Following White House orders, Army cut supplemental request

Army leaders sliced nearly $3 billion from their latest wartime supplemental spending request under last-minute orders from the White House, forgoing money needed to upgrade a hard-worn fleet of heavy tanks and armored vehicles, defense sources disclosed Monday.

The budget-cutting decision is expected to shut down production lines -- at least temporarily -- on the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle, resulting in long modernization delays for the aging platforms and perhaps thousands of layoffs around the country.

The cut also reveals the Army, the biggest beneficiary of emergency supplemental appropriations, is not immune to the fiscal constraints squeezing other Pentagon agencies as it tries to balance the need to repair older equipment while paying for high-priced technological transformation programs. The Army made the cuts after OMB officials directed the Pentagon to trim its supplemental request, defense sources said.

"There are so many things to be upset about," said a Senate aide familiar with the Army story. "The only solution to any of this is to give the Army more money."

The potential economic blow, coupled with lawmakers' historic affinity for the two mainstays of the Army's heavy force, could prompt a major battle on Capitol Hill as work gets under way on the $72.4 billion fiscal 2006 supplemental request, which the White House sent to Congress last week.

In fiscal 2005 alone, the Abrams upgrade program generated $427.7 million and nearly 4,000 jobs in 11 states, the brunt of which are at General Dynamics Land Systems headquarters in Michigan, according to an industry source. The company's plant in Lima, Ohio, and Alabama's Anniston Army depot would also be among those hardest hit.

Already, General Dynamics, which has fought previous Pentagon funding cuts to the tank program, is busy lining up meetings with affected lawmakers.

Late Monday, company officials met with staff in the office of Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. And last week, just days after the Bush administration released the supplemental, the firm called on Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, an appropriator in the middle of a challenging re-election campaign.

"Obviously, Sen. DeWine is working to supply the military with the equipment they need, and evidence shows that the Bradley and Abrams are critical to the warfighter," a spokesman said.

The Army, according to a General Dynamics spokesman, is aware of possible breaks in production schedules and is "aggressively working this issue."

United Defense Industries, a BAE Systems subsidiary that makes the Bradley, also is tracking the issue, a company spokesman said.

"There's a lot that both the Army and DOD are trying to do with a limited number of dollars," he said. "It is something that we obviously are going to be paying close attention to."

The Bradley and Abrams -- Army stalwarts for more than two decades -- have been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. As it has done with other equipment, the Army hoped to spend supplemental funds to upgrade the armored vehicle fleet instead of merely repairing it to its pre-war condition.

Army officials were essentially "banking on a supplemental that is no longer there," a defense industry analyst said.

But the Army has not given up on plans to leverage supplemental dollars to modernize its heavy armor. According to a service document, the Army intends to seek the funding in the $50 billion fiscal 2007 bridge fund for Iraq and Afghanistan, included as an addendum to the department's budget request for next year.

But despite hopes of recouping the funding in early fiscal 2007, the effect of the cut could weigh heavily on the Army's fighting force.

For instance, the service would have to forego fielding the upgraded Abrams tanks to five brigade combat teams in fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2008, while several heavy brigades will not receive an "urban survival kit" designed for the tank, according to the document.

Meanwhile, the Army will postpone modernizing 318 Bradley vehicles -- including adding increased troop protection -- beyond the fiscal 2008 planned date. Delaying those plans could drive up production costs by 50 percent, the document states.