Perhaps I should say sophomoric, or passive-aggressive. Andrew Houston-Floyd of Avascent simply called it unrealistic, implicitly asking what part of sequestration did you not understand? But that doesn’t mean that the document is without value, as it doe signal how the Pentagon’s priorities are changing, even within an inflated sense of what’s possible, or just appropriate.
As Houston-Floyd noted yesterday, it is the rebalancing of commitments from the Middle East towards East Asia that largely explains the larger changes in the request. Compared to last year’s plan, some big funding lines changed significantly:
+87% procurement of EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft
+60% procurement of MQ-4C Triton maritime reconnaissance drone aircraft
+15% procurement of Virginia-class submarines
+_5% procurement of P-8A Poseidon antisubmarine aircraft
–_9% development of the Marines' Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV)
–13% modifications for Bradley fighting vehicles
–31% modifications for Abrams tanks
–58% development of the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV)
–77% development of the Marine Personnel Carrier
zeroed procurement of drone helicopters for the Army
zeroed procurement of new AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters
While I think that this is merely a good start, I am enthused about these changes. I worry about long-term ability to stealth aircraft to penetrate air defenses without electronic support. I’m generally enthused about maritime patrol aircraft; in some scenarios, these watch over large ocean areas less expensively than fleets of frigates. I wonder about the unit-costliness of the Virginias, but word generally holds that the Chinese have little hope of countering them, and for the foreseeable future.
But it’s the reductions that get me a bit more enthused. If the Marines’ budget for the ACV is being trimmed, then at least we might infer that the Corps intends to avoid writing another blank check for development, as it essentially did with the forerunning EFV program. Abrams tanks have been modified a few times in the past two decades, and while many customers prefer, say, the Leopard 2A7, I can’t imagine who the US Army might fight with a decidedly better tank. Its Bradleys have similarly been upgraded several times, but the service has repeatedly signaled that it really wants to get away from the vehicle, so why pay for more upgrades?
That’s the whole point of the GCV, and a tracked infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) is an important vehicle for an army with tanks. But as the US Congressional Budget Office fairly wondered earlier this month, what’s wrong with the Puma from KMW and Rheinmetall? The Germans, it is said, make some pretty good tanks. Of course, what the CBO completely missed (and I’ll discuss this in a later entry) is the best-selling IFV of the market today—the CV90 from BAE Systems Hägglunds. So whatever the Army would like, with such solid military off-the-shelf candidates, I can’t fully understand the need for a wholly new development program.
The same applies to the Marines’ MPC. It’s supposed to be an eight-by-eight wheeled vehicle. Patria’s AMV, Nexter’s VBCI, ARTEC’s Boxer, and General Dynamics’ LAVs are already in service with over a dozen allied countries, and all are still in production. Why on Earth would the Marines need to spend any development money on this? Pick something already!
And as much as I like attack helicopters, the Army already has about 700 of those, and the latest AH-64D Longbows are great machines. The Army’s scout helicopter fleet is less than half that size, and does need recapitalization, but it’s reasonable to drop the drones in favor of a few more manned machines. For as much as I like drones, at treetop level, there’s an enduring role for an aviator looking out the window.
Industry has a choice in this environment. Managers can grab their ready bags, head to the airport, and descend upon their congressmen’s offices in DC—like the folks from BAE Systems York are doing this week. You can argue that Young Soldiers Will Die if your kit isn’t purchased for decades to come, though you’d better bring some real charts with some real projections of the actual value in combat. Maybe that would be good marketing, and maybe going over your customer’s head will just irritate him. At General Atomics, Tom Cassidy made a great business career from just that gambit, but as that case suggests, it works best when history is on your side.
The alternative is to surf the tide of history, and to find what an official at Northrop Grumman once described to me as “the sweet spots” of policing the global commons. I hardly mean to suggest that Land Wars in Asia are over for all time, but I do argue that the American ground forces’ challenges in the recent campaigns generally weren’t from lacking quality kit. The MRAP versus landmine episode is a notable exception, by and large otherwise, they weren’t overmatched in materiel. My advice to find the New New Thing is easily dispensed, but this budget submission does suggest that the US military is getting a little more serious about that. Now go make some new slides.
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