Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

DoD sets priorities with 2011 budget, QDR

The Pentagon’s double-barreled preview of spending plans unveiled Monday asks Congress for an additional $15 billion over current fiscal year spending — an increase of 2.2 percent — for baseline spending and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the White House announced last week, the Pentagon is proposing a 1.4 percent pay raise, equal to the most recent increase in the Employment Cost Index. The raise, if approved, would be the lowest in the history of the all-volunteer military.

Overall, the Pentagon wants to spend $138 billion, an increase of 2.6 percent, on military personnel — a category that also includes allowances for food and housing, and expenditures to fully fund end strength growth in the Army and Marine Corps — keys to increasing post-deployment time back home, officials say.

Reassessing capabilities

In sum, the Pentagon is requesting $708.3 billion, $159.3 billion of which would be targeted for spending on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to budget documents released Monday.

The base budget, the Pentagon said, “continues progress toward a better balance” in the U.S. defense posture — an effort begun last year to institutionalize spending on current and future needs, as well as to reform the department’s approach to procurement, acquisition and contracting.

That translates to more spending on items such as helicopters and helicopter crew training — $9.6 billion — as well as special operations forces, electronic warfare capabilities, and procurement and deployment of more advanced unmanned aerial vehicles.

Those are all elements vital to the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan and points of emphasis in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, also released Monday along with the proposed budget.

The QDR lays out four primary objectives: Prevail in today’s wars, prevent and deter conflict, prepare for a wide range of contingencies, and preserve and enhance the all-volunteer force.

At a Pentagon news conference announcing the budget plans and the QDR, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the review marks the end of the longstanding assumption that the U.S. military need to be able to simultaneously fight and win two major conventional wars.

“We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars we planned,” Gates said. “As a result, the United States needs a broad portfolio of military capabilities, with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of conflicts.”

The budget also calls for $25.1 billion to support a “realistic, sustainable shipbuilding program” that would add 10 ships in fiscal 2011, and $15.1 billion for fixed-wing aircraft — three-quarters of which would buy 42 F-35 tactical aircraft.

But Gates repeated his opposition to building more C-17 transport aircraft and an alternate engine for the F-35 —programs with strong backers on Capitol Hill.

“I will strongly recommend that the president veto any legislation that sustains the unnecessary continuation of these two programs,” he said.

Health care and personnel

On the personnel side of the budget proposal, funding for service member and family support programs would increase 41 percent over the current fiscal year, the Pentagon said. The fiscal 2011 budget request marks the beginning of a five-year plan to replace and recapitalize more than half of the 194 Department of Defense Dependent Schools.

The budget also includes a $100 million boost in spending for the care of service members wounded in combat, to a total of $2.2 billion. That includes money for “enhanced care and support” of the wounded, ill and injured and for research and development into, and treatment for, traumatic brain injury and psychological injuries. The increase will provide more than 1,000 additional personnel for Wounded Warrior Support, the Pentagon says.

That is just a fraction of the $50.7 billion the Pentagon says it needs to fund the Military Health System, which serves 9.5 million eligible beneficiaries — active-duty service members and their families, military retirees and their families, dependent survivors and certain eligible members of the reserve components.

The Pentagon repeatedly has expressed concerns about the rising cost of health care, which Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis says is growing at a pace “significantly above the rate of inflation.”

In 2001, Gates said, the total outlay for military health care was $19 billion.

“It’s only going to go up, and … it is absorbing an increasing percentage of our budget,” Gates said. “We absolutely want to take care of our men and women in uniform and our retirees. But at some point, there has to be some reasonable tradeoff between reasonable cost increases or premium increases or co-pays or something in the cost to the program.”

The Pentagon tried for three years running to get Tricare enrollment fees, deductibles and pharmacy fees increased, only to have Congress reject that move. In last year’s budget, the Pentagon threw up its hands and fully funded the program, and has done so again with this budget submission, Gates said.

The QDR contained few concrete personnel proposals. In addition to stressing wounded warrior care, family care and dwell time issues, it calls for allowing the services “to pursue innovative ways to retain quality personnel,” citing the Marine Corps’ Selective Reenlistment Bonus program.

The Pentagon also calls for a new emphasis on stability operations, counterinsurgency, and building partner capacity skill sets in its leadership training programs.

The Pentagon also seeks relief for reservists pushed by the 9/11 attacks into serving as an operational reserve, versus the strategic role they long served. “Our nation must have a force generation model that provides sufficient strategic depth,” the QDR states. “As the operational environment allows, the Department will seek ways to rebalance its reliance on the Reserve Component to ensure the long-term viability of a force that has both strategic and operational capabilities.”

Service-by-service budget breakdown

* Army Times: Army budget request slightly larger than 2010

* Air Force Times: AF budget request calls for 48 new Reapers

* Marine Corps Times: Budget calls for more EFV tests in 2011

* Navy Times: Navy budget includes 9 ships, kills CG(X)

Coverage at Defense News

* DoD’s $708.2B budget comes with veto threat

* $3B for BCT modernization in U.S. Army budget plan