2010 DOD Budget Focuses on Warfighter

The warfighter is front and center in the fiscal year 2010 Department of Defense budget proposed by President Barack Obama in early May. While Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in April the Defense Department’s intention to focus on the warfighter, the proposed budget has made this concrete, both in terms of the money set aside for military personnel and the way in which the new budget has been structured.

Approximately $177 billion in funding has been earmarked for improving quality of life for warfighters, a $13 billion increase over the fiscal year 2009 budget. Some of this money will be used to cover a 2.9 percent increase in pay, with other funds going to increase troop numbers. In addition, $47 billion has been set aside for military healthcare.

An additional $2 billion has been proposed to increase intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support for warfighters. Included in this line item is the proposed deployment of 50 Predator-class unmanned aerial orbits by 2011 and an increase in manned ISR capabilities. By providing this funding for ISR support, the Defense Department is “trying to improve conditions in the war theater as well as at home for the families,” says Fenella McGerty, defence economics analyst for IHS Jane’s.

Designating more money for the warfighter isn’t the only way the Defense Department is communicating how much it values its military personnel. This also can be seen in how the department has structured its 2010 budget.

In past budgets, funding for warfighters involved in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan was lumped into a supplemental budget rather than the base Department of Defense budget. Supplemental appropriation requests are intended to be used for emergency situations for which it is difficult to create a budget, but have grown to represent a significant part of the department’s overall spending.

“Between 2001 and 2008, supplemental budgets have increased by 1,250 percent,” McGerty says. “It’s really been a backbone of the defense funding increases that we’ve seen under George Bush. And since Obama was elected and since Gates was reinstated, there have been calls to end supplementals because they distort true defense spending.”

The 2010 budget reflects the move away from supplemental funding, with funds for troops now found in the base budget. This move, says McGerty, lets the department demonstrate that its warfighters are important and are therefore “going to be funded in a planned manner.”

Civilian employees will also begin receiving more funding under the 2010 budget. Much of that will be used to help grow the workforce involved in acquisitions support. The goal is to add approximately 4,000 more employees to the workforce by 2010 and ramp up to a total of 20,000 new acquisition jobs by 2015 compared to 2009 levels.

In addition, the department hopes to reduce its reliance on outsourcing. Currently 39 percent of its workforce performing administrative and advisory services consists of contractors; the department hopes to reduce this number to 26 percent.

“Contract personnel will be replaced by government employees starting next year, and they’re hoping to employ 33,400 new civil servants in the place of contractors over the next five years,” says McGerty.

Overall, says McGerty, the 2010 Department of Defense budget is very thorough and detailed. “It’s broken down into a great deal of detail. And I think it’s very transparent. It comes across as a budget that makes sense.”

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