Good story in the Washington Post today about some specific programs that might be facing cuts: Defense Industry in the Line of Fire.

The key here is to remember that cuts in individual programs are not synonymous with cuts in the overall budget. Public debate on this issue is often startling sloppy. Every campaign season, candidates for office throw around accusations of their opponent being anti-defense on the basis of his or her opposition to specific programs. A better approach is to look at the proposed budget topline in conjunction with an assessment of the strategic environment. As we’ve written several times, the DoD budget is likely to be higher next year than last, but that said, it is likely that several specific programs will come under new scrutiny with a change in administration. These include:

• The Navy’s DDG-1000, a tremendously costly land-attack Destroyer with some stealthy characteristics. At present, supporters of this program are focusing heavily on it as a defense industrial base issue. There is no compelling strategic military argument for this system. If it belongs anywhere, it should be in the stimulus package not the DoD budget.
• The Air Force’s F22 (pictured below), an air-superiority platform whose primary utility would come in a major conflict with China in the Taiwan Strait. At this point, the program may yet get cut or drawn out, but the problems with the F15’s aging airframes suggests that the train has left the station on this one. It still gets discussed as a cut target because of the cost and lack of utility, but ultimately will likely remain untouched simply as a matter of generational replacement of existing capabilities.
• Missile Defense…. At this point, missile defense is not a strategic program, but a political one. Support for missile defense is a bizarre form of demonstrating fealty to Ronald Reagan’s legacy. We’ve deployed systems that are incapable of functioning under real-world conditions, and have had only limited success in even rigged tests. Cutting missile defense would not weaken America’s defenses at this point.
• The Army’s Future Combat System, a multiplatform, networked land warfare system whose rationale has changed faster than its underlying architecture. Originally justified as a high-intensity warfare system for scenarios like the 1991 Gulf War, it is now promoted by some as a survivability measure for troops in low-intensity conflicts. As a practical matter, several of the vehicles in the system will be deployed on ad hoc basis, but the whole scheme as it appears in briefing slides is unlikely to be deployed given its costs and lack of relevance to current or likely future scenarios.

We are seeing a lot of self-interested rhetoric surrounding defense spending of late, but before accepting scrutiny of the systems listed above as being evidence of hostility to national defense, it is worthwhile to explore the rationale (or lack thereof) for the systems in question. In reality, cutting strategically incoherent endeavors in order to focus energy on better programs is a way of strengthening our capacity rather than reducing it. It is not clear what the Obama Administration will ultimately decide, and any accusations at this point are premature.

(photo credit: Defense Industry Daily)

Date posted: Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Posted in: Defense
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