Obama urged to scrap some Pentagon programs

WASHINGTON: A group of outsideadvisers to the Pentagon is urging President-elect Barack Obama to scrapunspecified military programs due to a growing gap between arms-buying plans andhow to pay for them.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," theDefense Business Board said in a series of briefings presented last month toPentagon leadership. Copies of the panel's briefing slides were made availableby the Defense Department on Monday.

"History suggests thedepartment is entering a period of fiscal constraint in a tough economy withdeficit and competitive spending pressures," the briefing material said.

"Eliminate programs and activities not vital to the mission," itrecommended to the incoming administration.

Cuts at the margin"won't work this time," the board said. "Nor will pushing things off to thelater years."

The board did not "call out specific programs to cut,"said Navy Cmdr. Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman. Its final report is to bereleased later this month.

The briefing material suggested investingsavings into items on the armed services' wish lists, offering them back toCongress as "goodwill" or a combination of both.

U.S. defensespending has climbed more than 60 percent during the eight years of the Bushadministration, and will total at least $612.5 billion in fiscal 2009. Thisincludes $542.5 billion for the core defense budget and an initial allowance of$70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A top defenseadviser to Obama, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, has said he does not seeoverall defense spending declining in the first years of Obama's administration.Obama has said he would review every major arms program,

InsideDefense.com, a trade publication, last week quoted a briefingpaper for Obama's national security advisory team as saying prime targets forpossible cuts included missile defense, notably a laser built aboard a modified747 jumbo jet by Boeing Co . The new administration will also mullcuts to the Army's Future Combat Systems, co-managed by Boeing and SAIC, it said.

The Defense Business Board said "boldaction" was required to resolve growing mismatches between projected futurebudget levels and weapons-buying plans.

The Defense Departmentcannot replace worn combat hardware, modernize and "transform" its capabilitiessimultaneously, the panel said.

"Choices must be made acrosscapabilities and within systems to deliver capability at a known price within aspecific period of time," it said in a presentation titled "Decision making in afiscally-constrained environment."

Since 1947, there have been fourperiods of significant increases in budget authority, each of which has beenfollowed by a period of significant decreases, the panel said.

Defense Business Board members are appointed by the defensesecretary. Among current members are Kenneth Krieg, the Pentagon's chief weaponsbuyer from mid-2005 to mid-2007, and Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financialofficer from 2001 to April 2004.

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In another briefing for thetransition, the board said the total budget for all major Pentagon acquisitionprograms more than doubled in the past seven years, from $783 billion to $1.7trillion. Of the total increase, $401 billion, or 44 percent, was tied toprogram cost growth over the baseline budget, the board said.

Separately, the Defense Science Board, another independent advisorygroup, said in a study for the incoming administration last week that theDefense Department's business practices -- acquisition, logistics andinfrastructure -- raised costs and slowed modernization so much that they werehaving "a long-term debilitating effect on our military forces."

With the wars under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, the newadministration must act quickly to meet challenges outlined in the report orface the risk of a "disastrous failure," the science board said.

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