Task force: Budget fix requires extreme cuts - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Task force: Budget fix requires extreme cuts

Cut two carriers and 40 percent of new ballistic-missile subs, then slash the fleet to 230 ships and eight air wings. Terminate the F-35, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and V-22 Osprey. Drop down to six expeditionary strike groups, eliminate the maritime prepositioning force and place greater emphasis on surging smaller naval groups as needed.

These are but some of the eyebrow-raising recommendations provided to Congress on June 10 by the Sustainable Defense Task Force. The group was formed at the request of Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Walter B. Jones, R-N.C.; and Ron Paul, R-Texas; and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. The task force proposal amounts to $1.1 trillion in defense cuts over 10 years. Slightly more than half of that amount comes from personnel budgets; the rest comes by cutting research, development and procurement of weapons systems.

While acknowledging that its recommendations will be hard for some to accept, the task force defended its report, saying a “significant number of the cuts that we propose and review represent outdated, wasteful and ineffective systems that could be foregone without any arguable impact on our national security.”

But not everyone is in full agreement — and that begins with one of the lawmakers who helped form the task force.

Jones told Navy Times that a strong military is absolutely necessary, but he requested the task force be formed because “this country is in very deep financial trouble, and I think it’s going to get worse.” He desires careful and complete review of federal spending — including defense spending — but said he does not agree with all of the task force’s recommendations. Specifically, he supports the continuation of the V-22 and opposes a reduction of Navy ships.

Jones said he is opposed to the number of worldwide bases the military now maintains.

“I don’t know how we can continue to support the bases, particularly these that have been in certain countries for over 60 or 70 years,” he said. “I think we have to be smarter with our situation.”

With an eye on diminishing budgets and rising tensions with Iran and North Korea, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead on June 24 called for continued international partnerships to hone a “just and sustainable international order.” He also continued his call for fiscal restraint, emphasizing that the Navy “cannot afford a tailor-made solution to every need that we have.”

But the CNO still is adamant that a 313-ship Navy is needed to maintain maritime security.

Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of Lexington Institute, a military consulting firm, said he “skimmed the report and moved on,” but also cautioned that the recommendations reflect the kind of political environment the Navy will be facing in the next decade.

“It will have to fight every budget year to prove the fleet is relevant,” he said. “We are talking about a country that is spending a trillion dollars each year it does not have. At some point, something has to give.”

Thompson took issue with, and laughed at, some of the report’s recommendations, notably that the military does not need a new fighter jet.

“The Super Hornet is a great aircraft,” Thompson said. “But the F-35 purchase covers the next four decades, and I’m not sure I would want to fly a non-stealthy aircraft against Chinese air defenses 20 years from now.”

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., also takes issue with some of the report’s recommendations — specifically, the call to reduce ballistic-missile subs to seven.

The plan for 12 new boomers to replace the retiring Ohio class is a standing point of contention, as it carries an $80 billion price tag. That would consume half of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget for 14 years.

While the task force looks to reduce boomers to save money, Courtney is looking for alternate funding. He wants to separate programs like SSBN(X) — the replacement for the Ohio class — from the military’s budget and place them in their own national security funding stream, in much the same way missile defense and sealift/auxiliary ships are funded.

He said that “no serious analysis” has said it is possible to meet mission requirements with fewer than 48 attack subs and 12 boomers: At that point, he said, “you’re ending up with shadow Navy.”