Lawmakers struck back last week at what they see as the Army's continued refusal to attach an accurate price tag to plans to restructure the force and repair vehicles damaged in the war in Iraq, threatening in the House defense authorization bill to curb funding for the Future Combat System.

The House version of the bill, passed last week by the House Armed Services Committee, would limit funding for FCS to $2.85 billion per year between FY-08 and FY-13 if the service does not fully fund reset, modularity or accounts to replenish prepositioned stocks.

The Army needs at least $119.9 billion over the next five years to fund reset and modularity, according to a committee statement. By that calculation, the Army would have to include close to $24 billion in its base budget request each year to fully fund FCS development.

Since the start of the war in Iraq, the Army has rolled many of those costs into emergency wartime supplemental requests. Congress has urged the service to place those requests in the base budget to ensure a more accurate picture of Army spending.

For example, the FY-06 authorization bill told the Army to report on the details of its modularity plans, to include costs. The service sent a report to Congress in March that did provide cost details but did not include procurement costs for Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to a congressional staffer. The new language will help ensure the Army's current plans do not go underfunded, the staffer said.

Lawmakers elaborated in statements released last week.

“We are not opposed to FCS. But the Army is facing many challenges and they are all expensive. Our first priority must be to ensure that there is sufficient equipment, prepositioned stocks and planning for all of these needs,” Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), the committee's ranking member, said in a May 3 statement.

Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-TX), ranking member of the readiness subcommittee, cast the issue in terms of balancing near-term and long-term needs. “We must all be concerned about the here and now, even as we plan for tomorrow,” Ortiz wrote in a May 2 statement.

The potential limit on FCS spending would be more damaging to the program and to the Army than a direct cut to the FCS program proposed by the tactical air and land forces subcommittee, according to the service official. Tying FCS funding to reset and modularity is tantamount to a cut in the service's overall budget, he said.

“That would be a problem, because we rely on the supplemental to pay wartime costs, and unless someone wants to increase the Army topline to put reset in the base budget, having to eat the reset costs on top of other fiscal guidance would cripple our ability to modernize,” the official said, referring to draft Pentagon guidance to cut $25 billion from Army budgets over the next five years (Inside the Army, April 24, p16).

In late April, the tactical air and land forces subcommittee chopped $325.8 million from the program; a recommendation that is now part of the House authorization bill.

In the FY-07 budget request, the Army sought $3.3 billion for development of “armored systems modernization,” a budget line comprising the bulk of the FCS program. In addition to that amount, the service asked for $435 million for the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System and $112 million for the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon.

However, according to Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), the service's actual request for FCS is estimated at $5.9 billion. “It is difficult to know the real costs of FCS because it is funded across dozens of lines within the Army budget,” Weldon said in a tactical air and land forces subcommittee mark up of the bill April 26 (ITA , May 1, p1).

According to the report on the authorization bill, the House Armed Services Committee's actions were motivated by the increasing cost of defense acquisition programs.

“The committee notes that the Army's spiraling costs per FCS [brigade combat team] are forcing the Army into a situation similar to that experienced by the Navy with its next-generation destroyer (DD(X)) program,” said a summary of the bill. “Similar to the DD(X) program, costs for a FCS BCT are approaching a price where the Army will have to continue to slow down procurement to make the program more affordable, reduce the quantities of FCS BCTs, or attempt to reduce force structure.”

Boeing, the program's lead systems integrator, would not comment on the bill's recommended cuts.

The Future Combat System “is key to Army modularity and modernization efforts, which will provide increased efficiencies and capabilities to our nation's soldiers,” said Mary McAdam, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement. “It is not productive to engage in speculation about individual steps in the budget deliberation process or their potential impacts on FCS. Nearly three years along, FCS continues to meet its schedule, cost and performance goals. We remain focused on staying on course as we proceed toward the major program milestones ahead of us this year.”

In its mark up of the FY-07 defense authorization bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee did not recommend cuts to FCS, but the Senate Bill does contain a proposal that would require an independent cost estimate of the program, plans to spin FCS technology into the current force and information on programs that complement FCS, according to a summary of the bill.

In addition, the House bill indicates Congress is concerned about the way the Army has chosen to restructure its forces into modular brigades -- specifically, its decision to place only two maneuver battalions in heavy brigade combat teams. As such, the bill requires the defense secretary to collect assessments about modularity from the combatant commanders and submit them with an FY-08 budget request.

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