San Diego — With the FY16 defense budget request recently released, senior Navy leaders took the opportunity at the West 2015 conference to raise the threat/concern level to orange should lawmakers not restore funding to pre-sequestration levels.
“We’re looking at our shoes while surfing the backside of the budgetary decline,” said ADM William Gortney, commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, adding that “inadequate resourcing over years is what will hollow out the force.”
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That will soon affect the military’s ability to respond to myriad crises now facing the armed forces, including the regrouping of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the threat of ISIL in Syria and Iraq, efforts by China to check the U.S.’s physical and political access to the seas around China, Russia’s intervention and destabilization of Ukraine, and transnational criminal networks moving drugs, money, people and weapons.
Add in the threat of cyber warfare, and the Defense Department has rarely had more challenges on its plate while the financial Sword of Damocles hangs over the Pentagon.
“(In the past), we came out of major wars more secure,” said Gortney, who gave a luncheon keynote at West 2015. “This time the international security environment is not better than when we started. Our inability to predict the future and the rapidity of these charges are startling.”
Gortney says the ability of Pentagon leaders to foresee these types of events in the future is dependent on adequate funding today.
“How well commanders succeed today is a function of yesterday’s decisions,” he said, adding that tomorrow’s decisions will suffer if we continue down the path of present-day defense budgets built around fiscal needs instead of strategic needs.
