On the surface, the US military’s half-trillion dollar budget request for fiscal year 2016, unveiled on 2 February, feels quite profligate compared with recent, sequestration-constrained years.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 programme is at a critical moment. It needs to dramatically ramp up production to drive the economies of scale that will lower unit prices. Next year’s budget request complies, with a line item that increases F-35 production by 50%.
The budget also gives the US Air Force the money to ramp up development of a new bomber while increasing production of the Boeing KC-46 tanker, which, along with the F-35, are the service’s three sacred acquisition priorities.
But there’s still enough left over to support several easily neglected programmes. A long-range cruise missile, which had been deferred in past budgets, gets accelerated in this one. A long-awaited replacement for the Northrop T-38C advanced jet trainer is also fully supported. The Lockheed U-2S has barely survived previous attempts to retire the fleet, but gets the blessing of this kinder, friendlier budget request.
It’s true that not every programme emerges as a winner. There is still not enough money to persuade the USAF to continue flying the Fairchild Republic A-10, leaving it to Congress – again – to ride to the rescue. The US Navy’s aged quest to field a carrier-based surveillance and strike unmanned air system is deferred three years, but that is largely because service officials cannot agree on what they want the aircraft to do.
If you are a defence contractor, the FY2016 budget request is still not the boom era of the middle of the past decade, but it is not so bad a deal either. The problem with that perception is that this budget proposal is really just a wish-list. Strictly speaking, the Obama administration’s budget proposal is, in fact, illegal.
The Budget Control Act of 2011 – passed amid a national panic over soaring deficits – sets strict spending caps on annual outlays over a decade. Unless Congress passes new legislation relieving the cap, the FY2016 request exceeds it by about $36 billion. It is a deliberate attempt by the White House to make Congress accountable for dealing with the spending caps that were passed five years ago.
In this game of budgetary chicken, it is still not clear who will blink first. If Congress fails to amend the spending caps, the seemingly generous FY2016 budget plan could become an arbitrary, budget-slashing fiasco.
Source: Flight International
