Affect of DOD Priorities and Choices

Affect of DOD Priorities and Choices; Today the Secretary of Defense Panetta and the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dempsey released the DOD Budget Priorities and Choices study.  The study was a follow up to the announcement of the “Nations New Strategy”. The study expanded the guidance and gave the DOD plan for the ‘Force of the Future’. The DOD guidance was driven by the end of the war and the congressional requirement to reduce the DOD budget by $480 Billion in 10 years, with a reduction of $259 Billion in the next 5 years. The areas that will impact the Navy and the local area;

-Increase role of Special Forces

-Maintain the aircraft carrier fleet at 11 ships and 10 airwings

-Maintain the big-deck amphibious fleet

-Budgeted to forward station Littoral Combat ships in Singapore and patrol craft in Bahrain

-Design changes to increase cruise missile capacity of future Virginia-class sub

-upgrade radars for tactical aircraft and ships

-Improve air to air missiles

To ensure sufficient resources, DOD will reduce the number of ships, slow the building of others and accelerate the retirement of existing ships.

-Retiring 7 cruisers early (probably some number from Norfolk)

-Retiring 2 LSD’s (Could come from area)

-Accelerate retirement of 4 Norfolk FFG’s (Possible)

-Slip outside Five Year Defense Plan FYDP, large deck Amphib, 1 Virginia class submarine

-Reduce 2 LCS outside FYPD and 8 High Speed Vessels by 8

-Slow down the JSF buy in the FYDP

Although there are no major planned reductions in the guidance there are local reductions already stated (Enterprise decom, 4 ships to Spain, 2 squadrons to west coast and the possible CVN to Mayport). All reductions will add to the ‘Trickle Down’ loss of assists to the local economy. Will not know the full impact of all losses until the budget is released in February.

The Secretary also announced that DOD is going to ask Congress to convene a BRAC. This is a real unknown; whenever a BRAC is discussed Oceana is mentioned. The City of Virginia Beach and Oceana have made major steps to eliminate concerns of BRAC 2005. In the present climate and the apparent lack of any facility that is capable of accomplishing the Oceana mission, I would not anticipate Oceana being on a BRAC list.

The study listed an area that will affect many in the region; Health Care---

-Further increasing and adding new enrollment fees for retirees under age 65 in the TRICARE program, using a tiered approach based on retired pay that requires senior-grade retires to pay more and junior-grade retirees less

-Establish a new enrollment fee for TRICARE-for-life program for retirees 65 and older.

-Implementing additional increase in pharmacy co-pays in a manner that increases incentives for use of generics and mail order.

The next step is for congress to review and evaluate the guidance and the submitted budget. This is a very critical time in the evaluation of the Strategy, although there are no drastic cuts locally, the massive cuts in Army and Marine forces, major programs and the increased emphasis’ on Asia and the Mid East-  all must be thoroughly evaluated.

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