Defense And The State Of The Union

January 28, 2010 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: BNET 
President Obama's State of the Union speech last night reinforced his budget plans for defense. This will see slight growth in the near term as...

TSAT Contract Latest To Be Ended

Secretary of Defense Gates announced that in the FY10 budget plenty of different programs would be ended. Unlike previous administrations who decide to de-fund a contract in next year’s budget but let the current year play out Gates has aggressively ended the contracts. The latest one announced was the U.S. Air Force’s Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT).

When the budget plans were announced in April the plan was to end this system and begin development of two new separate systems for the same mission. The TSAT like most military satellite and space programs had suffered delays and cost problems. They were not insurmountable but as time goes by the Pentagon often looks at different or new requirements that the older planned systems may not meet.

So following in the footsteps of the VH-71, Future Combat Systems (FCS) and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) programs the TSAT contracts were terminated for convenience today. There were two separate contracts — one with Lockheed Martin for mission operations systems and one with Booz Allen Hamilton for systems engineering.

One idea of doing this so fast is to prevent Congress from keeping the program alive through continuing funding despite the Pentagon’s request. Without an active contract it will be hard to do this in the next year. More to come on all of these various moves as the budget makes its progress.

Congressional Research Service Recommends Holding Down Military Pay

February 9, 2009 by Matthew Potter · Comments Off
Filed under: Careers, Commentary, Congress, Department of Defense, Events, Federal Budget Process, Services 

The CRS did a review of the future budget plans for the Pentagon and came to the conclusion they were underfunded. The Federal Times writes that one aspect of this review was a recommendation to reduce future military pay raises. Personnel costs are a large part of the defense budget and the operations over the last seven years have only increased those. The military and Congress have also moved to increase pay and benefits due to the stress military personnel have been under. They recommend reducing future raises and targeting special pay and bonuses. To be honest any attempt that looks like the military were being short changed on pay and benefits would not fly with the Congress, or the American people for that matter.

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