Washington, June 05: The U.S. Defense Department said it plans to end certain arms programmes in a push to free more than $100 billion to maintain current military forces and upgrade their arsenal over the next five years.
“To get $100 billion, you’re going to have to identify lower-priority programs that are not going to be part of future budgets,” Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told reporters on Friday.
“Nothing is off the table,” he replied to a question about whether the department also might seek to scale back its plan to buy 2,443 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets, the costliest arms purchase in history, at up to $382 billion through 2036.
The Defense Department is seeking “new efficiencies” in the F-35, which is co-funded by eight foreign partners, but, “We’re not looking at fundamental changes,” Lynn said.
Lockheed is the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, followed by Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp.
Possible targets for cuts include a projected $13.2 billion General Dynamics Corp programme to build an amphibious armoured personnel carrier, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates has often questioned.
The Pentagon is asking the Army, Air Force and Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, to identify $2 billion each in non-essential costs that can be cut in fiscal 2012, which starts Oct. 1, 2011.
The savings goal rises to $3 billion for each of the armed services in fiscal 2013, $5.3 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $10 billion in 2016.
The services would be able to transfer the savings to their forces and modernization efforts, Lynn said. The process would be institutionalized throughout the Defense Department over the next five years.
“History tells us that this will be very hard,” Lynn said, an implicit reference to vested interests, including lawmakers, defense contractors and federal bureaucrats.
Gates said in a statement that the Defense Department, the single biggest buyer of goods and services on Earth, must significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its business operations to support the military.
“Doing so will increase funding available for our mission functions from efficiency savings in overhead, support and non-mission areas,” he said.
Other Defense Department units are being asked to save a combined total of $1 billion in 2012, $2 billion in 2013, $3 billion in 2014, $4 billion in 2015 and $7 billion in 2016.
The combined five-year goal is $101.9 billion, a Pentagon fact sheet showed, noting the goals would be reviewed annually and could change.
The idea is to get more bang for the buck from the projected 1 percent real growth in its top-line budget that the White House has told the Pentagon to expect for the next five years.
The armed services, Defense Department agencies and combat commands are due to report savings proposals by the end of July as part of preparing the next annual budget submission to Congress.
Lynn said past experience shows that the Pentagon needs 2 to 3 percent real growth to maintain warfighting capabilities and continue to modernize its firepower.
“This is an effort to develop that 2 to 3 percent with these internal changes, these efficiencies, and these reductions in overhead and infrastructure,” he said.
Two-thirds of the total would be a direct transfer from overhead accounts into force structure and modernization accounts. One-third would be developing efficiencies within the forces and modernization efforts, he said.
The Obama administration’s core national defense budget request for fiscal 2011 was $548.9 billion, not including war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, up 1.8 percent from the current year.
—-Agencies