Rapid Fire 2012-01-27: FY13 DoD Budget Guidance

Update: FY13 PB has been released. Top Pentagon officials gave a briefing yesterday on major budget decisions ahead of the FY13 President Budget request coming on Feb. 13. Highlights among the outlined priorities [PDF]:

• A relatively stable topline at $613.4B, made of a $525B baseline plus $88.4B overseas contingency operations (OCO). The former is a couple billion dollars below the FY10 actual budget and reflects a 5% decrease from the FY12 request, but in reality is just $6B below what DoD ended up getting last year. The OCO funds are 25% lower than last year’s $117.8B request but they remain at a pretty sizable level now that troops have left Iraq. Again, a significant part of the cuts Panetta and House Republicans have most vocally objected to are actually found in a) reductions vs. baseline growth previously projected by DoD – as opposed to net cuts – and b) a drop in war funding which arguably makes sense when you’re withdrawing troops from combat.

• Force and infrastructure adjustments, starting with a new base realignment and closure (BRAC) process. The last one dates from 2005 and wrapped up only very recently. Well, almost. Also, the start of a 5-year process that aims to lower active troops to 490,000 for the Army and 182,000 for the Marines; and a 10% reduction in the number of Air Force tactical air squadrons from today’s 60. A new BRAC is sure to open a whole new can of worms in Congress.

• Slowing down JSF procurement – again – to allow for more testing and address the laundry list of issues outlined in the latest DOT&E report [PDF]. This decision reflects the conclusions of the Concurrency Quick Look Review [PDF] that talked of a “lack of confidence in the design stability” and of the “concurrency driven consequences of the required fixes.”

• Retirement or divesting of 27 C-5As, 65 C-130s and 38 C-27s. Cancellation of Global Hawk Block 30 (not the whole program). Early retirement of 7 cruisers; delayed or reduced production of 14 ships, spread between LHA, LCS, JHSV, Virginia-class sub. Termination of the Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS). Reduction in JAGM funding. Focus on JLTV rather than HMMWV Recap.
• Adjustments to pay raises shouldn’t start until 2015. Health care fees, co-pays and deductibles for retirees on the other hand will start to rise earlier. Beyond that, DoD is asking Congress to establish a commission to review military retirement. What could go wrong with that?

DID will obviously follow budget developments closely as they unfold and further details are made available. For reference, the FY12 DoD budget documents are found here. In other news:

• Lockheed Martin reported sales growth of 1.8% to $46.5B for 2011. Aeronautics is where most of the growth was, followed by electronic systems, while information and space systems saw a slight drop in sales. The company’s total backlog grew by 3% to $80.7B. The 8-K filing or press release don’t detail how much of that number is funded, and there’s the question of actual F-35 delivery rates in the next few years. As of the end of 2010 the funded backlog amounted to 64% of the total, based on that year’s 10-K filing.

• Boeing’s topline grew by 7% to $64.3B in 2011, driven by commercial airplanes. The Defense, Space & Security (BDS) part remained in the $31.9-$32B range or slightly under half of the total. Almost 78% of the $60B BDS backlog is already obligated.

• Raytheon’s AGM-65E2 laser Maverick passed its testing, clearly the way for delivery and use of the back-in-production missiles.

• The Defense Acquisition University published its Better Buying Power (BBP) learning materials.