House committee votes to cut FCS money

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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 supporter 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 shifted 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, cumulative 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 important 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 passes.

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 rushing production by using a variety of manufacturers.


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/20...mraps_051408w/