US 2012 Defense Budget

[buglerbilly]

DoD To Seek Long-Range Strike Funds in '12 Budget

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 6 Apr 2010 16:40

The Defense Department's fiscal 2012 budget request likely will seek funding for the multiple systems that will compose its repackaged long-range strike program, a senior DoD official said April 6.

"We have [research and development] funds set aside" for the group of systems that will perform missions ranging from deep-penetrating strike to ISR to electronic warfare to prompt global strike, said James Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

"We expect to propose specific allocations" for each in the Pentagon's 2012 spending plan that will be sent to Congress next February, Miller said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates in April 2009 canceled an U.S. Air Force-led program designed to design, develop and field a new long-range bomber. Gates felt the department needed to stop that work and re-examine how the U.S. military could best fulfill all the missions envisioned for a new deep-penetrating bomber.

After months of examining, Pentagon officials have said they expect to replace the former long-range strike aircraft concept with a "family of systems," each designed to conduct specific kinds of missions.

Pentagon officials in recent weeks have said they envision multiple aircraft and missiles, some of which would have complementary tools. For instance, a new strike bomber might also be loaded with ISR sensors.

Miller's comments came during a Pentagon briefing to unveil the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Administration officials, in the NPR, announced their plans to keep in place America's so-called nuclear triad, which for years has consisted of bomber aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed submarines.

[buglerbilly]

DoD Seeks More Control Over '12 Budget

New Assessments Will 'Drive the POM at the Beginning'

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 12 April 2010

lThe U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has decided to conduct so-called "front-end assessments" of some 20 capability areas that drive operational, force structure and investment needs - such as long-range strike, shipbuilding, electronic attack, satellites and end strength - to better shape Pentagon spending decisions starting with the 2012 budget, officials said.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, described the front-end assessment work as "an attempt to structure people's thinking," rebuffing criticism that Pentagon leaders are seeking too much control over budgeting.

DoD officials have "a legitimate place articulating what their expectations are," Schwartz said April 6. "There is some merit on narrowing the options on what we might come forward with to [OSD] so that in the program review, we're not rebuilding these [plans] out of whole cloth."

The assessments are being drawn up by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, to allow DoD leaders to affect spending plans earlier in the process. Currently, the services complete their out-year budgets in mid-year, while DoD leaders issue their guidance in the fall, often wasting time and effort as plans are redone.

"OSD is exploring how to drive the POM [Program Objective Memorandum] process at the beginning, not the end," one source said.

The new assessments also aim to improve what some senior Pentagon leaders view as poor-quality programmatic and budgetary data submitted by the military services during their annual budget builds.

So far, CAPE's preliminary list includes 21 topics, including aircraft carrier versatility, cruise missiles, education, electronic attack, electronic protection, end strength, global force management, language and culture, satellites, schools, shipbuilding, space and U.S. Strategic Command, the source added.

Officials were to discuss the preliminary list in an April 9 meeting, but at press time, the outcome remained unknown.

Schwartz said the assessments will be "phased, and it remains to be seen exactly which ones will be first delivered."

Some assessments may be put off until the 2013 defense budget cycle "because there isn't enough capacity in the building to do 15 or 18 or 20 of these at the level of detail that's required," he said.

He said the final list could have fewer than 20 items, while the Pentagon source said history indicated that "typically, on something like this, you get a list of about six or eight things."

The list is to be finalized in coming weeks and sent for approval to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Schwartz said.

CAPE officials declined requests for an interview.

In an April 9 statement, Pentagon spokeswoman Wendy Snyder said, "Each fall, we analyze and review a set of issues to inform our budget submission for the following year. This year, we are trying to get ahead of those reviews by starting earlier."

Snyder said, "We are currently refining the content and timing of the specific assessments that we will address for the FY 2012-2016 program/budget review cycle."

CAPE, Plus Help

The front-end assessments are the latest move in Defense Secretary Robert Gates' effort to inject greater discipline into the Pentagon budgeting and weapons-buying processes.

"There clearly is a move afoot to increase the role of CAPE and OSD because [Pentagon leaders] believe there is a need to shift force structure, and a heavy hand is required to do that," said Charles Wald, a retired Air Force general now with Deloitte, an auditing and consulting firm.

Wald said CAPE will not be able to take more control alone.

"This will require an AT&L [the office of the deputy defense secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics] piece, a comptroller piece - and service involvement, too," he said.

Wald said Gates and his lieutenants "are doing just what one would expect after a Quadrennial Defense Review": prioritize DoD acquisition programs and budgets according to the strategy laid out in the QDR.

Wald worked on QDRs and budgets while serving in senior Air Force and Joint Staff posts.

Several Pentagon officials past and present said the move continues Gates' efforts to consolidate budgetary and major program decision-making within OSD.

Some saw danger in giving OSD more control, while others said the services' spotty performance on budgeting and program management gave Gates no other option.

"There is ample empirical evidence that one political appointee at the top doesn't know everything," said Barry Watts, a former director of the department's Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) office, CAPE's former name. "But I also can appreciate OSD's frustration with the resistance of the military services to making programmatic choices that may disadvantage their institutions - even if those choices advantage national defense as a whole."

Other defense sources said CAPE is populated by the best analytic talent in the department, saying the office consistently wins facts-based programmatic arguments with the services.

Several former officials say strengthening CAPE would return some power the office lost in the 1990s and early 2000s.

But Watts, now an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wondered whether the centralization "bumps up against Title 10," the U.S. law that tasks the military services with organizing, training and equipping their forces.

Other analysts and former officials said this kind of management structure is well within a defense secretary's statutory bounds.

Still, "any time you consolidate power in a single government entity, it's not a good thing because it stifles the debate," one former military official said.

But Wald said, "By nature, it is very difficult to consolidate power within the Department of Defense."

Beyond the budget power struggle, the Pentagon source questioned the contents of the preliminary list.

"There are things on here that don't have a dollar toward them right now in POM-12," the source said. "Language and culture? We've supposedly been chasing that one for five years. And I bet the Air Force thinks it has a better sentence to put beside the 'satellites' question." ■

[buglerbilly]

OSD Alters Budget Process; Service POMs Due July 30

By VAGO MURADIAN and JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 13 Apr 2010 21:26

U.S. military services and agencies must submit to senior Pentagon brass by July 30 their five-year spending plans, according to a Defense Department fiscal 2012 budget memorandum that describes several changes to DoD's annual budget process.



By the end of July, the U.S. services and agencies must submit to the Office of the Secretary of Defense their program objective memorandums, which will span fiscal 2012-2016. (FILE / U.S. AIR FORCE) The April 9 Pentagon document, obtained by Defense News, offers the first glimpse of how the Obama administration plans to run the fiscal 2012 Pentagon budget build.

By the end of July, the U.S. services and agencies must submit to the Office of the Secretary of Defense their program objective memorandums, which will span fiscal 2012-2016. From Aug. 2-13, those DoD components will brief the Deputy's Advisory Working Group (DAWG) on those five-year spending plans, according to the memo. A draft Pentagon future years defense plan (FYDP), spanning 2012-2016, will be available on Aug. 13. Undersecretaries of defense and combatant commanders will brief Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn Aug. 2-13. OSD will wrap its budget review Nov. 22, and deliver a budget plan to Congress Feb. 7, 2011.

The fiscal 2012 budget review process described in the memo will cover the fiscal 2012 spending plan, the five-year projections, and a war spending request, states the memo.

The Obama administration also will usher in several changes to the Pentagon's annual budget-building process.

The fiscal 2012 spending review process "will consider changes to the [DoD] Components' Program Objectives Memoranda (POM) and Budget Estimates Submission (BES), strategic capability balancing, and compliance with prior guidance," according to the memo. The review also "will evaluate the justification material submitted by the Components for their BES based upon program pricing, executability, and compliance with fiscal, program, and legislative guidance," states the memo.

The April 9 document declares "the Department is committed to developing realistic and stable budgets."

To that end, Pentagon officials, "beginning with this year's review ... are making some key changes to our programming and budgeting process," states the memo. "First, the Guidance for the Development of the Fate

(ODF) and the Joint Programming Guidance (JPG) will be combined into the Defense Planning and Programming Guidance (DPPG). Second, the department will develop only single year budgets each year."

The memo also states another change will be this review process "will focus on a [five]-year period each cycle, with a single year extension to promote greater stability from budget to budget.

"Therefore, this year's Program/Budget submissions for the base budget will be limited to FY 2012 through FY 2016," the memo states. "The [war spending] submission will be limited to FY 2012."

At time of posting, defense officials were unavailable to discuss the changes in more detail.

The memo states a yet-issued guidance will be issued in coming weeks and months instructing the DoD components to "explicitly identify programmatic content in system inputs."

The document also addresses the series of front-end assessments the Pentagon will begin conducting for the fiscal 2012 budget process. These will be based on a set of key issues that are still being constructed by defense officials. Defense News reported details of the front-end assessments April 12.

Sources have said as of late last week the list of front-end assessment issues stood at 21. One Pentagon source said his bet is the final list will be smaller, with another saying April 13 it had been pared to 13 issues. The final list will be locked in coming weeks.

"These assessments will focus on strategic issues that will impact the department's resource allocations," the memo states. "The [assessments] will be conducted during the Summer and early Fall and will synchronize with the normal program and budget decision process."

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Scraps Rumsfeld-Era Budgeting

Lynn: 'Everyone Ignored' 2-Year Program Plans

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 18 April 2010

The Obama administration has scrapped the two-year budgeting cycle adopted under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while also scuttling a schedule that forced strategic planning and detailed programmatic decisions to be made simultaneously.

U.S. military services and agencies must submit to senior Pentagon brass by July 30 their five-year spending plans, according to an April 9 Defense Department budget memorandum. The memo gives the first image of how the Obama administration will run defense budgeting. It lays out key changes to DoD's annual budget process, including a revised schedule that decouples planning and program decisions.

"The department will develop only single-year budgets each year," the DoD memo states.

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn confirmed the move on April 15.

Lynn scuttled the two-year budgeting system because "nobody used the second year," he said in a brief interview after an industry luncheon on Capitol Hill.

Since 2003, major funding and programmatic changes are supposed to be made in even years, with smaller adjustments made in odd years.

The problem was, Lynn said, "everyone involved just ignored that second year."

In fact, "the building ignored it. Congress ignored it," Lynn said. "So why keep it?"

One Pentagon budget official noted that the "dynamic nature of both the national economy and DoD's top line over the next four years makes the traditional linear, biennial process obsolete - at least for the next few budget cycles."

In short, the budget official said: "We no longer live in a world of predictable five-year plans."

The uncertainties include how much more funding is needed for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and how fast U.S. troops will withdraw, the budget official said.

Another driving force is the White House's plans for dealing with the economic slowdown, he added.

"National security investments are important, but will be part of an internal debate seeking to preserve the economic foundations of our national power, not just the Pentagon's funding stability," the budget official said.

The two-year cycle was meant to bring the kind of budgetary stability that allowed for better planning at the Pentagon and in defense companies, but also slowed acquisition because new starts were generally allowed only every other year, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at Washington's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Gordon Adams, a professor at American University, Washington, who oversaw defense budgeting for the Clinton administration, called the two-year budget "a farce," largely because congressional appropriators "didn't pay attention to it.

"And when the folks with their hands on the money ignore something, it's simply not a worthwhile exercise," Adams said. "The appropriators don't want to only control the system every other year - they want to be in control every year."

Warm Reception

The memo also provides the first details on the 2012 budget-building schedule.

By the end of July, U.S. services and agencies must submit to the Office of the Secretary of Defense their program objective memorandums for 2012-16.

From Aug. 2-13, those DoD components will brief the Deputy's Advisory Working Group, while undersecretaries of defense and combatant commanders will brief Lynn.

Meanwhile, OSD budgeteers are putting together a draft future years defense plan for 2012-16, which is to be completed on Aug. 13.

Analysts and defense officials were largely upbeat - if lightly skeptical on some aspects - about the revised schedule.

"This is a sign that rationality has returned to the building," Adams said. Since the administration of President George W. Bush implemented the old process, he said, "budgeting-wise, it has been a zoo over there."

Adams was most upbeat on two aspects of the new plan: He said it separates planning and programming, and "pushes the programming phase" - during which time the services will build and submit their POMs - "back to the summer months, where it belongs."

One former service official who worked on programming welcomed the earlier involvement by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

"This is a positive step for the department as a whole it promotes an early and continuous dialogue between military programmers and [OSD] analysts," said the former service official. "As long as this is an open, iterative and transparent process, I foresee nothing but positive spinoffs."

[B]Tight Deadlines?

But Harrison said the Obama administration's schedule "is somewhat aggressive," adding that OSD often had trouble getting the services to submit their POM plans by the old deadline, in late August.

"It will be interesting to see how successful OSD is at getting the services to finalize and submit their POMs even earlier than before," Harrison said.

But if that works, the earlier start date "gives OSD - and the combatant commanders - more time to review, raise issues and adjudicate issues, which in turn gives OSD more oversight and influence in the budget process," he said.

Under the new schedule, analysts said, a traditionally slow month in Washington will become key.

"A lot of big decisions are going to be made in August," Adams said.

Two documents, Guidance for the Development of the Force and the Joint Planning Guidance, will be melded into one: the Defense Planning and Programming Guidance, the memo said.

The Guidance for the Development of the Force was prepared by the Pentagon's policy shop, while the Joint Planning Guidance was a product of what is now the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE (formerly PA&E), according to a National Defense University (NDU) fact sheet.

Both OSD offices will help fashion the unified guidance.

The GDF established "'fiscally informed' capability development priorities and [provided] risk guidance to inform investment planning," retired Navy Adm. Albert Church, a former director of the Navy staff, and Ted Warner, a former assistant secretary of defense for strategy and requirements, wrote in a 2009 NDU study. "This, in combination with additional analysis prescribed in the GDF, [informed] the JPG, which is intended to guide selected portions of service and defense agency POM development."

What was their view of those works?

"Reviews of the usefulness of these documents are mixed," they wrote.

Tough Decisions

The memo also mentions the new "front-end assessments" the Pentagon plans as part of 2012 budget planning.

The assessments will focus on strategic issues that will "impact the department's resource allocations," the memo states. "The [assessments] will be conducted during the Summer and early Fall and will synchronize with the normal program and budget decision process."

Lynn said April 15 that the front-end studies are designed to "pull forward the tough decisions in each budget cycle," and to "match the analysis with [budget and programmatic] decisions."

Just how many issues will be considered remains unclear; sources have estimated the number could range from 13 to 21.

Lynn said, "The final list will probably be smaller" than 21 items.

The list will be completed in coming weeks, sources said.

More detailed guidance is on the way in coming weeks and months instructing the DoD components to "explicitly identify programmatic content in system inputs."