{"id":26524,"date":"2018-11-08T17:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/11\/08\/a-shrinking-budget-cant-be-allowed-to-kill-modernization\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:14:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:14:44","slug":"a-shrinking-budget-cant-be-allowed-to-kill-modernization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/opinion\/2018\/11\/08\/a-shrinking-budget-cant-be-allowed-to-kill-modernization\/","title":{"rendered":"A shrinking budget can\u2019t be allowed to kill modernization"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan explains how the Pentagon is preparing two budgets as the White House says a $33 billion cut is needed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

For decades, the Pentagon, abetted by Congress, has behaved like a parent raiding a child\u2019s college fund to pay monthly bills, rather than tightening its belt. Myopically robbing from critical long-term investments to pay for urgent needs resulted in the core problem addressed by the 2018 National Defense Strategy<\/a>: America\u2019s eroding military advantage against China and Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NDS, released under the leadership of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan, strives to put a stop to this by emphasizing long-term competition with those major powers by prioritizing modern forces over larger, less capable forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Shanahan\u2019s response to news that the Department of Defense\u2019s budget for fiscal 2020 would decline unexpectedly<\/a> from a planned $733 billion to $700 billion \u2014 namely, that the smaller budget would rob funding from future modernization to build a bigger force for today\u2019s problems \u2014 was enormously disheartening to those of us who helped create the strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair to Pentagon planners, a sudden drop in the budget this late in the process throw plans into disarray. However, the choice to prioritize near-term investments is flawed and unnecessary \u2014 even under a smaller budget. The NDS is a flexible strategy for 21st century great power competition. At its core is a prioritization framework that was designed to accommodate a broad range of uncertainty, including budget shifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put bluntly, this shortfall shouldn\u2019t invalidate the priorities of the NDS; rather, it should force the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military services to prioritize more ruthlessly. Instead, it appears the OSD is abandoning the core principles of its strategy to fall back on the same approach that got us into our current predicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NDS provides an excellent guide for ruthless prioritization. Investments should check our most capable competitors, lower the cost of long-term operations like counterterrorism and seize opportunities presented by rapid technological change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Pentagon leaders and their staff are aware of the need to prioritize and, to the extent that a bureaucracy as large as the DoD can reach consensus, there\u2019s broad agreement that the investments laid out in the NDS \u2014 such as updating nuclear capabilities; improved networks through space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum; and investments in artificial intelligence \u2014 are required for America\u2019s future security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why the public statement to the contrary by Deputy Shanahan?<\/p>\n\n\n\t