Budget Rescission: Not Gonna Happen

The senior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, said earlier this week that the White House was toying with the idea of parring back the budget agreement reached only a few weeks ago. The bill marks the first time the military had been adequately funded since sequestration took effect. Though, it is important to note that the administration's complaints with the bill are aimed at its non-defense spending.

Even when Senator McConnell announced that they would consider rescission, he was adamant that it was not likely. Many Republican lawmakers announced their unease with moving forward on budget rescission, and those willing to go further expressed that it was unlikely to happen. However, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has taken the initial steps to begin the process.

But I'm willing to go a step further than most Republican lawmakers. I believe that it is not only unlikely, but it is in fact the longest of long shots. Nor should it! The signal which the administration would send with this move would completely undercut any sense of stability the finalized budget provided. And, while again this will not touch defense spending, to continue down this path could open up the defense budget to future uncertainty or alterations. Perhaps Senator, and aspiring poet, Lindsey Graham said it best, "It's going nowhere."

How hard is it to get a sense of the Russian Armed Forces budget data?

"Russia, who even knows; better than the Soviet Union, but we now get a better sense of how they’re fudging the numbers." - overheard

It's not very hard to get a number, or a couple numbers. I found close to a dozen sources that would state a budget or a spending number. Those are not necessarily the same thing. There were more that discussed percentages increase or decrease, and then went on to discuss what that might mean either for the Russian economy, procurement goals or both. Of the nine websites discussed below, some cited Jane's as a source, others mentioned articles in Russian news outlets Kommersant or Sputnik. SIPRI data was used more than once as well. I also found a recent press release by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the budget for the 2018-2027 period. Just as often as I saw numbers for a single year, I saw numbers spanning 10 year periods. 

Also, it takes a little experimentation to figure out the right way to look for information. The latest budget to come out is regularly referred to as "SAP 2018-2027," because Russia refers to it formally in English as the "State Armaments Program (SAP)." In romanized Russian it looks something like Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheny which yields a romanized abbreviation of "GPV." So one might see SAP or GPV as an abbreviation.  

Here are seven websites that published a real number about the size of the Russian defense budget or spending and a bit about each to illustrate the variation in reporting.

SIPRI

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is great for all kinds of IR stuff, but their Military Expenditure Database is longitudinal and free of charge for download as an Excel spreadsheet, PDFs, or even a beautiful interactive visual form. As you can see in the screen capture below their interactive graph shows that Russians spent $70,345,000,000.00 in real 2015 USD. One of their PDFs shows the same number for 2016 in billions of roubles and that number is 4645. So the 2016 Russian defense spending was 4.645 trillion roubles, or 70.345 billion US$.

Russian military spending data from SIPRI 

IHS Jane's Defence Weekly (Jane's)

In front of the spendy Jane's paywall is a tiny reference to the 2018-2027 SAP/GPV. They point to the Russian Ministry of Defense as as having published the 20 trillion rouble figure in January of 2018, and go on to convert that into "(USD 357 billion)."

Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)

The official English-language version of the MoD site must be the source of the Jane's data, as both sites show that 19T roubles is slated for procurement and 1T roubles is slated for construction. Did I mention that рублей is written roubles, rubles, or ₽. Enjoy.

Mark Galeotti and Michael Kofman

Both Galeotti and Kofman, respected Russia experts, wrote in depth articles about how an earlier Jane's piece had botched the math when analyzing a change from the 2016 to 2017 budgets. Jane's apparently published that Russia spent 3.8T roubles in 2016, and had allotted 2.8T roubles for 2017. Jane's suggested that Russia had experienced a 1 trillion rouble drop in spending. Both Galeotti and Kofman wrote lengthy explanations as to why a 25% cut is a misleading oversimplification of the delta.

"The truth about Russia's defence budget", by Mark Galeotti
"The Russian Defense Budget and You", by Michael Kofman

Russian Defense Policy blog

While the writing on Russian Defense Policy blog seems balanced and intelligent, I have no idea who is writing it and where exactly they are getting their data. What is interesting is that they discuss the budget in terms of periods. A budget published for 2011-2020 period was 19T roubles, and they speculated that the 2018-2025 budget would be 17T roubles. The post was published in September of 2017.

Dmitry Gorenburg/CNA

Gorenburg frequently posts his work for PONARS @ CNA on his own website, which is where I first saw his November 2017 prediction. He noted that the last program (2011-2020) had 19.3T roubles allotted and that this new one should be 19T roubles. His policy memo is also a great place to explore the break-down of spending expectations for this year and the next few.

Honorable Mentions

Forecast International (FI) and IISS both published articles in February about 2018-2027 spending plan. The differences in reporting are indicative of the nature of this problem. FI states that "Russia will spend over $300 billion on the procurement of new military hardware." They provide no rouble figure from which they convert that $300 billion. IISS writes that the new SAP "earmarks 19 trillion roubles (US$295 billion) for defence procurement and equipment support." Read literally, somehow equipment support costs 5 billion dollars less over ten years than simple procurement. To add much needed confusion here, the Sputnik News article that FI cites as a source writes that "the program stipulated spending 19 trillion rubles ($325 billion) on military equipment procurement."

In sum, if we now have a better sense of how they're fudging the numbers, god help us, because we're fudging the hell out of the reporting.

Pro of Trump's massive defense budget: Better Super Hornet Fighters!

More than a few eyebrows were raised on Capitol Hill and around the world when Trump announced that he would be ramping up the defense budget- not that anyone was exactly surprised. Already, US defense accounted for 16% of its overall federal spending and far outpaced that of any other country. As the image here illustrates, the US's $611 billion budget a year ago was larger  than the next 8 countries, including China and Russia. Maybe a bit more than necessary? Not a chance!

In that spirit, the proposed 2019 defense budget will bring it up to $686 billion- an increase of 8%.

One Forbes contributor suggests that the larger budget may begin to restore power to the navy, which felt it had been hurt in Obama-era cuts. This may start, he suspects, with upgrading their stock of Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters, as well as those still coming off the production line. They hope to bring all Super Hornets up to "Block III" configuration and to extend their lifespan. This particular model faced adversity under the Obama administration's decreased military spending. Now, under Trump era expansion, the Navy is said to be planning a purchase of 134 Super Hornets within the next 5 years that can all travel 500 miles before needing to refuel (aka with new Block III upgrades). They will also receive improved sensors and data exchange capabilities.

Is the new budget a lot? Kind of. Is it and the Super Hornet upgrades it'll help fund unnecessary? Perhaps not. In light of escalated tensions with Russia and an upcoming and unpredictable meeting with "Little Rocket Man," what will happen next is anyone's guess. The contributing writer himself suggests that these advancements have been made more and more necessary by other countries' investments in long-rang missiles that could put our super-carriers. So why not bulk up and be on the top of our military game?

Throwing Money at the Problem: collisions of US Navy and the proposed 2019 budget

Summer 2017 was an embarrassing and tragic one for the US Navy. It was marked by two deadly ship collisions (June 17, August 21) resulting in not only large dents and damaged pride but the loss of multiple sailors' lives. The visual in both cases is a bit a ridiculous: two, very large vessels in the middle of large body of water moving slowly toward one another yet unable to avoid impact. I'll be the first to admit that I initially found the incident(s) funny- until I heard about the casualties. How could a navy as highly skilled and equipped as ours fail to avoid another vessel in the course of normal movements about sea? This question has no simple answer.

In the case of the June 17th collision of the USS Fitzgerald with an MV Crystal cargo ship, the Navy cited the "poor seamanship" of the officer on deck and others who failed to maneuver, raise alarm, notify his commanding officer, or even radio the crew of the Crystal. The result was the deaths of seven sailors. While the Crystal also failed to take action, the Navy accepted the brunt of the blame because its sailors proved themselves to be unprepared and deficient in their training. On August 21st, the USS John S. McCain collided with a merchant vessel, killing ten men this time. The Navy report cited similar failures in ship's operation, following international maritime procedures, and "situational awareness."

Both collisions resulted in senior officers being relieved of duty and lower officers being reprimanded in varying degrees. Republican Senator Ben Sasse took advantages of these events and spoke out about the military being underfunded and that it was the cause of the lack of "training, readiness, and maintenance" at the heart of these tragedies. But why is this all relevant now? The answer is twofold but it looks like Senator Sasse may be granted both of his wishes. 

First: this week the Navy released word that, in response to these collisions (it mentions only the USS Fitzgerald by name), it has formed the Readiness Reform and Oversight Council (RROC). Its purpose is to ensure the Navy makes changes to prevent future (very avoidable) tragedies like these and will be expanding its scope in order to oversee and enforce the roll out of new readiness strategies. 

Second: also this week, news hit of the Navy's proposed 2019 budget- and it's big. $686 billion to be exact and with it hopes to get back to what James Mattis called, it's "position of primacy." It's goal is to have "more sailors, more pay and higher incentives for those joining the service or staying in," which they defined as around 7,500 more sailors and a 2.6% pay increase over 8 years. It cites the lower national unemployment rate (aka other job options) as the need for the Navy to step up their game and make enlistment more appealing: a new ad campaign (launched in December) and more incentives to join and stay. It should be noted that nothing is concrete, not even the Navy's 2018 budget, but as it stands it seeks to end the former focus on "asymmetric warfare" and slow the alarming tempo that the military has been functioning since 9/11. If Sasse's theory is correct (and in some proportion it may be), then the budget increase and change in oversight of Navy might just solve the failings that were exposed last summer and save lives. 

Prevailing in Current Wars or Preparing for Future Conflicts – Can we do both?

In light of our recent “near-miss” of a government shutdown with its resulting $38 billion in budget cuts, I thought it would be appropriate to reevaluate the DOD’s Fiscal Budget proposal.

Focusing on how the Defense Department evaluated the budgets needed to 1) sustain its capabilities for current conflicts and 2) those needed for future wars, paints a clear picture that the department is focused on keeping its “head above water” with current engagements and fails to fully prepare for future wars. Understandably, the department is forced to prioritize and allocate funds where it can, but the numbers are interesting.

A mere $58 billion are intended for modernization for future conflicts, not including the enormous $35 billion going to the aerial refueling contract. Of the $58 billion, the department is finally allocating $25 billion to a much-needed robust shipbuilding program.

$20 billion is planned for current war efforts and a separate but staggering $117 billion to support troops engaged in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. This prioritization clearly indicates the department is focused on troop support and prevailing in current conflicts. And it must be - fighting wars are costly. Nevertheless, it is troubling that our Defense Department is not comfortable enough to draft a fiscal budget that can both support troops engaged in operations and adequately modernize our defenses to maintain its preeminent status into the next decade.

Of the $117 billion, it is interesting that in order to support our troops $10.1 billion is set aside alone for counter-IED efforts. This is almost as much as what is budgeted for missile defense; more than what is planned for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) acquisition plan; $8 billion more than what is being planned for nuclear modernization; the same amount intended to be used for rotary-wing aircraft modernization and more than the combined funding set aside for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), cyber capabilities, the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, counternarcotics and efforts to train and equip partner nations to conduct counterterrorism operations.

It is almost as if the Department of Defense felt uneasy in its proposal due to cutting funding for certain projects and postponing others pending “successful development.” Thus, in order to justify these cuts to its services and show Congress other aggressive steps to present a sound budget, the department developed its political strategy to implement additional efficiencies and other changes, which add up to $78 billion in top line reduction from the fiscal 2011 budget plan. These savings were achieved through DoD-wide personnel changes, including holding the civilian workforce at or below fiscal 2010 levels and a two-year freeze on civilian salaries, a reduction in the number of contractors, and a cut in both flag and general officer billets and the number of civilian senior executives.

This again seems to draw questions as to why the department is able to make such “significant administrative cuts”, but then fails to appropriate adequate funds to sustain its second principal objective of “Balancing America’s defense posture, between capabilities to prevail in current wars and preparing for future conflicts.”