The Pentagon Needs Budget Agility to Compete with China – By Bryan Clark & Dan Patt (Defense One) / Feb 12 2021
It can take two or more years to shift funding from a failing program. That’s more than a money problem.
Congress put defense acquisition under a microscope during the last decade, pressuring Pentagon officials on slow or failing programs and creating new ways to identify future needs, buy equipment, and develop software. These efforts yielded some successes, like the Middle-Tier Acquisition Path that bypasses DoD’s laborious requirements system to let program managers prototype their way to a new weapons system. Unfortunately, DoD’s newfound acquisition agility will be wasted unless it also gains more budget latitude.
The Pentagon’s funding process is notoriously inflexible. Spending plans are built two years in advance to account for internal haggling and Congressional deliberation; and if appropriation delays require continuing resolutions, the gap between planning and execution grows even longer. Further entrenching funding choices, budgets are distributed into discrete program elements across multiple appropriation categories from operations and maintenance to procurement. Reprogramming money from one category or program element to another requires approval from four Congressional committees. As a result, managers often cannot shift funding away from a failing program for more than two years.
The inability of defense officials to promptly move money out of unproductive efforts and into new challenges or opportunities is more than a management problem. The U.S. military’s lack of adaptability also puts DoD at a disadvantage against its primary competitor, China’s People’s Liberation Army. Unlike the Pentagon’s attempt to predict specific needs years in advance, the Chinese budget process rolls continuously from one year into the next and allocates money to services and bureaus in blocks that can pay for multiple functions or programs. As noted by Andrew Marshall and others who guided America’s Cold War effort against the Soviets, long-term security competition is about organization and process as much as hard military capabilities.
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