Planning Purposes

By Christopher J. Castelli / May 24, 2012 at 4:45 PM

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little today downplayed the need to plan for the imposition of sequestration under the Budget Control Act. "There's not a whole lot of planning, quite frankly, that we'd do because it's an across-the-board cut,” Little said. “I've heard it described as a haircut by senior department officials. You know, there's not a whole of planning you have to do."

When pressed on the notion that sequestration could be implemented without a plan, he added, “We would have to obviously take steps to deal with the consequences of sequestration and for prospective reductions in resources and personnel. . . . We haven't started it yet.” Asked whether that might change before the end of the year, Little said, “I'm not aware of any changes to this point. We're going to have to see where the process takes us. The focus is on trying to avoid sequestration. We do expect at some point to have to deal with if it's starting to look us straight in the face.”

Little declined to comment on the prospect of defense cuts totaling $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, a scenario described in a new Center for Strategic and International Studies assessment due out today. He defended the Pentagon's fiscal year 2013 budget request and the accompanying strategy that was rolled out in January. "No one to my knowledge has really picked apart that strategy, including on Capitol Hill,” Little said. “People seem to recognize that it's a sound approach to dealing with what we need to do to address the national security challenges of the future. Now, when it comes to the budget side and how that strategy is implemented, I understand that people have disagreements. We recognize that.”

Inside the Pentagon reported on the CSIS findings today:

CSIS: DOD Likely Faces Cuts In $1.2 Trillion To $1.5 Trillion Range

The drawdown facing the Defense Department in the next decade will likely total $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, exceeding the Budget Control Act's sequestration scenario, according to a new report that criticizes the Pentagon's failure to plan for the cuts as a high-stakes gamble.

The department will likely face not only budget cuts but also a "weakening defense dollar in terms of purchasing power as measured by military capability," states the Center for Strategic and International Studies' report on planning for a deep defense drawdown, due to be released today.

Perpetually rising costs within DOD are "eroding the purchasing power of the defense dollar," Clark Murdock, the report's author, told Inside the Pentagon. Murdock said his initial estimate is these internal costs are inflating at a rate of roughly 7 percent annually.

Today's interim report, informed by a working group of 30 leading defense and budget analysts, lays out a seven-step approach for determining which military capabilities must be retained and developed in the face of deep defense budget cuts. This includes an analytic way to categorize capabilities as must-have, nice-to-have, and unnecessary. In November, CSIS plans to issue a final report that recommends four to five distinct force mixes, each reflecting different potential long-term investment strategies.

69577