Report: $40 billion needed to expand Army - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Report: $40 billion needed to expand Army

The Army projects it will need $40 billion annually above current spending levels once a planned 74,200 troops are added, according to a draft service report for the Obama transition team.

The report says the planned force of 1.1 million soldiers would require a budget of “$170 billion to $180 billion per year to sustain,” well above the 2009 budget of about $140 billion.

A draft copy of the 43-page document, labeled “predecisional” and dated November 2008, was obtained by Defense News, a sister publication of Army Times.

In early 2007, the Bush administration proposed swelling the Army, as well as the Marine Corps, by early next decade. Congress approved the plan. Army officials have hinted for months that a larger force will require a bigger annual budget. What has been missing, however, are specific cost estimates like those included in the transition paper.

Naturally, with the grow-the-Army plan, the U.S. will need personnel dollars and extra dollars for equipping, said one Army official familiar with service planning.

Independent defense budget analysts have estimated that just recruiting and training 10,000 soldiers costs $1.2 billion a year. The entire proposed increase is expected to cost about $80 billion through 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office and independent budget analysts.

But if service officials have previously estimated the full costs of sustaining the proposed increase thereafter, they have not released the figures.

The Army paper, which outlines a broad range of service plans, strategic insights, future needs, goals and potential threats, does not spell out how service officials arrived at their $170 billion to $180 billion estimate.

At press time, an Army spokesman had yet to respond to a reporter’s inquiry seeking further details.

The CBO has estimated that sustaining the extra forces will cost about $14 billion per year, far less than the Army report suggests.

Several analysts declined to speculate about the discrepancy with the CBO figures.

The document does explain why senior military officials want a bigger Army: more brigade combat teams. The end-strength increase is “an important element of building resilience back into our force, restoring strategic flexibility,” it says.

The extra active, Reserve and National Guard troops are needed to meet a service goal of fielding a total of 15 brigade combat teams and “to deal with the most uncertain strategic environment we have ever faced.”

The planned 1.1 million-soldier force could support 20 brigade combat teams and support forces, assuming 12-month active-component deployments and nine-month reserve-component deployments with a 12-month mobilization, the document says.

If active- and Reserve-component units are given three years to five years between deployments, “the planned 1.1 million-soldier force could continuously supply 15 brigade combat teams and their support forces,” it says.

The document is largely a reflection of current status and plans, not a call for changes to be made under a new administration, said Andrew Krepinevich, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies in Washington, D.C.

“Remember, with [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates’ reappointment, the Army still has the same leadership at the Pentagon. The transition team is not Gates. And the members will not necessarily have positions in the Pentagon. In fact, most will not,” Krepinevich said. “The transition team is there to gather information useful to those who will assume senior positions under Gates. So there does not appear to be a reason for the Army to modify its position from that which it had prior to the election.”

The document says the service is “making progress, but there are [two to three] rough years ahead” in the ongoing effort to repair and restore its war-worn vehicles, helicopters, and other gear. “We have an achievable plan to restore balance to the Army by the end of fiscal 2011. The next two years are critical.”

The document calls the service “out of balance,” meaning the ground force is “feeling the cumulative effects of more than seven years of war in which the demand for forces exceeds the sustainable supply.”

The document mentions almost no specific weapons, save for a few paragraphs and one chart that lists programs central to Army modernization plans. The most in-depth discussion of its prized Future Combat Systems comes on a page that describes the service’s modernization plan.

“Our combat fleet is aging and will require replacement in the next 20 years,” the report says. “Our Future Combat Systems program is designed to ... meet that goal with an integrated system of systems, and ... enhance the capabilities of our combat formations with ‘spinouts.’”