Focusing on the current warrior
Spending priorities slowly continue to align with strategic realities. InsideDefense reported this week that the Army is finalizing a FY08 budget that will cut $3.3 billion from the Future Combat System (FCS). Included in that cut would be the Future Warrior program. Far out Starship Troopers-esque body armor, individual data systems and nanotechnology-based dynamic camouflage are cool, but there is simply not room for them in a finite budget that also needs to pay for repairing, replacing and upgrading current equipment. Such work is estimated to cost $17 to $19 billion annually for several more few years, so a $3.3 billion cut isn’t the end of the adjustment.
According to some, this budget crunch represents the death of transformation.
“Military transformation has turned into a bad joke,” said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute…
“Transformation is basically dead,” said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Virginia-based Teal Group… “Three reasons: strategic irrelevance, marketing overhype and budgetary impossibility.”
There will be much nashing of teeth, but the overall defense budget’s growth is stopping. Also, the “emergency” supplimentals for OEF and OIF will have to come to an end soon. These trade-offs are going to become clearer and clearer as the choice becomes funding either the current warrior or the future warrior.
