CIAO DATE: 10/2012
September 2012
Center for Strategic and International Studies
The executive summary focuses on the broad impact of current defense plans on federal spending and the US economy, the impact of the Budget Control Act and Sequestration, and the problems caused by the Department’s failures to make realistic force plans and budget projections to bring its costs under control. The full analysis also addresses the new strategy the Department of Defense issued early this year – generally quoting directly from its text. It shows how vague and uncertain many aspects of the new US strategy are, that the military services are often developing their own approaches to strategy, and that many elements of the strategy remain decoupled from the FY2013-FY2017 Future Year Defense Plan. It shows that a major gap exists between the broad, undefined strategic rhetoric in the new strategy and the budget-driven spending cuts in the FY2013 budget submission. These studies show that far too much of the prose in the new strategy has little more depth than the average fortune cookie. There are no clear force plans, procurement plans, personnel plans, or spending plans to support the new strategy in most areas. The mission priorities are not adequately explained or justified, and key areas of spending like the projected expenditure on the Afghan conflict raise serious questions. Moreover, the steady escalation of personnel and procurement costs raise further questions as to whether the projected spending can buy anything like the projected force. Finally, the new strategy and FY2013 budget request also fail to provide a clear basis for integrating the defense portion of the national security strategy with the funding and activities of the State Department and USAID, or with the broad range of activities that OMB lists under the heading of Homeland Defense.
Resource link: The FY2013 Defense Budget, Deficits, Cost-Escalation, and Sequestration [PDF] - 3.6M