Multi-Domain Task Forces Top Army’s $7B Unfunded List

WASHINGTON: The Army’s $7 billion Unfunded Priorities List includes $3.85 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), largely driven by the wars in Afghanistan and Syria. The remaining $3.19 billion asks for base-budget plus-ups for 26 different projects around the world, including $1.9 billion in Military Construction accounts.

[Read all our coverage of the armed services’ and Combatant Commands’ Unfunded Priorities]

In this list of projects that didn’t quite make it into the regular 2021 budget request, the sheer diversity of the Army’s unmet needs leaps out at you from reading just the top five priorities:

• The top unfunded priority $151.4 million for Multi-Domain Task Forces, upgrading both the existing MDTF in the Pacific and the new MDTF being created in Europe. Built around artillery brigades, these units bring long-range land-based missiles and rocketry to bear, along with growing capabilities in cyber/electronic warfare and access to joint space assets for communications and surveillance. They’re intended to strike targets the Air Force can’t reach because of advanced Russian and Chinese air defenses, destroying radars and surface-to-air missile sites to blast a path open for airstrikes. The $151.4 million is all base-budget funding, a mix of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) money and Other Procurement Army (OPA), mainly going to build command posts and equip them with high-tech electronics.
• Next comes $104.5 million for the much less glamorous work of safety and environmental fixes at the Army’s aging ammo factories. Specific projects range from eliminating open burn pits at Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, decontamination work at Milan AAP in Tennessee and Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, and a host of fixes at Holston AAP, also in Tennessee, from anti-pollution scrubbers to a new laundry.
• Third comes $142.6 million in Military Construction money – a separate appropriation from the rest of the defense budget – to repair and renovate barracks for the regular Army, Reserve, and National Guard in four states: Alaska, South Carolina, Oregon, and Wisconsin.
• The next item is also barracks restoration and modernization, this time just under $92 million in Operations & Maintenance money for projects around the world, from Fort Irwin, Calif. to Fort Drum, New York and from Japan and Korea to Italy and Germany.
• Rounding out the top five is $65 million for new childcare facilities and playgrounds at Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter in Hawaii.

In fact, most of the base-budget money in the Unfunded Priorities list goes to general improvements at bases across the country — always popular with Congress — and Child Development Centers, living quarters, and other “quality of life” improvements for the Army’s million-plus uniformed personnel and their families — which are even more popular, making the Hill more likely to add them. All told, the Army identifies $1.37 billion in general infrastructure needs and $538 million worth of what it calls “people requirements.” That fits with Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville’s emphasis on taking care of the Army’s people, but it also reflects that the grueling Night Court process has moved tens of billions to take care of the Army’s top equipment programs within the regular budget.

The Night Court drills couldn’t find money for every modernization program, however, so there are a number of notable ones going begging to Capitol Hill in this Unfunded Priorities List. We’ve listed them below by their rank on the UPL:

• Priority No. 14: $33 million to develop new training simulations, replacing $33 million that Congress cut from the Synthetic Training Environment (STE) effort in the 2020 budget. We’ll have to see if the Hill is receptive this time around.
• No. 15: 189 tractor-trailers — Oshkosh Enhanced Heavy Equipment Transporter (EHET) trucks pulling reinforced trailers — to transport M1 Abrams tanks, for example over European highways. The current HET can’t carry the latest and most heavily armored Abrams, but Army had cut back the EHET upgrade in its regular budget.
• No. 17: $375 million to buy 60 upgraded 8×8 General Dynamics Stryker armored vehicles with IED-resistant double-vee hulls and prepare for further production in future years. Of the two Army combat brigades still permanently stationed in Europe, one is light infantry and the other is Strykers.
• No. 18: $283 million to buy eight new Boeing AH-64E Apache gunships, a full company, to replace aging AH-64Ds.

With Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy emphasizing a more deployable force, ready for contingencies around the world, there’s also a total of $97.4 million for winter housing and other facilities at four sites in Poland – currently 2,000 troops there live in tents. Another $45.3 million goes to improve airfields, railheads, and other logistics facilities at Fort Bragg; Fort Campbell; Fort Hood; Fort Huachuca; Fort Leonard Wood; and Fort Lewis.

The Army Chief of Staff sent the $7 billion wishlist to the Congress with a grim warning that budget cuts and inflation are slowly eroding the service’s buying power just as it urgently retrains, rearms, and develops high-tech new weapons to counter Russia and China.

“The Army’s FY21 Budget Request … represents a downturn in real purchasing power (-1%) from FY20,” Gen. McConville says in his cover letter. “While we have managed to sustain the readiness gains the Army has achieved in FY18-20 and further invest in our six modernization priorities, our progress is at risk in future years if we don’t have real growth of 3-5% in our budgets going forward.”

You can read the Chief of Staff’s letter and the full Unfunded Priorities List below.

Csa Ufr 21 Cover Letter (Final) by BreakingDefense on Scribd

Csa List __ as of 20200219_v30 (Final) by BreakingDefense on Scribd