TOPICS
TOPICS
Cash-strapped Army plans cuts to future combat program
The Army is planning significant cuts and other changes in its $160 billion Future Combat Systems program to save $3.3 billion through 2013.
The cuts, outlined in a recent memo from the service's top acquisition official, are an indication that the Army is beginning to sacrifice some of its planned funding for weapons systems to pay for both increased Iraq war costs and plans to expand the service by thousands of soldiers.
The undated memo, signed by Army Acquisition Executive Claude Bolton, said bluntly that cuts and other adjustments to FCS are "strictly budget driven" and are not due to the contractors' performance or other issues.
"You should incorporate these changes as expeditiously as possible in order to maximize the availability of current year resources to execute the adjusted FCS program," wrote Bolton, who did not include dollar figures in his memo. FCS, the most expansive and expensive technological endeavor in Army history, forms the core of the service's technology transformation.
Among many changes listed in a three-page addendum to Bolton's memo, the service intends to cancel two of the four unmanned aerial vehicle classes originally planned for the sprawling FCS program, and suspend development efforts on an armed robotic vehicle.
FCS program officials also have been ordered to stop work on development of the XM307 armament system, and instead use existing crew-served weapons. All of those systems are now dubbed "objective requirements" for the FCS program, treating them as goals and not listing them among the primary systems that must be funded by the Army.
The Army also has changed several primary requirements for the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System to objective requirements, and has placed two small unmanned ground vehicles on the objective requirement list. In addition, the Army plans to scale back experimentation costs for FCS and reduce the number of technology "spin outs" of various FCS technologies from four to three.
Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday downplayed any squeeze on the FCS budget. Schoomaker emerged from a two-hour closed-door meeting with House appropriators Wednesday confident that increased operational and personnel costs would not adversely affect the service's expensive technology transformation.
"It's not [about] affordability," Schoomaker said. "It's priorities." Schoomaker, who will retire as the Army's top officer in the next several months, said the meeting with appropriators prompted an "extraordinarily good discussion" about the Army's priorities and needs. "I think it was very meaningful," he added.
The meeting, which focused on Army and Marine Corps readiness, was the first of two months of hearings House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., intends to hold on the Bush administration's annual defense budget and wartime supplemental spending requests, both due on Capitol Hill next month.
COMMENTS
- It cannot continue to be an us (Citizens), them (Congress & Exec branch/DOD). We must all work together to improve laws empowering swift, efficient, effective execution with appropriate oversight while simultaneously preventing easter egging projects (jobs) for congressional districts. All players within this process must adhere to the highest ethical standards if the U.S. Government is to optimize our citizen's hard earned resources (taxs). Let's put our nose to the grind stone, address our differences in an open civil manner and gain the respective of our people. The United States is at its greatest when its people come together to overcome diversity. Duane Posted October 21, 2007 3:34 PM
- The Army, like the other DOD agencies, has wasted billions of dollars over recent years through poor planning and mismanagement. They have many military and civilian workers who aren't productive. They use middlemen like Defense Logistics Agency to buy their material goods which leads to excessive overhead and surpluses that eventually have to be disposed. It also delays repairs on vital systems while parts are being procured. There are countless examples of DOD waste and they didn't just happen overnight. It's been going on for decades. The problem isn't a shortage of money. It's shortage of good leadership in the Pentagon where they are afraid to give up Cold War relics like DLA and get with the times. There are too many pet projects going on. Someone is going to have to make some really tough decisions. This time, it can't be a "realignment" which was just another excuse to waste money. If Congress has to squeeze the Pentagon to get them to wake up and act responsibly, so be it. The taxpayers are getting tired of paying too much for too little. Robert M. Posted January 18, 2007 1:31 PM
- Big deal. Cutting $3.3 billion over 5 years of a $160 billion budget is not significant! The Army should be cutting at a minimum $16 billion over the next two year to even get anything near significant! I propose the cut be $60 billion next year and $20 billion a year for the following three years. That might be significant and the cut in budget request is not a cut in out weapons that exist! This would provide $120 billion that could be used to provide health care to those uninsured, beef up social security reserves and improve Medicare. As the chief says, it is a matter of priorities! Taxpayer Posted January 18, 2007 7:16 AM
