Key Lawmaker Warns DOD Headed For Financial Disaster In Five Years

Inside The Army | March 11, 2002 | Erin Q. Winograd

[Stand Watch Listen]

Legislators and congressional aides are concerned the Defense Department is headed for a fiscal "train wreck," as all four services jump on the transformation bandwagon but funding falls short.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, last week predicted financial disaster for the Defense Department within five years.

"Everybody's trying to cram their transformation into the same budgets, like the Keystone Kops all trying to get through a door at once. I have said for some time a train wreck in defense was on the way. Now, it has a name. We can call it 'Fiscal 2007,'" he told attendees of the 2002 Air and Space Conference hosted by the Air force and the National Defense University.

Skelton outlined the enormously costly projects that will all reach critical mass at roughly the same time: full-rate production of the Air Force's F-22 and Marine Corps' V-22 aircraft, a "big increase" in missile defense programs, replacement of the Navy's EA-6B and P-3 aircraft and the Air Force's E-8 and KC-135 fleets.

Additionally, the Joint Strike Fighter will be in the heart of the development process. The Navy will still be building ships such as the Virginia-class submarine and will be converting four Ohio-class submarines to be able to shoot Tomahawk missiles. The Army's Stryker vehicle and Comanche helicopter programs will be dispensing large amounts of cash, as well, Skelton said.

"And that's just the procurement part of the picture. That's before we develop new space launch capability and fix houses and pay for our troops," he noted.

"I know it is isn't good news for this audience, but I simply don't see how we get there from here."

A Senate aide expressed similar concerns at a recent Army conference about the soundness of DOD budgets and the Office of the Secretary of Defense's commitment to transformation.

"Will OSD follow through? Talk is cheap," the aide said regarding financial support for the Army's transformation process.

"The question is, I guess, there's a lot bills that they need to pay. It seems like they find a lot of the money in [Army] programs sometimes," the aide added.

The staffer further criticized the department for not instituting one clear definition of transformation for all involved in the process. OSD is telling the services, "'You've got to transform, you've got to transform.' But what does transformation mean to them?" the aide asked. Many officials have recently cited the war in Afghanistan, where a special operations soldier on horseback used his satellite phone to call in B-52 air strikes.

"You know, that's funny, that's cute I suppose. It's also kind of scary," the staffer said. "I mean that's not what transformation is. That's not what the Army meant by transformation.

"I have a fear that you're being abandoned by some of our friends at OSD," the aide said. "I think, really, [transformation] is an Army concept that was invented by [Chief of Staff] Gen. [Eric] Shinseki and it's now espoused by [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld. All along the way, there's been different definitions and I hope OSD comes back to the Army's definition."

-- Erin Q. Winograd