Pentagon details cuts in 'reform' budget

Despite a broad swath of cuts to weapons programs, the Pentagon's $533.8 billion base budget request for fiscal 2010 includes a 5.6 percent increase over fiscal 2009 levels in the military's procurement accounts to pay for unmanned aerial vehicles and other systems favored by the administration.

The only other account to get a bigger boost than procurement was military personnel, up 8.9 percent over this year to pay for a growing Army and Marine Corps.

Meanwhile, the termination of several programs in their infancy accounted for a 1.1 percent decrease to research and development dollars over figures approved for this year.

The budget includes a detailed $130 billion request to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, marking the first time the Pentagon has outlined its full war funding needs in its annual budget submission.

But the budget does not include any projections for FY11 and beyond, as is customary with the annual submission.

Instead, defense officials are relying on the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is now under way, to guide spending in the out years. That review of Defense Department needs and capabilities will be completed early next year.

The program cuts and cancellations, first announced last month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, are aimed at focusing Pentagon spending more heavily on weapons and capabilities that are needed for current combat operations, such as drones and more helicopter crews.

"This is a reform budget," Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale said today. "We sometimes ... use that phrase loosely. But I think a handful of budgets qualify, and this one does."

The budget provides funding for the Army's Future Combat Systems program at around $3 billion, down $633 million from the amount previously projected for 2010, Army officials said Thursday.

Only a small portion of that request would pay to restart the manned ground vehicle portion of the program, which Gates canceled last month amid concerns that the Army had not taken lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan into account in the vehicle design.

The Army plans to have a concept for the manned vehicles ready by Labor Day, said Lt. Gen. Edgar Stanton, the service's budget chief.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration said it does not intend to pursue an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which would cost $465 million next year.

"The Defense Department is already pleased with the engine it has. The engine it has works," President Obama said this morning. "The Pentagon does not want, and does not plan to use, the alternative version."

United Technologies' Pratt & Whitney unit builds the primary engine, while General Electric Co. and the British firm Rolls Royce had been tapped to build the second engine.

The Bush administration tried and failed for years to cancel the second engine, saying it was an unnecessary cost. But lawmakers repeatedly rejected the cancelation and put the funding back into the program, arguing that an engine competition would ultimately cut costs.

Also today, Hale said the Pentagon plans to "immediately restart" the presidential helicopter program, which Gates canceled after it had more than doubled in cost to $13 billion. The Pentagon has already spent $3.2 billion on the program.

"Well, as economists say, sunk costs are sunk. We won't save that" funding, Hale said. "But going forward, we need to keep better control of the requirements, which I think ran amok with this weapons system."

The 2010 budget request includes $85 million to end the program and start up another effort, but contract termination costs are likely to exceed the amount requested for 2010, said Rear Adm. J.T. Blake, the deputy assistant Navy secretary for budget.

Indeed, the Pentagon will incur hefty termination costs on several of its canceled programs, but Hale said the department did not have an estimate of what it would cost.

"Those are going to be subject to negotiation," he said. "They always are."

The war fighting portion of the budget request -- spending that the previous Bush administration routinely sought in emergency supplementals -- contains mostly operations and maintenance dollars. But it does include some procurement money, including $5.5 billion to buy 1,080 all-terrain versions of the Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles for use in Afghanistan.

Also included in the war-related spending request is $252.8 million to buy 12 Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, in addition to the $1 billion in the base budget to buy 48 of the drones.