House committee votes to cut FCS money
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/05/military_army_mraps_051408w/
The House Armed Services Committee agreed Wednesday to cut the Army’s
Future Combat System to provide money for National Guard and reserve
equipment.
The 33-23 vote to cut $233 million from the FCS program was along party
lines.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee’s air and
land forces panel and a sup****ter of the MRAP funding, said the
committee’s version of the 2009 defense policy bill includes money for
most of the Bush administration requests for the Army, including $2.2
billion for upgrading Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and
Stryker vehicles; $3.4 billion for tactical vehicles including $947
million for heavily armored Humvees; $3.1 billion for helicopters; and
more than $1 billion for munitions.
However, the bill also makes a 5.5 percent reduction in funding for the
Army’s FCS program. Abercrombie said the cut is needed so that money can
be ****fted to higher priorities, like readiness, and also reflects a
“history of delays and cost overruns” in the program.
“It is $110 billion over budget and five years behind schedule,” he
said. “I hardly think they have been cut short. And, it has not produced
a single deployable system in six years of development.”
He said the savings were redirected to supplying equipment to the
National Guard and reserves, one of the many unfunded needs in the
defense budget. The Army had $4 billion in unfunded priorities,
Abercrombie said.
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the former committee chairman and now
its ranking Republican, criticized the cuts.
“While some can look at a $3.6 billion program and conclude that a
one-year cut of 5 percent to 10 percent is inconsequential, you must
look at this issue from a longer term, ***ulative perspective,” Hunter
said.
He called 2009 a critical year to decide if the program should be
continued, altered or terminated.
Also critical of the reduction was Rep. Jim Saxton of New Jersey,
ranking Republican on the air and land forces subcommittee, who noted
that this is the fourth straight year of reductions in what he considers
a revolutionary program.
“This is the year the Future Combat System gets its go-ahead or its
cancellation papers,” Saxton said. “There is no doubt that every member
of this committee wants to ensure we have an Army that is ready today
and prepared to meet the challenges of the future.”
“We don’t have a ‘Plan B’ — this is the Army’s modernization program,”
said Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who predicted the cut would lead to a delay
on a decision about the fate of the FCS.
“The Army’s funding crisis cannot be solved by continuing to cut funding
for the FCS program or any other modernization program,” Akin said. “The
Army must be allowed to invest in technologies and equipment that enable
our most im****tant asset — the soldier — to remain more effective than
our adversaries.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee fully funds the Future Combat System
in its version of the bill, making this one of the issues that will have
to be resolved before a final bill p*****.
The bill also provides $2.6 billion in the 2009 defense budget for Mine
Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, with a call by one key lawmaker
that some of the vehicles be kept in the U.S. for training.
The $2.6 billion allocation is exactly what the Bush administration
requested. Additional funding is expected as part of the 2008 wartime
supplemental appropriations bill.
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the armed services committee’s
seapower panel, said the extra money in the 2009 defense authorization
bill is aimed at getting MRAPs “to our troops in the field as quickly as
possible,” but he also hopes the services are able to build enough that
some could be used in training.
Taylor said he is “troubled” that most troops arrive in Iraq or
Afghanistan without ever seeing an MRAP except on a video. That makes it
impossible for the services to train like they fight, something Army
officials, in particular, have always said is the best training, Taylor
said.
Taylor said he would press for language in the final version of the
defense bill ordering, or at least strongly suggesting, that the
military set aside some MRAPs for pre-deployment training.
As of April, about 3,500 MRAPs have been deployed, about 150 to
Afghanistan and the rest of Iraq. The Pentagon has a goal of buying
about 15,000 and is ru****ng production by using a variety of
manufacturers.
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