Although Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye says he doubts President-elect Barack Obama would cut the military, a new briefing paper indicates that Obama’s transition team is considering doing just that in some areas.
“In my discussions with Senator Obama, he has indicated to me that he supports the military,” Inouye, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, said in comments published Thursday in Hawaii’s Star-Bulletin.
But supporting the military doesn’t necessarily mean that the Department of Defense escapes the Obama chopping block, because the briefing paper mentions reductions in high-profile weapon systems, including national missile defense, the Airborne Laser, and the Army’s Future Combat Systems program
The new administration is expected to overhaul the way Defense has been funded, according to the briefing paper prepared for the campaign’s national security advisory team, led by former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.
“Despite massive defense spending, all four services have ‘broken programs’ — not enough resources in out-years to continue with their current programs,” the paper says.
One item in particular that is in the transition team’s cross hairs is the long-sought holy grail of consolidating all military spending into a single appropriations request.
“No supplementals,” the briefing paper states, referring to the Bush administration practice of relying on supplemental appropriations to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Already challenged by overseeing the first wartime transition of civilian power at the Department of Defense in four decades, the Obama team is also right on time to knock heads with a looming 600-pound gorilla: the sweeping review of U.S. military force structure, global posture and composition called the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
That review will emerge against the stark backdrop of a new round of Defense belt-tightening that could reduce investment decisions to a choice between additional ground forces, which are essential to counterinsurgency operations, and capital-intensive ships and aircraft key to conventional wars.
At stake in the squeeze play: Obama’s ambitious campaign promises to rebuild National Guard and Reserve forces to create a military suited to both irregular challenges and conventional operations, and to increase the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marine Corps by 27,000.
The Obama team also is tinkering with retooling the intelligence undersecretary office established by Donald Rumsfeld; creating a new high-level energy security post; and dividing the substantial portfolio of the assistant secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities.
A Thousand and One Details
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are coordinating the great power shift with Danzig.
A small library of briefing books detailing policy, the status of key programs, and recommendations for the next Pentagon leadership team has been assembled in the office of Thomas Tesch, the transition task force chief, according to a Defense Department source.
Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff is putting final polish on an exhaustive briefing that details eight to 10 issues, dealing largely with policy, that require the immediate attention of the incoming administration, according to a Pentagon source cited by InsideDefense.
A complete presentation of Pentagon issues to Obama’s transition team could come as soon as next week.
Danzig reportedly also is hard at work identifying about 50 candidates for Pentagon posts that require Senate confirmation, the majority of which are in the Secretary of Defense office. Eight are in the Army and seven each are in the Air Force and Navy.
Still hanging fire is exactly how to implement Obama’s pledge to improve the weapon system acquisition process to achieve cost savings and to “develop a strategy for determining when contracting makes sense,” according to the briefing paper.
Meanwhile, with the fiscal ax poised to fall, Defense is hustling to grab all the funding it can before the new president takes over as commander in chief.
The Secretary of Defense’s office is preparing a fiscal year 2010 budget proposal that recommends a $57 billion top-line increase, according to Pentagon sources contacted by InsideDefense.
Friday, it will consider the military services’ requests to transmit to Congress before the end of December a 2009 fiscal year war-cost supplemental spending request to finance operations between spring and October.
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