The Department of Defense must shed thousands of military, civilian and contracted workers or it will not be able to handle increasing security threats — under either sequestration or higher spending levels — a panel of defense budget experts told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
“The largest amount of savings comes from personnel,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “Cutting head counts — both active duty and civilian.”
A panel of national security experts, including Harrison, was asked last year to game the Pentagon’s budget under sequestration and with higher levels of spending to recommend cuts that would best position the Pentagon to meet current and future security needs.
Several of the panel members said that under either scenario, personnel has to be cut.
“Personnel and readiness simply consume so much of the defense budget,” said Nora Bensahel of American University, whose recommendations included cutting civilian staff by one-third. “Between 2001 and 2012, the number of DOD civilians grew five times faster than the number of active-duty military. In our view, military combat forces — that sharp end of the DOD spear — needed to be preserved at the cost of deeply slashing civilian staff.”
The Pentagon in its fiscal 2016 budget request said it would cut its 749,000-strong civilian workforce by 2,000 positions. It also seeks to cut the Army by 15,000.
The panel also recommended conducting a base closure round, changing medical and retirement benefits for military personnel, and cutting or reducing weapons systems. All panelists recommended retiring the A-10, Harrison said. Other potential cuts were to reduce the Air Force purchase of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
“The F-35 … is eating the entire defense budget alive,” Bensahel said.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee, noted that the panel has to be willing to cut systems or personnel in their districts.
“It’s not our primary job to protect everything in our own districts,” Smith said. Given the budget limits, barring an unforeseen acquisition reform miracle … something’s gotta go.”
The panel assessed the budget options last spring, just as Russia was launching its aggressive attacks on Crimea and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was beginning its violent run through northern Iraq. Both actions represent an evolving kind of threat that was not clear the Defense Department is adequately postured to defend against: “sub-conventional creeping aggression,” the panel and committee members said.
Those actions require more “boots on the ground” to be able to provide “low-end deterrence,” the panel advised — small groups of special forces to counter rising threats and not the large-scale ground operations that marked the last decade. But the panel also recommended investing in anti-access capabilities, which “provide umbrellas for revisionist states to conduct creeping aggression,” said Jim Thomas, an expert from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
