The Defense Department will have its Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR), a wide-ranging analysis of how the fiscal year 2014 defense budget will be impacted by sequestration cuts, delivered to Congress by July 1, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said yesterday.
DoD said May 30 the SCMR would not be released “for weeks.” But DoD spokesman James Swarthout said yesterday all the internal SCMR work has been performed and the Pentagon is waiting to brief Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel upon his return from Europe before its goal of submitting the review to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) by July 1.
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| Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. Photo: DoD. |
Carter made his remarks at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA)-Fletcher School special operations conference in Washington.
President Obama’s administration did not factor the $500 billion in decade-long sequestration cuts into its FY ’14 budget request, to the chagrin of defense-minded lawmakers, who want the Pentagon to do more contingency planning for sequestration, which began in March (Defense Daily, May 31).
Carter also said DoD needs congressional leeway to make “profound and difficult managerial choices” starting in FY ’14. DoD is still waiting on Congress’ response to a $9.6 billion reprogramming request sent the third week of May, which would shift around FY ’13 funds already in the Pentagon’s coffers. The request comes as DoD is facing across-the-board sequestration budget cuts, which are projected to tap $37 billion in FY ’13, with $20 billion coming from operations and maintenance accounts (Defense Daily, May 28).
“We’re ready for whatever happens to our budget, but the choices are unprecedented and will require Congressional support to get them right,” Carter said.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) did not respond yesterday to an inquiry on when the committee would make a decision on DoD’s reprogramming request.
Carter said DoD protected special operations forces (SOF), or U.S. Strategic Command (USSOCOM), ii its FY ’14 budget for four reasons. First, SOF is essential to many defense priorities ranging from combating Al-Qaida and building partnership capacity to enabling conventional forces and supporting humanitarian disaster relief. Secondly, Carter said SOF is a highly-skilled workforce that can’t be mass produced or quickly rebuilt in times of crisis. This is why many SOF soldiers are senior officers and non-commissioned officers and why they have deep expertise in cultures, languages and functional issues, Carter said.
Third, Carter said SOF has a high return on investment, with SOCOM representing less than two percent of DoD’s FY ’13 budget. Fourth, Carter said SOF was protected because the United States needs to provide its partners with capabilities to provide for their own security.
Carter said, lastly, SOF is essential due to a strategic, and perhaps, less measurable, component: The influence accrued over time by working closely with those it trains.