Pressure on the US Defense Budget is going to increase dramatically in the coming years. Which, is going to put extreme pressure on programs like the F-15EX.
DoD must identify its ‘crown jewels’ in preparation for fiscal uncertaintyAs the attention of Congress and senior leaders in the Department of Defense are rightly focused on mitigating the coronavirus pandemic, it is not too soon to begin planning for how the nation and the DoD can recover from this crisis.
The much-needed $2.2 trillion relief package recently passed by Congress — and whatever additional spending is appropriated in the coming weeks and months — comes on top of a preexisting budget deficit of more than $1 trillion for the current fiscal year. When this crisis eventually subsides, the deficit will be at an all-time high and the pressure to cut spending — including defense spending — may also be high. Now is the time to start thinking about the steps the Defense Department can take to better position itself for the post-coronavirus fiscal environment.
Historically, higher deficits put long-term pressure on the defense budget. We saw this in the mid-1980s when the federal deficit peaked at nearly $0.5 trillion (in today’s dollars). Congress reacted at the time by passing the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. This law put in place a set of deficit caps and created an enforcement mechanism known as sequestration. From fiscal 1985 to fiscal 1991, the national defense budget fell by 19 percent in real terms as part of these deficit reduction efforts. And when the Cold War ended, it fell another 18 percent through FY98.
During the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, deficits spiked to $1.7 trillion (in today’s dollars). This led Congress to enact the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resurrected sequestration and put caps on the defense and nondefense parts of the discretionary budget. Despite a series of budget deals that amended the budget caps, the combination of the BCA and the drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in a 22 percent real decline in the national defense budget from FY10 to FY15.
The Defense Department was caught flatfooted in 2013 because of its stubborn refusal to plan for sequestration. It muddled through the across-the-board cuts imposed by sequestration that year by furloughing civilian employees, canceling training and exercises, and deferring maintenance on equipment and facilities. To make matters worse, many of these actions did not save money in the long run; they merely deferred expenses and made long-term costs higher than they would have been otherwise................
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