No way to plan defense

The last-minute plan to avoid default and re-open the government will delay bringing sanity to defense spending.

Defense budget experts are working on their own plan for the 2015-to-2019 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) “with absolutely no idea what we’re going to be doing in 2014, if and when we end this shutdown and get to start executing 2014 [spending].”

That’s Jamie M. Morin, who testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee as the nominee for director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation. CAPE is the Pentagon’s unit that provides independent analytic cost assessments of current and future military programs, along with development of the FYDP.

His problems won’t go away unless Congress comes up with a fiscal 2014 Pentagon budget that promises some stability before the new Jan. 15 deadline.

Morin, now an assistant secretary of the Air Force, told the senators, “One of the key reasons that our Department of Defense is the envy of the world and our military establishment is the envy of the world is the really robust planning, programming, budgeting, execution process that we use.”

But, he added, “I think the [current] instability really puts at risk that entire, well-articulated, effective set of institutions that strive to squeeze that maximum amount of combat capability out of each taxpayer dollar.”

Michael Lumpkin, slated to become assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, described the sequester-the across-the-board cuts required in fiscal 2013 discretionary defense spending-as endangering the projected slowly planned growth of Special Operations Command from 65,000 to 71,000 personnel.

“Special operations cannot be mass-produced. It takes time, and there’s a significant process that goes to making a special operator,” said Lumpkin, a former Navy SEAL. “I have real concerns about the morale of both our armed forces and the federal workers, based on the current climate.”

Jo Ann Rooney, nominated to be Navy undersecretary, had a different issue. Asked whether the Navy would uphold its legal obligation to meet financial audit deadlines set for 2014 and 2017, she said she couldn’t make that determination because there was “the inability to make sure that there is the appropriate hiring to fill those slots.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), started the hearing off, however, by criticizing Congress for providing “the government with precious little certainty about future funding, which has caused untold amounts of scrapped planning, administrative double work and waste.”

There is plenty of blame to pass around for today’s fiscal cliff and for yesterday’s Pentagon excesses. The real question is whether this latest crisis has forced enough people in Congress and the executive branch to settle down and work out their differences so defense budget planners can get to work.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 10/19/2013

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