Last week, Todd Harrison presented a detailed trend analysis of defense spending. Using this trend analysis, he shows that the BCA caps may be a ceiling on defense spending rather than a floor.
You can watch the full presentation here.
The Army's FY2014 Base Budget Request is $129.7 billion. Yet, Army Chief of Staff, General Ray Odierno, says that only two brigades are ready to fight.
Where does the money go?
It seems that DoD is having a hard time measuring the cost of doing business in IT operations as well.
The goal is to understand how much military services and agencies spend on people, technology and processes, and then use that information to improve decision making and to become more efficient.
Are you surprised that DoD doesn't know how its spending translates into performance?
An article on DoD Buzz about the Air Force's next-generation aircraft states:
Meantime, the operational costs of the F-35 are unlikely to affect how many of the aircraft the service intends to buy, Donley said.
The cost of flying the F-35 “will be slightly higher than the F-16, there’s no doubt about that in my mind,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a link there between projected operational costs and how many we’re going to buy.”
How can there not be a link between what an aircraft costs to operate and the quantity that the Air Force will purchase? Isn't the cost of ownership a key component of fleet composition and size?
You can find the DoD Budget information here: