DOD News Briefing by Maj. Gen. McGhee and Barbara Bonessa fr

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DOD News Briefing by Maj. Gen. McGhee and Barbara Bonessa from the Pentagon on the Fiscal 2012 Budget Proposal


Go to http://www.defense.gov/pdf/Army_FY12-PBO-110210.pdf to view briefing slides associated with this transcript.
STAFF: Ladies and gentlemen, Major General Phillip McGhee, director of the Army budget; Ms. Barbara Bonessa, deputy director of the Army budget.
Would you please hold your questions until after the presentation.
GEN. MCGHEE: Well, thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Army's rollout presentation of our FY '12 budget. The agenda we're going to follow includes our budget priorities, an overview of our base and overseas contingency operations request, some detail of all of our appropriations. We are going to touch on Army efficiencies, and then have a few comments on the impact of a continuing resolution, and then take questions.
Now, before we go into the details of the budget itself, I'd like to begin with the Army's FY '12 budget priorities. And the priorities that you see in this chart are synched with and fully support the Army themes and our four imperatives of sustain, repair, reset and transform. The Army's leadership's highest priority is caring for our people -- that is, our soldiers, our families and our civilian workforce -- all with the goal of restoring balance across the Army; continuing to build resiliency to sustain our all-volunteer force. We're obviously continuing to focus on maintaining our combat edge by training and equipping soldiers and units for the current fight; but at the same time, reconstituting and modernizing the force for the next contingency.
And you're going to see throughout the budget request the resources to continue the transformation of the generating force, maintaining our facilities and our installations, and development of new and advanced technologies; all while trying to find efficiencies to make use of our dollars.
We'll go ahead to the next chart, and we'll dive straight into the budget.
The Army's FY '12 budget is represented by these two pie charts. The top one is the base request of $144.9 billion, and the bottom, smaller pie chart is for the overseas contingency operations, or OCO, of about $71.1 billion. Our base budget request is only slightly larger than the FY '11 request, which was 143.2 (billion dollars). And that's basically factoring in inflation. There's also a 30-percent decrease in the FY '12 OCO request of 71.1 billion (dollars), as compared to our FY '11 request of 102.1 billion (dollars). And this decrease is the result of the termination of Operation New Dawn in Iraq at the end of December 2011. And so all the following charts you're going to see outline the appropriations that make up the base budget and the OCO request itself.
As I mentioned earlier, our base budget request is 144.9 (billion dollars), and outlined here is a summary of the appropriations that make up that request. As you can see, the military personnel account is the largest component of the Army budget, at $60.5 billion; followed by operations and maintenance, at $45.2 billion. Our resource development and acquisition, and our military construction and our family housing appropriations make up the other 31.8 billion (dollars) and the 4.9 billion (dollars), respectively.
You're going to see some of these pass-through accounts, including chem demil and a Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund, that are executed by other than Army organizations, but they're accounted for by the Army.
So what we'll do now is just review the individual appropriations that comprise the Army's budget. Our first appropriation, the military personnel appropriation, comprises the largest portion of the Army budget. In fact, it accounts for 42 percent of the base budget request. Caring for soldiers and sustaining the quality of our all-volunteer force are the top priorities of the Army leadership. So in addition to caring for our soldiers, the military personnel budget of $60.6 billion also achieves our manning objectives. The budget request fully funds a total end strength of 1.1 million soldiers across all three components. And within our OCO request, we're going to discuss additional funding for 22,000 temporary end strength increases, or TESI account. The growth in the military personnel appropriation is primarily due to the increases in military basic pay, allowances for housing and subsistence.
We'll go ahead and move on to the operations and maintenance overview. The operations and maintenance appropriation provides for the day-to-day operations of our units and our installations, the training of our personnel, maintenance of all of our equipment and the Army-wide support services. So for FY '12, the Army's O&M request of 45 billion (dollars) is approximately a billion dollars more than it was for FY '11. And that's due primarily to more forces at a home station and are available for training.
Within O&M, there's $900 million for recruiting, advertising and initial training for the all-volunteer force. And the budget also funds the Army readiness to include a revised combined arms training strategy that focuses and shifts training from major combat operations to full-spectrum operations. So funding will support 24 rotations to the combined arms training centers for all of our brigade combat teams and 33 war-fighting exercises for our multi-functional and our functional support brigades.
Within our force structure, O&M provides the funding for 73 brigade combat teams, 98 multi-functional support brigades such as your fire brigades and your sustainment brigades, and 133 functional support brigades such as your military police and your signal brigades.
Funding for weapons of mass destruction civil support teams and the homeland response force units that support the FEMA regions are included in the Army National Guard request. In addition, the Army Reserve request continues to rebalance the force structure itself.
We are sustaining the force through the Army family programs, and we fund those at $1.7 billion in FY '12. We continue to fund these programs that will build resilience and mitigate stress for both our soldiers and our families, including the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and the campaign for health promotion, risk reduction and suicide prevention.
We also fund facilities and infrastructure maintenance and have included increases for municipal services to support a larger force that's now at home station.
Enabling the force -- the Enterprise Network initiative is another priority of the Army, focused on standardized information technologies and an enterprise approach for financial and logistics systems across the Army. That includes the general fund enterprise business system, a global combat support system and a logistics modernization program.
Next, we'll go ahead and move into our investment appropriations. Our FY '12 procurement program will emphasize capabilities that will network the force, deter and defeat hybrid threats, and protect and empower soldiers. And our equipment modernization is along four lines of effort: modernization, sustainment, mitigation and fielding.
Overall in procurement, you'll see a modest increase in our request for FY '11, FY '12. And this $800 million increase is primarily reflected in our aviation nonprocurement appropriation.
So we'll now look at each appropriation -- procurement appropriation separately. And we will start with the aircraft.
You'll note that our FY '12 aircraft procurement request is probably approximately a billion dollars higher than the FY '11 request. And this is mainly due to program ramp-ups in Gray Eagle, the Apache, and the Enhanced Medium-Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System programs.
Our FY '12 request continues to modernize and provide new capabilities to our utility, our cargo and our attack helicopter fleets. We also provide funding for the procurement of 36 MQ-1 Gray Eagle UAVs, which will provide us with a dedicated reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition unmanned aerial platform.
Additionally, the budget request provides for the procurement of 18 Enhanced Medium-Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance Systems, or the EMARSS, which will provide our BCTs with a multi-sensor intelligence-collection capability. It also provides funding for 39 of our UH-72 Lakota light utility aircraft, which will provide organic general aviation support to both our active and our reserve formations.
Now, with the termination of the armed reconnaissance helicopter program, we're now going to keep the Kiowa Warrior in the fleet longer. And as such, we are filling some upgrades to address both the safety and obsolescence issues. And we are procuring long-lead components for both the cockpit and the sensor update program.
Our next category is our missile and ammunition procurement. Our FY '12 request is lower than our FY '11 request due to the termination of the Surface-Launched Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air missile, SLAMRAAM, and a Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System, NLOS-LS programs.
Once again, the majority of our missile procurement is dedicated to our Patriot PAC 3 program. And in FY '12, we're going to procure 88 missiles. Additionally, we're going to begin initial production facilitation for the missile segment enhancement. And that's the PAC 3 follow-on.
Now, with the decision to cancel the SLAMRAAM system, it has become necessary for a Service-Life Extension Program, or SLEP, and upgrade to the Stinger missile. And this program replaces the aging components of the Stinger and the upgrade to enhance lethality in the range. On the tactical side, we continue to procure the Javelin, the TOW and the Hellfire missiles and the guided-missile launch rocket systems to maintain or establish war reserve requirements.
In our ammunition accounts, our appropriations, we continue to fully fund our critical training ammunition requirements. There are some limited quantities of select war reserve ammunition, and we do modernize our protection-based facilities.
In our weapons and tracked combat vehicles, our request represents a modest increase of about 200 million over the FY '11 request. Our focus in the weapons and in the track combat vehicles is on achieving a two-variant standard Abrams tank as well as a two-variant Bradley Fighting Vehicle that, combined with the Stryker will round out the Army's dominant heavy combat maneuver platforms.
We are buying 100 Stryker NBC reconnaissance vehicles and funding improvement of survivability by providing the slat armor protection, Common Ballistics Shield, Blue Force Tracking and driver enhancements and mine protection kits.
We will upgrade 21 of our older Abrams tanks to the M1A2 SEP Version 2 configuration, and we are going to continue to provide engine improvements and systems training devices to the M1A1. This budget request will also keep the essential capability of the armor facility at a sustainable level.
And finally, we're going to procure 108 Bradley situational awareness kits required for the modulation BCT, and these kits will improve lethalities, survivability and sustainment of the M2 fleet.
We'll go ahead and move now to other procurement, starting with our tactical wheeled vehicles, our major modernization program, and the request includes procuring almost 2,400 truck and trailer variants in the family of medium tactical vehicles, and almost 8,000 multiple truck and trailer variants in the family of heavy tactical vehicles.
Our in-service modification program will convert 481 MRAPs to the route clearance configuration and by upgrading the fuel tanks with ballistic protection and sensor activity fire suppressant. This request also provides $162 million to recapitalize up-armored humvees coming out of theater.
In our support equipment category, we're going to continue to fund the tactical bridging systems, the nonstandard training devices and our net warrior. In our communications and digitalization, our major effort is to integrate our systems to provide our warfighters timely and more relevant information. Our goal is the seamless connectivity regardless of the echelon, the location or their mission, and to achieve it, the Army's going to build upon the current baseline of network architecture.
So we're going to start with the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, or WIN-T, which is the backbone for the Army's information modernization program. It's going to be fielded in three increments. Increment 1, networking at-the-halt, is almost complete and fielded to our BCTs, and it will provide the reach-back capabilities for all of our battle command posts. Increment 2, on-the-move, will be fielded next, and Increment 3 is still in development.
Within the Joint Tactical Radio program, we are producing or procuring 471 ground mobile radios that will provide us with a scalable, on-the-move network architecture that connects the soldier to the network.
We're also going to fund the tactical surveillance equipment, which includes three variants of the night vision thermal weapons sites, a multifunctional line of sight target acquisition common sensor suite, which will provide our warfighters with real-time target detection, recognition and identification capability 24 hours a day in all weather conditions.
The Research, Development, Test and Evaluation lines is -- in our strategy is twofold. First, we're going to continue development in support of the current force, and then we're going to pursue technologies to enable the future force. Our FY '12 budget request is about 600 million (dollars) less than our FY '11 request of 10.3 billion (dollars), but that is primarily due to the cancellation of the unmanned ground sensors and the NLOS-LS.
In the area of development, our budget provides funding for the combat vehicle modernization program, which will include the ground combat vehicles, the Stryker, the army multipurpose vehicle, our Bradleys and our Abrams. In this program, we're going to emphasize space, weight and power shortfalls, and we will focus on soldier protection, soldier capacity and full-spectrum operation support.
We're also looking at improvements to our networks, specifically Warfighter Information Network Tactical and key aviation and intelligence and air defense programs, including the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Evaluated Net Sensor System, or JLENS, and the Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense System.
In FY '12, the Army is requesting more than $2.3 billion for science and technology programs, with the two largest investments in the areas of force protection and base -- basic research.
Our other major investment is in the area of facilities. The FY '12 military construction request supports facility needs for both the active, the Guard and our reserve forces. The 1-billion (dollar) decrease in the FY '12 request as compared to the FY '11 request is primarily due down -- due to the ramp-down from growing the Army. We are almost complete.
Supporting the Army family's covenant, the Army family housing program provides a quality living experience for Army families. So our request includes construction funding for some new housing, renovation of existing housing, the maintenance of our Army-owned housing and the oversight of over 88,000 homes that we've privatized through the residential communities initiative.
The Army is on track to meet the BRAC law by the 15th of September 2011. And the FY '12 will be the first year we submit a budget request for post-implementation BRAC 2005 activities. So the FY '12 request at 300 million (dollars) will provide for caretaker operations and environmental-restoration functions at all the remaining BRAC properties.
Now, this concludes our base program appropriations overview. But before I turn it over to Ms. Bonessa to cover down on the overseas contingency operation request, I would like to briefly discuss our efficiency efforts in FY '12.
Our DOD efficiency initiatives are enabling the Army to maintain our forces and our force structure in FY '12, able to sustain an Army at war. It does build soldier and family resiliency, and it does help build our full-spectrum readiness and strategic flexibility.
As you know, there was a $29.3-billion -- identified as efficiencies for the Army from FY '12 through FY '16. Two-point-seven billion (dollars) of that was laid into the FY '12 program. So the first efficiencies we found were in the reorganization and better business practices, including the reduction of a number of installation-management commands, regional headquarters from six to four, and the consolidation of our e-mail infrastructure and our data centers Army-wide.
The second areas involve program reductions and terminations that include several redundant programs, most notably NLOS-LS, our SLAMRAAM and our Scorpion land mine.
And the final area included is deferring some low-priority MILCON projects, mainly some ranges in a few of our smaller facilities. The Army did reinvest the savings from these programs in order to enhance current readiness and capabilities including our -- upgrading our combat vehicles, accelerating the procurement of the Gray Eagle unmanned aerial system to a maximum production rate. We also developed future capabilities by investing in the unmanned ground vehicle, and we are accelerating the fielding of the Joint Tactical Radial system.
So at this point I'll turn it over to Ms. Bonessa, and we'll go ahead and walk through the OCO request.
MS. BONESSA: Okay. Thank you, General McGhee.
Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, this is the third year since 2010 that we have submitted the overseas contingency operations request concurrent with the president's budget rather than as a follow-on supplemental appropriations request later in the fiscal year. That creates some significant challenges with regard to trying to project our requirements into the future. So what you see -- what we're about to present to you is our best estimates of what we will require for fiscal year '12, based on guidance provided by the Joint Staff and by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Of the $117 almost 118 billion requested by DOD, 71 billion (dollars), or 61 percent of that is for the Army. That's for the accounts that we manage within the Army, our appropriations, as well as those for which we're the financial management executive agent. That would be the Afghanistan infrastructure fund, a new account, the Afghanistan security forces fund, and the joint IED defeat fund.
As General McGhee mentioned, this request is 30 percent lower than our $102-billion request of last year, which is due primarily to the planned drawdown from Iraq to be completed at the end of this fiscal year.
For the MILPERS and O&M accounts especially, the single major cost driver is the size of the deployed force. And the assumptions that we have built this -- and I would mention that they are budgetary force-planning assumptions -- that we have built this estimate on include 64,000 in Afghanistan at a steady state, as described by Mr. Hale during the OSD press conference, 64(,000) of the 98(,000) in theater; an average, because of the rapid drawdown, in -- over a three-month period in Iraq, it's an average of only 3,500, and then we have about 13,000 that are in surrounding countries providing support. That's primarily in Kuwait, of course.
I would also add that for many areas to include some common logistics, base-camp support, we're the executive agent to provide support for all U.S. deployed forces. So we actually support all 98,000 in Afghanistan, again, for general common functions such as base camp support.
If you turn to the military personnel request, this account, this request is also down by 30 percent from FY '11. It provides for those incremental requirements in the military pay area. First off, the active component temporary end strength increase of 22,000 that you're familiar with, that is the strength that we are at right now. We will decline to an end strength of about 14,600 at the end of this fiscal year, beginning in March of 2012. And we will expect to completely off-ramp the temporary end strength increase by the end of '13.
The bulk of this request, almost $5 billion, supports those incremental pay requirements for full-time pay and allowances for approximately 50,000 Reserve component personnel on active duty. You can see the Guard and Reserve split on the chart. About $1.2 billion for subsistence-in-kind for all military forces in theater. And there's about $700 million for additional training days while still in Reserve component status for our National Guard and USAR soldiers who are working to complete certification of as many possible pre-deployment tasks as possible before they go into their 12-month mobilization.
Turning to the O&M accounts this, by far, is the major portion of our request; it's almost 90 percent and it covers the full range of operational and support requirements for an army -- a force at war, everything from pre-deployment training, transportation to, from and within theater, force protection in theater, equipment maintenance, logistics, and as I mentioned earlier, base camp support for all deployed U.S. forces.
There is $500 million in this account for the training and operational tempo portion of the Guard and Reserve requirements in advance of mobilization. And then, finally, there's about $4 billion in this account for reset of our equipment returning from Iraq and from Afghanistan.
In the RDA account, of the total $2.2 billion request, about half, $1.1 billion of dollars -- $1.1 billion of that request is for force protection, including battle command and ISR capabilities, counter-fire and counter-mortar radars and individual soldier protection equipment as well. Most of the balance of this account is to replace equipment that is either lost or beyond economic repair and also to replenish munitions that were expended in theater.
In the interest of time, the next two charts provide the systems and the quantities that are included in those requests, the first three appropriations, aircraft, missiles and ammunition. Just give you a moment to look at those. And I will certainly be happy to take any of your questions later on.
And the second chart in this section includes our weapons and tracked combat vehicles, other procurement Army and research development and test and evaluation requirements.
I would mention that of the other procurement, the significant investment of over 800 million (dollars) in electronic equipment reflects our significant investment in the ISR capabilities to include persistent surveillance that Mr. Hale referred to earlier as being so key and such an insatiable demand from our theater commanders.
As we close out this portion of our briefing, I would make only brief comments on the continuing resolution; it would be very hard to top what Secretary Gates and Secretary Hale said. We are also extremely concerned about moving into almost halfway through the fiscal year without our full appropriations. We are cautiously encouraged by the bill that was referred to the rules committee by the House on Friday evening. While there are still some dollar challenges there, one of the most important things that can happen is the certainty of having our money in hand and being able to move out on our execution without the constraints of operating under the uncertainty of a continuing resolution, as well as the work that lies ahead to prepare for fiscal year '12.
In closing, the FY '12 base budget request supports the priorities of taking care of people and investing in our transformation, our modernization of the force and our OCO request provides for the operational and first-protection requirements of a deployed force.
With that, we both thank you for being here today. We welcome your questions. And we do have the -- and the Army leadership team from Army Budget is all here to help us respond to any of your questions.
STAFF: Ladies and gentlemen, we have about 10 minutes for your questions. Please.
Q: Yes. Two quick questions.
Does this budget anticipate that the two brigades in Europe will be brought back to the United States?
MS. BONESSA: I can take that.
Q: Okay.
MS. BONESSA: In accordance with SecDef guidance, the force structure for Europe is still being assessed at the Defense level. And we will -- we will await the outcome of that.
Q: And in layman's terms, the -- there's a big increase in spending for communications.
That goes -- how -- can you say in layman's terms how that will affect the soldiers deployed?
MS. BONESSA: In the OCO -- in the OCO request?
Q: No, in the budget request.
MS. BONESSA: In the base request. So it's soldiers' deploying maybe...
GEN. MCGHEE: Well, and this is about networking the force. This is about networking the soldier to the -- to his equipment, to his -- to his vehicles, to his -- to his aircraft. It is -- when a soldier's on the ground, everything and no matter where he is at or she is at, they are networked and they can see; so they have situational awareness of everything that's going around them to the left and the right of them. And so this is about networking that soldier.
Q: (Off mic) -- the Army is still buying a joint high-speed vessel in FY '12. Does this mean that the talks with the Navy about transferring ships are off the table, or is the Army still thinking about transferring its fleets to the Navy?
MS. BONESSA: I'll take that one. The dialogue between the chief of Naval Operations, the chief of staff of the Army and obviously the secretary of Defense leadership are still ongoing with regard to potential transfer of the - what would be two joint high-speed vessels.
Q: So is the Army still buying one?
MS. BONESSA: It's still in our budget. Yes. We know when we'll buy it.
STAFF: Would you please announce your name and your organization for the record, please?
(Off mic.)
Q: John Doyle with Combat Systems. Can you give us some specifics on procurement for unmanned ground systems, particularly unmanned ground vehicles, EOD and IED disposal?
MS. BONESSA: David -- I want to ask if our director of investment, who I'm hopeful is -- (inaudible) -- do you have a list of the key systems involved?
STAFF: I can get a list....(Off mic).
MS. BONESSA: Okay.
And we'll get that to you very shortly if you'll just --
STAFF: In the back.
Q: Thank you. Sandra Erwin with National Defense.
General, you said one of the initiatives for efficiency reinvestment is to accelerate Joint Tactical Radio. Can you say what is the request for '12 for joint -- for the entire Joint Tactical Radio System program? And when are you going to start -- (off mic) -- plan?
GEN. MCGHEE: (Inaudible) -- numbers, specific numbers.
STAFF: The requester amount for JTRS is almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Q: And the schedule?
STAFF: I can get you the schedule. I don't -- I don't have the schedule handy.
Q: But it's being accelerated by how much time?
(Inaudible)
Q: Thank you.
STAFF: Tony.
Q: Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg News. On efficiencies, you've got $2.7 billion in 0 -- '12 of your $29 billion total. Can one of your colleagues sort of give us the numbers for the Futures Years Defense Plan? And how confident are you, as you go beyond '12, that these numbers will withstand scrutiny and are not totally smoke and mirrors at this point?
GEN. MCGHEE: Well, we have laid in the $29.3 billion across the -- across the FYDP. We have -- in conjunction with OSC, we have walked through each and every one of those programs. It is to ensure that we can execute it; to ensure that we are not going to break anything within the Army; that we will cause no harm to the Army. So the 29.3 billion (dollars) that we found in efficiencies we -- for the most part we took out of the -- out of the generating force and we moved it into the operating force. So we bought back readiness; we bought back capability in those -- in those particular areas. So this is a fully executable program for us.
Q: (Off mic.) Do you have the dollar figures for those, can you get those -- (off mic)?
GEN. MCGHEE: Absolutely.
Q: It'll be helpful to know the stream of dollars. Thank you.
Q: (Off mic) -- the Army. Considering that the GCV is not considered a new START program, is the Army willing -- is it a high priority enough for the Army to keep its schedule in tact in the face of a CR?
MS. BONESSA: In the event of a full-year CR, because the dollars are sort of right in RDA, but they're in all the wrong places, be it at base or OCO misalignment, or in a cross-appropriations misalignment, we would have to simply sequence everything by priority and make that decision.
There are, I believe, three technology development contracts that are pending for this spring. So we are cautiously optimistic that with a bill, we will be able to move out with those on a timely basis. Failure to do so could delay the first production vehicle.
STAFF: (Off mic.)
Q: Kate Brannen again, Defense News. Could you talk a little bit about the OSD's decision to end the MEADS program in 2013 and what this means for the Army's budget in the out years? How much savings does it free up? And in the decision it said that more money could therefore be directed to counter-rocket and -mortar systems. Is that based on what the Army sees as -- sees as a growing threat? If you could comment, thanks.
GEN. MCGHEE: Well, I will try -- answer all three at the -- and at one, it's -- one, we fully support the OSD's decision to cancel the -- to cancel the program. We do have dollars in the FY '12 program for the -- for that system. It would be our intent at some point that we would use dollars to go ahead and upgrade our current missile systems, to include the Patriot, this -- the Stinger, as I talked about earlier, so just to go and upgrade the systems that we currently have and provide more capability and capacity for them.
STAFF: We have time to take one more question.
Q: Sir, you mentioned -- you singled out JLENS as you were talking about the R&D. Is there any change in that program, or is that program going ahead as planned?
MS. BONESSA: No change.
GEN. MCGHEE: No change. No change in that program.
STAFF: Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to wrap it up now, the Army presentation. Thank you for coming.
MS. BONESSA: Thank you all.
GEN. MCGHEE: Thank you.



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