Last month, this feature addressed the procurement budget concerns being expressed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, and other four-stars. They articulate the requirement for an annual minimum of $60 billion dedicated to procurement by 1998. The Clinton administration this year has budgeted $38.9 billion, and isn’t planning to hit the $60 billion minimum until 2001.
Tables 1 and 2 provide a breakdown of selected programs in the research and procurement budgets respectively, and include program status for most. The fiscal year (FY) 1997 budget columns include the FY97 portion of last year’s biennial FY96/97 submission, and the updated FY97 budget as submitted this year. Many missile systems are on the verge of transitioning into production. In fact, the Fiscal year 1997 upturn in aircraft procurement funding reflects not so much a surge in numbers of aircraft being procured as the shift from the relatively inexpensive final production of the F/A- 18C/D ($58M FY96 unit cost) to the very expensive initial production of the F/A-18E/F ($174M FY97 unit cost) and the V-22 ($137M FY97 unit cost); both of these unit costs will drop markedly as production gears up.
The numbers mean little until they’re graphically displayed in context. Figure 1 graphs presidential budget submissions over the past ten years for Department of Defense-wide research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) and procurement. Figure 2 displays the same submissions for the Department of the Navy portion of the budget. Both begin with the next-to-last Reagan Administration budget and end with the Clinton Administration budget now being debated on Capitol Hill. Defense-wide RDT&E budget requests declined "only" 26 percent from the high in fiscal year 1989 to the low in fiscal year 1996. The overall DoD procurement budget request, on the other hand, declined almost 54 percent from its high in fiscal year 1990 to its low in this year’s submission. The DoN declines are even higher: 30 percent in RDT&E and 60 percent in procurement.
Figure 3 illustrates the decline in procurement by major category. Over this period, the Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy (SCN) account peaked in fiscal year 1991 at almost $11.2 billion when the second SSN-21 was funded, and bottomed out in fiscal year 1994 at $4.3 billion when only four major combatants (three DDG-51s and one LHD) were requested. Weapon Procurement, Navy (WPN) recorded its high in fiscal year 1988 at $6.5 billion, and dropped to $1.4 billion in the current submission. Aircraft Procurement, Navy (APN) peaked in fiscal year 1990 at $10.8 billion, but dropped to only $3.9 billion in fiscal year 1996. Weapon procurement has obviously been the hardest hit category. Hopefully, that will soon change as the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) shift from RDT&E to procurement over the next couple of years.
Floyd D. Kennedy, Jr. is the Center for Naval Analyses representative at the Naval Doctrine Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and is a captain in the Naval Reserve. The author is indebted to the professionals in Navy public affairs offices for the information contained in Tables 1 and 2.