Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com & Dan Lamothe / The Washington Post – 2017-01-29 00:13:51
Trump Signs Order for
‘Great Rebuilding’ of US Military
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(January 27, 2017) — During his first post-inauguration visit to the Pentagon, President Trump today signed an executive order for what he described as the start of a “great rebuilding of the Armed Forces,” seeking to increase the size of the US military, which already spends roughly as much as the eight next largest militaries in the world.
Trump promised the plan would include new warplanes, new ships, new resources, and in increase in the number of special forces. The order calls for the Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget to work jointly on increasing military spending in the next fiscal year, and in ways that will give the Pentagon chief more flexibility on spending.
Exactly how much bigger the 2018 military budget is going to end up being is unclear, as analysts have estimated things like the planned increase in warships adding a massive amount both in construction costs and in maintenance. At the same time, the Trump plan calls for reducing spending on projects not considered “highest priority.”
That’s potentially difficult, however, as the costliest weapons projects, even those the Pentagon is relatively ambivalent about, tend to carefully spread their spending through enough Congressional districts as to make the cuts politically difficult.
Trump made increasing the size and strength of the military a top priority during the campaign. He is considering several proposals on escalating the fight against ISIS, which is likely to involve an increase in ground troops deployed around the Middle East. This too is likely to increase costs in the final budget.
Trump Promises “Great Rebuilding of the Armed Forces” While Signing Executive Order at the Pentagon
Dan Lamothe / The Washington Post
(January 27, 2017) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to launch what he called a “great rebuilding of the Armed Forces” that is expected to include new ships and planes, additional Special Operations forces and the modernization of the IS nuclear arsenal while cutting projects that are not considered the “highest priority operations.”
Trump, making his first visit to the Pentagon since his Jan. 20 inauguration, said the order was signed “to ensure the sacrifices of our military are supported by the actions of our government.”
The final version was not immediately available, but a draft of the order obtained by The Washington Post and published Friday morning called for new Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to carry out a 30-day “readiness review” that will examine needs for the war against the Islamic State and “other forms of Islamic terror,” as well as training, maintenance, ammunition and infrastructure.
The review, the draft said, also will examine how to carry out operations against unnamed “near-peer competitors,” a group which IS officials typically identify as China and Russia.
The draft order also calls for a second, parallel review in which the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) combine to craft a “military readiness emergency budget amendment” that would boost military spending this year, and for Mattis to revise the Pentagon’s tentative budget proposal for 2018 within 90 days.
Mattis also is charged with creating a new national security strategy by next January that explicitly builds up the military. Special emphasis would be placed on modernizing nuclear weapons, strengthening missile defense, addressing delays in the maintenance of existing equipment, and overcoming “shortfalls” in areas where more people are needed, such as cyber warfare, personnel recovery and expeditionary naval forces, the order said.
The document offers no details on which programs may be cut.
The draft circulated Friday as President Trump indicated during remarks at the White House that he will allow Mattis, who retired as a Marine general in 2013, to “override” him on whether the United States tortures terrorism suspects. Trump has said he believes torture works, while Mattis believes interrogations should be carried out according to IS military guidelines, which specifically ban harsh techniques such as waterboarding.
“He’s an expert. He’s highly respected. I happen to feel that it does work,” Trump said, without mentioning that Congress banned torture in 2005. “I’ve been open about that for a long period of time. But I am going with our leaders.”
Later, at the Pentagon, Trump said he was proud of his executive order calling for the expansion of the military. He promised to IS troops present that his administration “will always have your back.”
Administration officials declined to discuss the draft order, which states that Trump will pursue “Peace Through Strength,” a campaign catchphrase.
The order addresses a number of concerns that senior military officials have expressed for years about “military readiness,” the ability of a unit to carry out operations. The training and equipping of some units was significantly altered by the congressionally mandated budget cuts known as sequestration that went into effect in 2013, military officials have said.
IS defense officials have advocated for a larger military since the election, with the Navy publishing a study that states it should add dozens of ships until its fleet reaches 355, senior Air Force and Army leaders calling for tens of thousands of additional personnel, and senior Marine officers saying that more personnel would be helpful, but should be devoted to filling specific needs against a near-peer enemy.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the new draft memo or whether Mattis was involved in its development. Mattis, who retired as a Marine general in 2013, said during his confirmation hearing that he does not think the IS military is strong enough to deter its enemies. He speaks regularly with Trump and has spent the first few days of his tenure as defense secretary mostly asking questions of senior commanders, Davis said.
“He is primarily interested in listening and learning,” Davis said. “I heard him say this morning, ‘The good Lord gave me two ears and one mouth for a reason.'”
Trump’s proposals for the military during his presidential campaign were drawn heavily from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and could cost between $55 billion and $90 billion per year, according to outside experts.
The plan included adding tens of thousands of soldiers until the service reaches 540,000, expanding the Navy’s fleet to have at least 350 ships, adding about 100 Air Force fighter or attack jets until the service reaches 1,200, and increasing the number of Marine Corps infantry battalions from 24 to 36, which would include thousands of Marines.
The growth would have the most significant short-term effects on the Army, which shrunk under former President Barack Obama from 540,000 soldiers in 2013 to 470,465 at the end of November — the smallest number since before World War II.
Obama wanted to shrink the Army even more to 450,000 soldiers by fall 2018, but Congress stopped that with a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that directed the Army to grow to 476,000 this year.
Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari, the Army’s director of program analysis and evaluation, said in an interview that his service is “shovel-ready” for growth in part because of the way it downsized. For instance, rather than completely ending the manufacturing of weapons like the M1 Abrams tank, the service continued to buy them in small quantities so the Army could keep open its plant in Lima, Ohio.
“We made some calculated decisions, the Army did, on how we were going to get smaller,” Ferrari said. “We really looked at how we were going to scale down so that we could scale up again.”
Ferrari said the Army could add entire brigade combat teams if Trump wants, and that it would not only improve defense, but add manufacturing and construction jobs, a priority of Trump’s. Defense plants and barracks are aging, and stockpiles of ammunition and parts have dwindled in the last few years, requiring more manufacturing, he said.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein called last month to grow the service from 317,000 airmen to 350,000 in the next seven years, citing in part the heavy the service’s heavy usage in the air war against the Islamic State and a variety of new missions that have emerged.
The additional airmen also are needed to meet new demands in jobs like space and cyber operations, and to work on aircraft that the Pentagon once considered retiring, such as the A-10 attack jet and U-2 spy plane, said Brig. Gen. Edward Thomas, a senior Air Force spokesman.
In the Marine Corps, Trump’s proposals have raised some concerns among senior leaders who believe the service has more pressing needs than adding more infantrymen. The service currently has about 183,000 Marines, down from a peak of more than 202,000 at the height of Obama’s surge of troops into Afghanistan.
Congress authorized the service to grow to 185,000 by next fall, but Gen. Robert B. Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, cautioned afterward that the circumstances have changed since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is now more important to add Marines who can perform skills like electronic and cyber warfare.
In the Navy, senior leaders have worked for years to build up the size of its fleet. There were 316 ships in 2001, but the number dropped to 278 under President George W. Bush, as the United States fought prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon began investing in more ships under Obama and former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and is expected to hit a goal of 308 by 2021. Last month, however, it announced an even more aggressive goal in a new “force structure assessment,” stating that the fleet should grow to 355 ships.
A Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the assessment was launched long before Trump won, and is a reflection of a year of research. But Mackenzie Eaglen, a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said it’s notable that the Navy didn’t officially argue for more than 350 ships until recently.
Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., who recently called in a study for $54 billion more in defense spending in 2018, said in an interview last week that “everything he has been told” by the Trump administration signals that the president wants to spend more money on defense. He also expressed trust in both Mattis and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser.
On Tuesday, however, McCain grilled Trump’s nominee to run OMB, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R.-S.C., during his confirmation hearing, questioning whether he would be an “impediment” to growing the military given his history as a deficit hawk who voted against military spending.
Mulvaney responded that he was “absolutely in lock step” with Trump on boosting defense spending, but that any increase in the Pentagon’s budget should be offset with cuts in other spending.
Karoun Demirjian and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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