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Air Force Brat said:

Now that is assnine! ...

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The defense community is abuzz with talk of strategy and force expansion as the Pentagon develops the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. Talk is nice but, as budgeteers like to say, “If it ain’t funded, it ain’t”.

Building the forces the services say they need—with the readiness and modernization to support them— requires large budgets, such as those proposed by Sen. John McCain. Defense

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as the required level. But political gridlock, the enduring drag of the Budget Control Act, and the history of budget compromises will conspire to prevent DOD from getting that much. The Pentagon will need to make some tough trade-offs.

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showed what these tradeoffs look like, and it’s going to disappoint a lot of people.

First let’s consider the future of defense spending.

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, the future is highly uncertain. The chart below shows the wide range of projection and proposals.

The solid black line is the enacted budget level. The other lines are different budget projections.

“Gates 2012” is the budget projection before the cuts imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Then-Secretary Gates regarded it as the minimum required to execute the strategy, and defense hawks often refer to it as a goal.

“McCain plan” reflects the build up that the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee proposed in January 2017 and which is embodied in the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act.

“Trump 9/2016” is the fiscal level implied by the president’s September 2016 speech in which, as a candidate, he proposed a greatly expanded force structure.

“Trump +$18B” is the Trump administration’s projection in the fiscal 2018 budget, an $18 billion increase over what the Obama administration had projected. (

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, but that used the Budget Control Act level as a baseline.) The Defense Department was emphatic that

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that would be changed as a result of the administration’s strategic reviews. In theory it could go higher. However, it represents budget “facts on the ground”, and the department must appeal to OMB for more resources. (Note: Cancian used to be the OMB person who said no to the Pentagon.)

“Obama 2017” is the Obama administration’s last projection.

“BCA caps” (also known as sequestration) were established by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Successive budget compromises have modified the caps, but their continued existence puts a damper on any defense buildup.

What do these different budget levels mean for force levels? The table below links forces to budget levels, using the CSIS Force Cost Calculator where the original source did not specify forces.

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What becomes clear is the profound affect that budgets have on forces and hence on strategy.

• The high levels fund a robust force structure along with the readiness and modernization that support it. McCain and Gates are not alone in recommending a force structure this large. Both the
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  and
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  have recommended similar buildups.
• The “Trump +$18 billion” level essentially freezes the forces where they are. There is simply not enough money to expand the forces. This means that DoD will need to negotiate with OMB to get more money if there is going to be any force expansion under the Trump administration. The exception is the Navy, which will expand as ships already under construction are delivered, but they won’t get to the 350-ship goal.
• The Obama FYDP can only support smaller forces, at the level of Quadrennial Defense Review 2014 and before recent congressionally directed increases. This level was widely recognized as inadequate, being based on the assumption that the US could withdraw forces from Europe and the Middle East, which it was assumed would remain relatively quiet. The plan was developed before Russia took over the Crimea, ISIS roared out of the desert, and the Chinese ramped up their assertive policy in the South China Sea. It is still relevant, however, because it is between the BCA caps and the administration’s proposal, and that’s where budget deals tend to end up.
• Most worrying is the fact that forces under the BCA caps are
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  . This is not just a Pentagon talking point. As noted below, there’s a chance that the budget could end up here. If that happens, then DoD will no longer be able to pursue the current strategy of increasing activities in Eastern Europe to deter Russia, fighting an air war in the Middle East against ISIS, pushing back against an assertive Chinese Navy in the South China Sea, and enhancing missile defenses against a rogue North Korean regime.
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  (“restraint”) could be funded at this level, but so far the public and policy community have been unwilling to ratchet back their goals.

The table generally represents a balanced approach to funding forces, readiness, and modernization without leaning strongly one way or the other. However,

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Defense Secretary Mattis appears to be leaning towards buying capability to face the challenge of high-end competitors like Russia and China. That would trade force expansion for modernization programs.

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and explicitly called for such a tradeoff. The difference between the structure of “Trump 9/2016” and “McCain plan”, which cost about the same, gives a sense of that trade-off. Robust modernization in the McCain plan limits force expansion.

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and most experts recommend enhancing readiness. Indeed, Mattis noted how much readiness had deteriorated when he returned to the Pentagon and so focused the 2017 and 2018 budgets on readiness. However, readiness is extremely expensive and buying it necessitates trade-offs with forces, modernization or some other element of the budget like compensation or quality-of-life. Calculations using the CSIS Force Cost Calculator show that building a high readiness force at the Trump administration’s FY 2018 budget projection would require freezing the forces at about the Obama 2014 QDR level, for example, the regular Army at 450,000 and the Navy at 282 ships (long term).

So which budget will we get?

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, large growth can only be obtained through some government-wide budget agreement that changes or eliminates the Budget Control Act (BCA). Despite much rhetoric, that has been elusive. Other budget experts,

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and

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, express similar skepticism.

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in order to make room for tax cuts. Additional forces could be supported temporarily through Overseas Contingency Operations funding (war funding known as “OCO”), but that would not be a long-term solution and might not be acceptable to deficit hawks or domestic program advocates in the Congress. The likely outcome: despite the administration’s rhetoric, the force levels that emerge will disappoint a lot of people.

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The Air Force’s pilot shortage is even worse than service Secretary Heather Wilson reported last week.

Wilson, speaking during a “State of the Air Force” briefing on Thursday, said the service is short 1,926 pilots. However, that number was based on an old counting method that didn’t include remotely-piloted aircraft operators or the Reserve component, Air Force spokeswoman Erika Yepsen said.

Including RPA pilots, as well as pilot shortfalls in the Guard and Reserve, the actual number is “approximately 2,000 Total Force” pilots USAF was short by the end of fiscal 2017, Yepsen said. The Aircrew Crisis Task Force “expanded the scope of our analysis to ensure we’re taking a more holistic look at all pilot numbers,” she said in an email to Air Force Magazine.

Putting the numbers into more context, Yepsen said “the shortage in our manned platforms continued to grow by about 250 pilots” in FY17, although that loss “was offset by improvements in the health of our RPA force.”

The fighter pilot shortage “continues to be our greatest problem,” she said, as USAF is “nearly 1,300 fighter pilots short” across the Total Force. However, the “greatest negative trend” between fiscal ‘16 and ‘17 was “in our bomber and mobility pilots.”

Brig. Gen. Mike Koscheski, head of the Aircrew Crisis Task Force, said at a Pentagon press event in October that USAF’s solution “is to grow our way out of this,” looking for a 25 percent increase in pilot production. He said it would take time “to get in place what we need to start producing more pilots,” and the key element to that is to have “stable and predictable budgets.”

At the State of the Air Force brief last week where Wilson offered the 1,926 number, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said the service is “first and foremost looking to retain everyone we can, as we build up our capacity to produce more.”

He also asserted USAF’s pilot shortage is symptomatic of a wider problem wherein the nation isn’t producing nearly enough pilots to satisfy military or commercial needs, which pushes the airlines to raid the ranks of military aviators. “This is a national-level issue that we’re working with industry,” Goldfein said.

The Air Force is designing new programs to try to keep pilots. The Air Force Personnel Center on Thursday announced that airmen who are selected for dependent-restricted, short overseas tours can select their follow-on assignments.

The airmen can pick where they go as long as they select a “realistic location.” This agreement would let airmen’s families stay in the pre-tour location, or move to a follow-on location early, according to

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.

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Jura said:

if the tragedies hadn't recently happened, it would've been nothing ("No one was injured on either vessel and Benfold sustained minimal damage ...") Destroyer USS Benfold Damaged After Collision with Japanese Tug

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but now let's wait and see

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Jura said:

What’s inside the $700 billion defense budget plan headed to Trump's desk?

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"... Whether the military will have that much money to spend is still up for debate. The authorization bill sets policy priorities and spending parameters for military funding for fiscal 2018, but appropriators still must allot the money to the Defense Department before they can move ahead.

That process is expected to take several more weeks. ..."

... and I'm going to quote this post

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