07 Feb 05.
(Extracts from full text available on http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/defense.html)
President Bush on Monday called for a 5 percent boost in U.S. defense spending to $419.3bn next year, making the Pentagon one of the budget’s few winners though facing a slowdown in growth after post-Sept. 11, 2001, surges. The request to speed modernization of the Cold War military, sent to the U.S. Congress in a $2.5 trillion fiscal 2006 federal budget, would boost Pentagon spending by 4.8 percent and is sure to create heated debate among lawmakers.
The Pentagon budget also does not include funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those tens of billions of dollars would come later from separate “supplemental” requests to lawmakers.
HIGHLIGHTS
* The Department’s funding for UAV development has risen from just above $3bn in the 1990s to over $12bn for 2004 through 2009. These funds will be used to develop new sensor technology, to assess the feasibility of new roles and missions for UAVs, and to develop intelligent autonomous vehicles that can perform the “dull, dirty and dangerous” missions better and with less risk to U.S. forces.
* Other transformation efforts are focused on the mobility and agility of ground forces. The Army reoriented its focus to be lighter and more mobile than its current tank and infantry fighting vehicle based units. The centerpiece of this change is the Future Combat Systems (FCS).
* The Budget assumes that the first ship of the Littoral Combat Ship class will be procured in 2005 as an experimental platform to prove the concept and evaluate what else these small reconfigurable ships may be able to do.
* The 2005 Budget continues to support advanced technologies, which improve and refine knowledge available to soldiers, sailors and marines on the battlefield and at sea through sensor technology and real-time communications. Network Centric Warfare systems will tie real-time intelligence and sensor information, target identification, mission planning and battle damage assessment capabilities together in one place. As the technology develops and evolves, the ability to transmit this information to all forces within range will be possible.
* Space. The Department continues to make progress in significant new, transformational space programs. The Space Based Radar program promises to provide near-continuous, all-weather surveillance on a global basis. DOD is also conducting an Operationally Responsive Spacelift demonstration program with the first flight planned in 2007. Rapid launch of satellites will become an essential element of future transformational space operations.
* The level of investment in R&D will continue into the future, with $68.9bn being proposed for 2005, a $27.8bn increase over the 2001 appropriated level.
* In 2005, the Budget provides funding for many new defense systems, including the Joint Strike Fighter program, the Future Combat System, a new destroyer ship program, high capacity communications, and a number of intelligence systems.
* In December 2002, President Bush directed the deployment of missile defenses to protect the United States from long-range missile threats with their ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction. The 2005 Budget provides more than $10.3bn to pursue this goal and to provide effective missile defenses for deployed U.S. forces, our allies, and friends. The first, modest land- and sea-based systems to defend against long-range missile threats will be fielded by September 2004 (?5Ed).
* The makers of tactical wheeled vehicles such as Stewart & Stevenson Services Inc. and Oshkosh Truck Corp., M-240 class machine gun maker FN Manufacturing and ammunition-maker Alliant Techsystems Inc. will benefit from Army dollars spend on expanding the brigades. United Defense will produce more Bradley Fighting Vehicles under the Army plan. The Army requests $1.7bn and $1.9bn respectively in fisca