would like to think, the men and women with whom I was honored to serve in Iraq.)

Modern-day irregular conflicts are inherently land-based. They encompass the full spectrum of conflict and require boots on the ground. Al Qaeda can’t be eliminated through Air Force bombing runs or naval gunfire. Soldiers and Marines on the ground must do the job.

Yet, in the name of making the defense budget more relevant to irregular conflicts, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are proposing to eliminate all eight state-of-the-art FCS vehicle types with some as-yet-unannounced more conventional replacement vehicle. That’s not defense budget reform; that’s defense budget evisceration.

This is at a time when our ground forces - the Army and Marine Corps - already are shortchanged. Indeed, nine of the Defense Department’s top 10 weapon-acquisition programs are for ships, aircraft or missile defense; just one, FCS, is designed for the grunts on the ground.

Moreover, according to Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr., former commandant of the Army War College, since the early 1990s, about 70 percent of the American defense investment, or more than $1.3 trillion, has been earmarked for missiles and fixed-wing aircraft. Yet since the 1990s, soldiers and Marines have done most of the fighting and dying.

This “reformed” defense budget doesn’t remedy this inequity; it makes it worse. Spending on the Air Force Joint Strike Fighter, for instance, will increase dramatically, from $6.8 billion in fiscal 2009 to $11.2 billion in fiscal 2010, Mr. Gates said April 6.

The Joint Strike Fighter is a great and revolutionary airplane, but, unlike the FCS vehicles, it would have little or no utility in an Iraq or Afghan-style counterinsurgency operation.

The irony is that FCS is procurement reform. In fact, the program has run afoul of the Government Accountability Office precisely because the Army has adopted an innovative procurement model that GAO does not understand or accept.

FCS costs have increased because budget cuts have forced costly program restructurings and because the Army has increased the size and scope of the program to accommodate more soldiers and more units. In reality, FCS has been a successfully administered acquisition program that is helping soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, Mr. Gates apparently has been swayed by the GAO and other vocal (and typically uninformed) critics. And his hand has been forced by the White House, which has artificially capped defense spending to accommodate a vastly greater domestic social-welfare budget.

As well, an increasing share of the defense budget is being earmarked toward pay and benefits, especially the military’s quasi-socialistic and fully bureaucratic system of health care. This leaves less money available for weapon-systems modernization.

Congress needs to intervene. America needs to spend more, not less, on weapon-systems modernization for our soldiers and Marines.

John R. Guardiano is a writer in Arlington and a proud former Marine.