Sunday, April 28, 2024
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Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
The Pentagon plans to wait until the proverbial eleventh hour in the current fiscal year to disclose exactly how many additional billions of dollars it requires on top of the $147 billion it has already sought for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a move that will stretch debates about war funding into at least October.
The Defense Department is preparing a new $5.3 billion spending request to purchase thousands of additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in fiscal year 2008, bringing the two-year total slated at this point for the blast-proof truck program to more than $11 billion.
Pentagon officials leading the charge to field as many blast-proof trucks to Iraq as possible face a vexing dilemma -- what to do with scores of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles purchased last winter that had difficulties in survivability tests this spring.
The powerful House Appropriations defense subcommittee has slashed $139 million, or more than a third, of Pentagon-requested funding in fiscal year 2008 for a controversial plan to establish a U.S. missile defense capability in Europe.
The Pentagon late Friday awarded International Military and Government a $414 million contract to build an additional 755 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, a deal that gives the Illinois-headquartered truck builder a total of 1,971 orders and nudges it ahead of Force Protection and General Dynamics Land System for the largest share of the growing MRAP work.
The Army has slashed by half the total number of vehicles operating in Iraq that it considers capable of withstanding blasts from roadside bombs, a change that reflects a new view that part of its armored wheeled vehicle fleet is more vulnerable to improvised explosive devices than previously thought.
Pentagon assertions that Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle production will increase by 60 percent this year are based on pledges made by MRAP makers competing for additional orders, not on independent industrial estimates worked up by the Defense Department.
The Pentagon, which is preparing a preliminary spending request to cover the purchase of 8,000 additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in fiscal year 2008, plans to increase its funding proposal in September if makers of the blast-proof trucks demonstrate the ability to produce additional vehicles, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The Defense Department yesterday proposed a pair of reprogramming actions to maximize the production of blast-proof Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, asking Congress for the authority to boost spending for the vehicle program by more than $1.1 billion and keep more than $400 million already transferred to MRAP, according to Pentagon documents.
The Defense Department's $1.1 billion reprogramming proposal for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program would provide funds for an additional 1,480 vehicles during fiscal year 2007, bringing the total number of vehicles on order to 6,415, according to senior Pentagon officials.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is planning major revisions to the Pentagon's $141.7 billion war spending request for fiscal year 2008 to account for new requirements, including the purchase of as many as 12,000 new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, an effort expected to cost at least $10 billion.
The Defense Department is preparing to boost funding for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program by as much as $1.5 billion, which could lift total spending for in fiscal year 2007 as high as $5.3 billion and raise prospects for additional production orders during the last 10 weeks of the fiscal year.
The Army expects to begin taking delivery next month of dozens of blast-proof trucks, setting the stage for the early fall delivery of nearly 200 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to troops in Baghdad, according to Pentagon officials.
The Marine Corps today awarded a $518 million contract to Armor Holdings to build 1,170 Mine Resistant Ambush protected vehicles, a move that adds a fourth major manufacturer to the Pentagon's campaign to rush the blast-proof vehicles to Iraq.
The Army is refining its estimates for fiscal year 2008 war spending needs to pay for things not factored into the proposal submitted to Congress in February, including additional troops in Iraq and thousands of new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, according to a senior service official.
Production rates for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle are on pace to yield by this December less than half of what Marine Corps officials had expected U.S. companies to produce each month.
The Pentagon has slashed the number of programs deemed to be of the "highest national defense urgency" -- a designation that provides priority access to materials and commodities that may be in short supply -- in order to ensure the most pressing U.S. military industrial needs are being met.
The Pentagon wants to slash $500 million from a handful of major Army and Air Force weapon system programs and shift the money to higher priorities, including more funding for the National Guard, short-range missile defense capabilities and classified Air Force programs.
Top Pentagon budget and program officials have directed the military services to prepare spending proposals to finance Iraq and Afghanistan operations as well as other "global war on terror" activities through fiscal year 2009, which will span the last days of the Bush administration and the early months of the next administration.
To ensure it can buy every Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle that industry is capable of producing, the Defense Department is considering shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming weeks to pump more cash into coffers used to place orders for additional blast-resistant vehicles.