Funding For Lockheed F-35, Boeing System Boosted In 2010 Budget

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Forum Spin Doctor
Bloomberg.com
November 12, 2008
By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News
Funding for the U.S. military's two most expensive weapons programs, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Boeing Co.'s systems of vehicles, drones and wireless networks, is boosted in the proposed 2010 budget.
The Pentagon wants to accelerate purchases of all three F-35 versions in 2010 and each year thereafter through 2013 and to increase development funding for Boeing's Future Combat Systems by 30 percent in fiscal 2010, according to memos sent to the service secretaries.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England approved buying 330 F-35s through 2013, or about 35 percent over the planned amount of 245, in an Oct. 31 memorandum. Acting Comptroller Douglas Brook approved the Army plan in an Oct. 24 memo.
Both documents represent final decisions for the proposed fiscal 2010 defense budget that President-elect Barack Obama's Democratic administration will inherit when he takes office Jan. 20. His budget must be delivered to Congress by Feb. 2.
Obama was critical of the Boeing program during the election campaign. “I will slow our development of Future Combat Systems,” he told the Iowa-based group Caucus for Priorities, which favors reduced defense spending, in October 2007. “A serious review of alternative paths is required,” he said a month later.
Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi didn't have an immediate response to e-mailed requests for comments about whether he has changed his view since his election.
Funding for development of the Army system would increase in 2010 by $992 million to $4.26 billion or about 30 percent more than planned in the fiscal 2009 budget, according to Brook's memo.
Brook, in the memo, said he approved the increase “in order to execute the Army's revised strategy to accelerate” by three years fielding the new systems' technologies to infantry brigades earlier than planned.
Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last month, said some Army infantry brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan will get the equipment starting in 2011 instead of 2014. Heavy, mechanized units that were scheduled to get it in 2011 will now wait.
Major General Charles Cartwright, who manages the Boeing program for the Army, declined in an interview to address the budget decision, saying only that money in the fiscal 2010 budget would be used to upgrade both active-duty and National Guard brigades.
The Army plans to spend $44.4 billion from 2010 to 2015 on development and purchase of the Future Combat Systems. The program's cost, estimated at $159.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, makes it the Pentagon's second-most-expensive.
The program is jointly managed by Chicago-based Boeing and San Diego-based SAIC Inc. The two companies manage 25 other defense contractors.
England in congressional testimony this year expressed a preference for buying the F-35 over increased quantities of the Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an Oct. 21 session with reporters voiced support for the F-35, a fighter that will be used by the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy.
“It's the plane we are looking at in terms of having fairly significant numbers -- it's a little over half of the cost of an F-22” fighter and will have “a lot of the same capability,” Gates said. “There's a pretty large sunk cost already,” he said of the roughly $37 billion Congress has approved through fiscal 2008 for the $298.8 billion program.
England in his memo approved the Air Force and Navy buying 32 aircraft in 2010, up two from the current plan. Purchases would increase to 70 in 2011, versus the 43 planned; 109 in 2012 versus 82; and, 119 in 2013 versus the 90 planned.
England in his memo gave no reason for the proposed increases and his spokesman Kevin Wensing had no immediate comment.
 
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