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GCN Home > 02/19/07 issue

DOD shifts budget priorities

War on terror takes toll on large networking programs

By Patience Wait, GCN Staff

The Defense Department’s era of big networking programs seems to be succumbing to new budget pressures.

Based on President Bush’s fiscal 2008 budget request, experts predict funding and progress on programs such as the IT components of Future Combat Systems, the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical and the Joint Tactical Radio System will be hampered by DOD’s more immediate need to fund the war on terror.

“I think the big cuts in these systems-of-systems networking initiatives are probably a harbinger of things to come,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a public-policy think tank based in Arlington, Va. “First, [former secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is gone. Second, these programs don’t deliver capabilities for years to come. And third, we need the money right now.”

Overall, the Bush administration submitted a record-setting budget request for the Defense Department for 2008—$481.4 billion, 62 percent higher than the request for 2001, just seven years ago. DOD received an 11 percent increase over the 2007 request, the largest in the federal government.

DOD comptroller Tina Jonas, at a Feb. 5 press briefing, broke down the budget request:
  • Readiness and support, $146.5 billion, about 30 percent of the budget
  • Strategic modernization, $176.8 billion, 37 percent
  • Training, facilities and family housing, $21.1 billion, 4 percent
  • Military pay and benefits including health care, $137 billion, 29 percent.
Of the total budget, $31.4 billion, or 6.5 percent, is being allocated for IT expenditures. That’s $650 million higher than the 2007 request, and soaks up about 48 percent of the entire federal budget for IT.

This figure does not include any embedded IT projects, such as systems included in armaments, weapons, and communications programs in the research, de- velopment, test and evaluation budget.

Examples of embedded systems requested include $2.8 billion for elements of the Army’s FCS, $854 million for the Navy’s JTRS project and $964 million for the Air Force’s Transformational Satellite program.

Those are lower than in previous years, Thompson said.

The budget for FCS shows $3 billion in cuts over the next six years, while the date for the initial operating capacity for T-SAT shows a slip of at least a year, to 2016, he said. And Thompson questioned whether JTRS, which is intended as a battlefield communications system, will ever be deployed as it is currently planned.

Another indication of change: DOD decided to end the Land Warrior program. After spending 10 years and $2 billion on developing network-centric capabilities all the way down to the individual soldier, the Army zeroed out funding in the 2008 budget and ended the program.

More news on related topics: Defense IT, IT Management



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