PRESIDENT'S BUDGET SUPPORTS MODERNIZING COMBAT AVIATION PROGRAM

FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Navy, Air Force Advocate for Modernizing Combat Aviation
By Terri Moon Cronk
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 26, 2015 – Top Navy and Air Force officials today told the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2016 will support modernizing combat aviation programs.

Navy Vice Adm. Paul A. Grosklags, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisitions; Air Force Lt. Gen. James M. “Mike” Holmes, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, Air Force headquarters; and Air Force Maj. Gen. Timothy M. Ray, director, global power programs, office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, all testified on the need for a modern force.

Navy and Marine Corps aviation allows “sea-based and expeditionary naval forces to bring simultaneous influence over vast stretches of the maritime environment across the shoreline and deep inland,” Grosklags said.

Aviation Must Stay Ready, Poised

It is therefore critical that U.S. aviation forces remain “always ready and poised to engage at a moment’s notice with required capacity and capability to influence events, and if necessary, to fight and win,” he said.

As global threats and demands increase, the Navy’s budget grows more challenging, Grosklags said, adding that the Navy and Marine Corps depend on today’s modernization and readiness efforts.

“Across the department, the strategies for our development, procurement and sustainment of [existing] and future weapons systems are critically dependent upon stable, and predictable funding at a level commensurate with [the president’s 2016 budget request],” he said.

“The alternative has been made clear by our secretaries and service chiefs,” the admiral emphasized. “A smaller force, a force less forward deployed; a force slower to respond in a crisis, is a force, which, when it does respond, will be less capable and more vulnerable.”

Budget Would Help Balance Air Force Needs

The National Defense Strategy is increasingly at risk, Holmes said, and the proposed budget takes steps to balance the many challenges the Air Force faces.
“The Air Force continues every day to deliver global vigilance,” he said.

“However, [after] more than 25 years of sustained combat operations and years of constrained budgets, it is becoming more difficult to achieve our mission.”

The first of many difficult capacity decisions before the Air Force is whether to divest itself of the A-10 fighter jet, he said.

“There’s no question the A-10 has been a steady and stellar performer in recent conflicts,” Holmes told the panel. “Nevertheless, our force structure is simply unaffordable in today’s fiscal environment.”

Divesting the entire A-10 fleet would free up $4.7 billion for the Air Force’s future defense program, which would pay for priority capacity, capability and readiness needs, he said.

But overall, the Air Force fighter jet fleet is facing an average age of 30 years, the oldest in the service’s history, Holmes said.

“The fourth-generation F-15s and F-16s, that are the majority of our fighter fleet, require upgrades to extend their life span and provide the combat capability required to prevail in today’s increasingly contested environments,” he emphasized.

Similarly, the advanced capabilities of the fifth-generation fighters -- F-22s and F-35s -- are critical to ensure the service’s ability to fight and win in contested environments, he added.

“The Air Force continues to be the world’s finest across the spectrum of conflict, but the gap is closing,” Holmes noted. “A return to sequestration-level funding would result in a less-ready, less-capable, less-viable Air Force that’s unable to fully execute the National Defense Strategy.”

Sequestration is a provision of current budget law that mandates major across-the-board spending cuts in fiscal 2016, which begins Oct. 1.

Global Security Complex

Today’s global security environment is more complex than ever before, Ray told subcommittee members, and the Air Force “must continue to invest in science and technology to modernize our capabilities.”

The budget proposal continues to focus on modernizing Air Force capabilities while exploring game-changing technologies for the future, Ray added.
“Adversaries are developing technologies and capabilities to shape and deter our nation,” he pointed out.

“[We] must continue to institute servicewide efficiencies that will capitalize on innovative concepts, keep weapons systems on track and build affordability into new systems,” Ray said, adding that the president’s FY 16 budget proposal “reflects Air Force priorities in these areas.”

DOD REPORT ON SEQUESTRATION IMPACT ESTIMATES

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT 

DOD Releases Report on Estimated Sequestration Impacts

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2014 – Defense Department officials today released a report that documents the cuts to military forces, modernization and readiness that will be required if defense budgets are held at sequester-levels in the years beyond fiscal year 2015.

The report fulfills a commitment made by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “to provide details on the effects of these undesirable budget cuts,” officials said in a news release announcing the report.

The report says sequester level budgets would result in continued force-level cuts across the military services. The Army would be reduced to 420,000 active duty soldiers, along with 315,000 in the National Guard and 185,000 in the Army Reserve. The Marine Corps would drop to 175,000 active duty personnel. The Air Force would have to eliminate its entire fleet of KC-10 tankers and shrink its inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles. The Navy would be forced to mothball six destroyers and retire an aircraft carrier and its associated air wing, reducing the carrier fleet to 10, the report says.

Modernization also would be significantly slowed, according to the report. Compared to plans under the fiscal 2015 budget, the department would buy eight fewer ships in the years beyond fiscal 2016 -- including one fewer Virginia-class submarine and three fewer DDG-51 destroyers – and would delay delivery of the new carrier John F. Kennedy by two years.

The services would acquire 17 fewer joint strike fighters, five fewer KC-46 tankers, and six fewer P-8A aircraft, the report says, adding that many smaller weapons programs and funding for military construction also would see sharp cutbacks.

In addition, the report says, the Defense Department would invest about $66 billion less in procurement and research funding compared with levels planned in the fiscal 2015 budget.

The report notes that sequester-level budgets would worsen already-existing readiness shortfalls across the force and would delay needed training to prepare the joint force for full-spectrum operations.

Overall, the report says, sequester-level cuts would result in a military that is too small to fully meet the requirements of its strategy, thereby significantly increasing national security risks both in the short- and long-term.

“As Secretary Hagel has said, under sequester-level budgets, we would be gambling that our military will not be required to respond to multiple major contingencies at the same time,” officials said in the release announcing the report.

GENERAL WELSH SAYS CUTS HARM AIR FORCE READINESS

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 
Air Force Readiness Harmed by Steep Cuts, Welsh Says
By Claudette Roulo
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 18, 2013 - The rigid requirements of sequestration spending cuts have made it difficult for the Air Force to maintain readiness, the service's top officer said yesterday.

Speaking to CNN's John King at the annual Aspen Institute Security Forum in Aspen, Colo., Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III said each service has four major accounts: personnel, infrastructure and facilities, modernization, and readiness.

"We have had a great amount of difficulty recently doing anything about the infrastructure and facility costs -- we can't seem to get to a point where we can reduce those," he said. "We have not been able to reduce the people costs. In fact, the people costs have gone up exponentially over the last 10 years."

So, he said, sequestration requirements have driven the Air Force to look at modernization and readiness costs. "Those are the only places we have to take money from," Welsh said.

"We are trading modernization against readiness," he added. It's the only place we have to go for funding because of this abrupt, arbitrary mechanism that is sequestration -- and it's causing a real problem on the readiness side of the house and putting out ability to modernize over time at risk."

The civilian employee furloughs necessitated by the spending cuts are a problem for the Air Force for two reasons, Welsh said. "The first is a very human reason -- we have about 180,000 civilians in our Air Force. Those civilian airmen are integral to every mission we do, and in some cases, they are the mission -- they're the entire workforce."

About 150,000 of those civilians are being furloughed for 20 percent of the remaining fiscal year, he said. Most of them are lower-wage scale employees who are going to have trouble making ends meet, Welsh added.

From a corporate perspective, the Air Force is losing 70 million man-hours of work during the furlough period, he said. "That's going to leave a bruise," he added.

The Air Force and the Defense Department as a whole recognize that they have to be part of solving the nation's fiscal problems, Welsh said. But the department has to make overly steep cuts in the modernization and readiness account in the first two years of sequestration, he added, because personnel or infrastructure can't be cut quickly enough.

Impacts to operations already are being felt, Welsh said. "We've prioritized everything that we know about, ... but if something new happened, we'd be affected dramatically, because our ability to respond quickly is affected."

In his discussion with King, Welsh also addressed a number of recent headline-making events.

Recent leaks of classified material are a lesson re-learned, he said. The existing safeguards need to be adjusted based on these cases to ensure that personnel with access to classified information will protect it properly, he said.

"I think the key is [to] control access to information," he added. "Everybody doesn't need it, and you have to very carefully vet people who have the skills to operate on your networks because we know the cyber domain is now a huge vulnerability -- as well as an opportunity."

Solving the sexual harassment and sexual assault crisis will require the services and the Defense Department to partner with Congress, victims' advocacy groups, universities and experts around the country, the general said.

"I don't care who else has the problem; my problem is the United States Air Force. ... The trauma of this crime is to the entire institution," he said.

Last year, 792 sexual assaults were reported in the Air Force, he said.

"The real number is higher than that. ... According to our surveys, only about 17 percent of the people report it," the general told King. "If you take a look at one victim -- not 792, just one -- and you look at the pain, the suffering, the lifetime of anguish, ... this is horrible. And multiply that by 792 times, and it's appalling."

For the Air Force, Welsh said, it's not about addressing some spike in activity. It's about making lasting changes across the entire spectrum of the force.

"From trying to screen for predatory behavior," he said, "to deterring this kind of conduct from those idiots who become criminals ... who might not technically be ... violent predators, but they put themselves in situations where they take advantage of other people."

Turning to the situation in Syria, Welsh said sequestration would make implementing a no-fly zone there difficult. "It would take some time to do it right," he added, "because some of the units that we would use ... haven't been flying."

Because of continuing rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Air Force's overall readiness levels have been declining since about 2003, Welsh said.

"We had to back off a little bit on full-spectrum training ... where we try and simulate the most-difficult threat we can and train realistically," the general said. In addition, the Air Force was forced to use some readiness funds to pay for modernization, he added.

"The Air Force is old," Welsh said. "Our aircraft fleet is older, on average, than it's ever been. ... Modernization is not optional for the Air Force. We've got to modernize."

The F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter is imperative to the future of the Air Force, Welsh said. Upgrading the existing fleet may save money, he said, but it will not make it competitive.

"A fourth-generation aircraft meeting a fifth-generation aircraft in combat will be more cost-efficient," Welsh said. "It will also be dead before it ever knows it's in a fight.

"Not having the F-35 right now ... operationally makes zero sense to the warfighter," he continued. Russia and China are rushing to produce their own fifth-generation fighters, the general noted, "which will put our fourth-generation fleet at immediate risk."

Welsh said he doubts the United States will fight China or Russia in the next five years, "but the reality today is that about 53 different countries around the world fly Chinese or Russian top-end fighters."

And despite the drawdown in Afghanistan, the Air Force isn't going to get less busy. It still will perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions all over the world, Welsh said, and will be doing an airlift mission every 90 seconds, every hour of every day.

About 15,000 space operators will be providing missile warning for the United States, about 25,000 airmen will be on the nuclear alert mission, satellite operators will be flying about 170 different satellites and more than 50,000 airmen will be engaged in cyber command and control, Welsh said.

"Our Air Force does an awful lot of stuff behind the curtain that people don't really see," he added.

Readiness will be affected if personnel, health care and retirement costs are not reined in, Welsh said.

"We have to solve the problem," he added. "We just have to -- there's no other option. Or we'll be doing nothing but paying people in the next 20, 30 years. We won't be turning a wheel. ... There's no magic bucket you go to [in order] to get more money."

Welsh acknowledged "a certain ambivalence" about the Air Force among the American people, "because they really don't know everything we do. And it's easy to get disconnected."

In the areas around Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve bases, it's easier for the larger Air Force to stay connected to communities, he said. The civilian airmen come to work on base and live in the community, Welsh noted.

"So, we're actually better in those communities than we are anywhere else," he said, "and we have to figure out how to take that strength and expand it."

ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF DISCUSSES READINESS AND SECURITY ISSUES

FROM: U.S DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Odierno: Readiness Issues Pose Risk to U.S. Security
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2013 - A smaller Army still needs to be ready, and sequester issues on top of previous budget cuts are impacting readiness accounts, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray T. Odierno said here today.

The general told reporters at the Defense Writers Group that the Army "has to be ready to do many missions, at many speeds, in many different environments."

The Army is scheduled to cut a total of 80,000 soldiers from its ranks, he said, and this smaller force still needs to be ready.

"We have to be able to build [-up] quicker, in scalable packages, for unknown contingencies," Odierno said.

Readiness problems are growing, he said, with fiscal year 2013 shortfalls causing problems in the Army.

"We were short funding Afghanistan, and we had sequester on top of that," the general said.

This left the Army with a $13 billion shortfall, and that affects readiness, he said. Through the rest of fiscal 2013, about 80 percent of the Army will train at very low levels at home stations -- squad or platoon levels.

"We've cancelled six National Training Center rotations for the rest of the year, we've reduced flying hours, we've had to degrade services at installations -- right now, we're going to furlough civilians for 14 days," Odierno said. "That's how we're going to pay the bills in [fiscal year] '13."

This means the Army will begin fiscal 2014 in a readiness hole, the general said.

Without a solution, "I see us having a three- or four-year issue with readiness," he said. "Our ability to respond will be degraded and I worry about the unknown contingency."

The Army, he said, will continue to train forces for known contingencies like Afghanistan.

"But for unknown contingencies our risk goes way up," Odierno said. "The environment we are going to have to operate in will be a mix of high-end, combined-arms maneuvers, but also some aspect of counterinsurgency and some aspect of stability operations."

The general said Army units also must be ready to counter asymmetric operations.

"We have to be able to operate in a very complicated environment," he said.

And, the Army needs to train to provide the combined arms capability that is the Army's specialty in the joint force, Odierno said.

Army officials also are concerned that the readiness shortfall could translate into retention problems in the future, he said.

"We are not seeing any degradation in retention or in our ability to recruit," the general said. "Last year, for the first time, not everybody who wanted to was able to reenlist. Our attrition rates are at historic lows."

Yet, Odierno said, the retention environment can change quickly.

Readiness plays a part in this also, he said. "If we don't have the money to train and do what we need to do, it will have an impact [on retention]," he said.

Odierno entered the Army in 1976, when the three-year-old all-volunteer military was going through some teething pains.

"I came into a hollow Army. I don't want to leave a hollow Army," he said. "When I first came in we had significant discipline problems. We didn't have the money to train, we didn't sustain standards [and] we were recovering from the Vietnam War.

"What I worry about is if we continue to have these budget issues, we're heading down the same road," he added.

Odierno said he was fortunate as a young officer to "grow up" with leaders doing everything they could to correct the situation.

This is serious business with real consequences, he said. "I have to make sure that we can meet the needs of this country and when they need them, they are ready," Odierno said. "When the Army gets involved and when you are not ready, the cost is lives."

Odierno pointed to the casualty lists from the 1st Cavalry Division and Task Force Smith in the early days of the Korean War as examples of the cost of not being militarily prepared.

"We can't do that again," he said. "It would not be acceptable to the American people. They spend a lot of money on defense. They expect us to be ready and they expect us to respond when needed."