DoD Plans $1.3B Funding Shift to Buy ISR
By JOHN T. BENNETT
Published: 18 Jul 14:36 EDT (18:36 GMT)
Senior Pentagon officials have asked Congress to green-light shifting nearly $1.3 billion in the 2008 budget to buy more intelligence-gathering systems and send them to deployed troops. The money would come mostly from Army procurement coffers, breaking with the past practice of raiding Air Force and Navy accounts to fund some war costs.
The transfer answers a call made over the past few months by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The financial details are spelled out in a 17-page July 11 reprogramming request signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
"These funds are being made available for ISR based on the view of the secretary of defense that the ISR effort is a higher priority, and need to be address[ed] at this time," the document said.
The Pentagon has shifted previously appropriated funds from annual service budgets to cover emerging war costs numerous times during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. But this request marks the first time senior Defense Department leaders have primarily drawn from Army procurement accounts to pay large war-related bills.
The largest portion of the money, $930 million, would be taken from tactical wheeled vehicle and electronics programs accounts, according to a copy of the request obtained by Defense News.
One analyst said the proposed move is not entirely bad news for the ground service, because almost $700 million of that amount would be shifted within its own procurement accounts.
The move would allow the Army to "control the assets" purchased for overhead surveillance, while also "making it easier for the Army to reimburse those other accounts later," said James McAleese, principal at McLean, Va.-based McAleese & Associates, a government contracting and national security law firm.
If approved, $686.9 million would be shifted within the Army - though away from future procurement programs - to pay for a host of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and related items, including:
* $262.6 million to buy digital data links for Raven UAVs, data links and laser designators for Hunter unmanned aircraft, and various improvements for other unmanned aircraft.
* $168.5 million to buy eight Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance airborne systems, including with $52 million for three new Constant Hawk airborne surveillance and target acquisition systems.
* $116 million to "procure ground SIGINT collection and analysis capabilities," the document said.
A total of $456 million would be stripped from Army vehicle accounts, including $386 million from the Army's Family of Tactical Wheeled Vehicles (FMTV) and$70 million from tactical trailers and dolly sets.
The FMTV program was "an easy target" for such a funding cut, McAleese said, because "there have been concerns within the service and certainly on Capitol Hill that the contractor could not execute the program – build trucks - as quickly as the money was being allocated."
The trucks are built by BAE System's mobility and protection systems division.
Also up for a major funding cut would be several Army communications and electronics programs. Collectively, the SINCGARS, Bridge to Future Networks, Improved HF Family radio and Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below programs, would lose $479.9 million.
The Navy would get $133 million to purchase the kinds of systems Gates wants to speed into theater, including $17 million to extend a contract for Scan Eagle UAV services, $15 million to buy a new Northrop Grumman-made Global Hawk UAV and associated gear and services, $26 million to purchase four Boeing-made Scan Eagles and cover associated costs, and $30 million to buy one Lockheed Martin-made EP-3 intel-gathering aircraft.
For the Air Force, congressional approval would bring $197.9 million to buy intelligence systems like seven Hawker Beechcraft-manufactured C-12 aircraft, which, the document said "supports the [secretary's] initiative to put more ISR capability in the war fighters' hands immediately." Another $61.6 million would go toward integrating new imaging and defensive systems on those C-12 planes. The remaining amount intended for the air service would buy other items, including training systems, software, sensor packages and other aircraft modifications.
The remaining amount of 2008 funds that would be reprogrammed, $331 million, would be transferred from a list of accounts from across the department. The Marine Corps would lose $112.2 million in O&M dollars previously earmarked for "physical security equipment," while the Navy would be stripped of $71 million intended to be used for imagery systems, construction equipment and command support gear, according to the England-signed document.
Should lawmakers sign on, $98 million would be moved out of various Air Force accounts, dollars originally tagged to buy various kinds of vehicles, runway clearing equipment, electronic infrastructure components and base maintenance equipment, according to the document. The rest, $50.1 million, would come from an Air Force-managed space research and development account.
If approved by Congress, the move would be a major victory for Gates, who has been working behind the scenes for months to push the Air Force and the other services to send more unmanned ISR-gathering aircraft to Iraq and Afghanistan. During a headline-grabbing April 21 speech at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., the defense secretary told Air University students that convincing the services to send more intel-collecting platforms to theater was "like pulling teeth" because those officials "were stuck in old ways of doing business."
In a comment that foreshadowed the July 11 request to shift $1.3 billion to buy a range of UAVs and other ISR-related equipment, Gates noted during the April speech: "While we've doubled [in-theater ISR] capability in recent months, it is still not good enough."
But one former military officer reacted with concern about diverting so much money toward largely unmanned ISR systems.
Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel who is now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said sensor-equipped unmanned aircraft may be useful in defeating a "weak enemy" like the various anti-U.S. groups in Iraq. But such a significant investment in such assets, he said, could end up leaving the American military ill-prepared to take on a peer military.
Vago Muradian contributed to this report from London.
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