Army Secretary Mark Esper talks to soldiers at Fort Drum, New York.
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Mark Esper began prepping Congress for what will likely be a series of heated battles over military modernization and scrapping legacy systems on Friday, warning that budgets “aren’t going to get any better. They are where they are.”
Esper’s comments reflect the reality of the two-year budget deal reached between Congress and the White House in July, which caps the 2021 budget at $740 billion, just a tick higher than the $738 billion allocated this year.
The internal squabbles set off by that flatline bled into the open last week when Navy, Army, and Air Force officials all said they’re not receiving their fair share of the budgetary pie.
In remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies today, Esper didn’t boast of rebuilding the military or lay out a plan for growth. Instead, he relied on tested talking points about reforming the acquisition process and hinted at increases in research-and-development spending, particularly when it comes to hypersonic weapons.
“The department nearly doubled its long-term investment — almost $5 billion more in 2020 — in hypersonics alone in the next five years,” he said. “And our 2021 budget will be even stronger.”
He also appeared to confirm that the services are going to have to begin scrapping some of their legacy systems to make room for new investments, a tradeoff that may cause imbalances in the near-term as the swap from old to new is made.
“We have to be much better stewards of the taxpayer’s dollar. And that means divesting of legacy things, divesting of things that don’t deliver” a return on investment, he said. “We have a lot of support from Congress, and we have to bridge this gap now between what was Cold War-era systems and the counterinsurgency, low-intensity fight of the last 18 years, and make this leap into great power competition with Russia and China — China specifically,” he added.
While he’s counting on congressional support for to help the military modernize, Esper fully expects some pushback from Congress once the final budget numbers — and cuts — are delivered next month. The two-year budget deal may have passed with majorities on the Hill, “but then there’s that moment of time when it hits their backyard and you have to work your way through that,” he said. “We have to make that leap.”
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