Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

236 • Understand, Then Contain America’s Out-of-Control Defense Budgetproblems it currently faces, the Army seeks a $3.9 billion supplement. Taking intoaccount the amount by which the 2009 Army budget has already been increased overand above the extrapolated 2001 plan for 2009, $50.6 billion (see above), it is apparentthat the Army is actually seeking a $54.5 billion “wish list plus-up.”The Navy is doing the same. Citing the shrunken size of the fleet, the Navy seeks$7 billion more than it requested in its official 2009 budget request, $149 billion,which is an amount well above the Navy’s post-World War II average. Taking intoaccount the amount by which the 2009 Navy budget has already been increased overand above the extrapolated 2001 plan for 2009, $37.1 billion, the Navy is actuallyseeking a $44.1 billion plus-up.Even though it is the service least involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,the Air Force is seeking the largest “wish list,” $18.7 billion. Taking into account theadditional money already built into the Air Force budget above the 2000-2009 “plan,”$35.4 billion, the Air Force is actually seeking a $54.1 billion plus-up.Having failed to reform a system that requires an increasing amount of money toshrink, age and blunt the armed forces, each of the military services can only suggestone solution: more of the same. The military services have put themselves and thenation on a treadmill of squandered resources with no positive result. They operatein an environment, both in the Pentagon and Congress, where no one fundamentallyquestions their self-scripted vision of the past, present and future.Time is way overdue to break the self-destructive chain of declining forces atincreasing cost.RecommendationsReal reforms do not need to be complicated or elaborate, but simplicity does notmean the implementation will be easy. The business–as-usual crowd in Congress,industry, and the Republican-Democratic national security think-tank apparatus willaggressively oppose them.De-grease the porkEnding the addition of billions of dollars of dubious pork projects to defense bills eachyear requires a process to sort out the junk from the worthy projects, if any exist. 36Members of Congress who argue that their earmarks are good ideas should have noproblem with competent, independent evaluation of their proposals and a goodgovernmentprocess for implementing them. Any earmark proposed to any defense(or any other) bill should have:1. An estimate from the Congressional Budget Office for all costs, past, presentand future.