Identifying DoD’s ‘crown jewels’
But as far as what capabilities the military will need in the future, the teams had a fair amount of agreement. CSBA asked the experts to identify the military’s “crown jewel” priorities that shouldn’t be scaled back under any circumstances.
They unanimously agreed on several: Both offense and defensive cyber capabilities, special operations forces, undersea warfare platforms and a next-generation long-range strike bomber.
They also concurred that some programs would have to endure reduced funding, including the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
“Their reasoning was that it might give time for the program to mature a little bit more before we proceed with full-scale procurement,” Gunzinger said. “One team cancelled the F-35 outright, reasoning that the new kinds of scenarios we have ahead of us in the Pacific with very long ranges and challenges to our forward bases give less support to short-range aircraft.”
Despite the wide divergence in approaches the teams took, they found other areas of commonality. For instance, Harrison said, under any approach to a half-trillion dollar budget reduction, the DoD civilian workforce is going to have to shrink.
“All of the teams made significant cuts, ranging from 20 to 40 percent reductions in the civilian workforce. I can’t necessarily say that’s part of a strategy, but it is something that all the teams went to when they needed more resources,” he said.
Gunzinger and Harrison said it’s not surprising that the teams found ways to cut DoD’s budget. After all, they said, that gradual $519 billion cut would be roughly in line with previous downturns in defense spending following the conclusion of wars. The interesting part, they noted in a report based on the exercise, was that at least a couple of teams found ways to start with a strategy and build a budget around it.
Gunzinger, who worked on strategy inside the Pentagon for 35 years, said the system is still not designed to allow that.
“The point still is that the services develop their (program operating memoranda) independently, and then they’re reviewed by the (Office of the Secretary of Defense) at the end of the budget process. So there’s a lot of momentum behind those budget submissions already by the time they start to have the strategic choices discussion,” he said. “If you have that discussion up front, before the POMs are developed, it might actually drive some different investments.”