SecDef to Congress: Let the Pentagon Dump Old Gear to Fund New Weapons – By Hope Hodge Seck (Military.com) / Jan 24 2020
The Defense Department is “doubling down” on hypersonic technology and other cutting-edge weapons, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday, and it’s continuing to clean house on older systems to fund the investment.
Esper told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., that the Pentagon had nearly doubled its long-term investment in hypersonic weapons, with almost $5 billion allocated in the fiscal 2020 budget alone and an “even stronger” fiscal 2021 budget request in planning.
“We have significantly ramped up flight testing and other experimentation so we can accelerate the delivery of this capability in all its forms,” he said.
And to make that happen, he said, the DoD will need to keep cutting. Esper said that will mean finding efficiencies within the department, as well as continuing to divest of legacy systems that are no longer relevant to the current fight.
“I’ve been telling the Pentagon for two-and-a-half years now that our budgets are what they are. They’re not going to get any better, and so 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 high [return on investment],” he said.
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