Soldiers from Company D, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, watch as Afghan troops try to zero their weapons during marksmanship training in Maiwand district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. The Army budget reflects a pivot toward Afghanistan, to include training Afghan forces and construction of military posts. (Drew Brown / Stars and Stripes)
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Army’s proposed 2010 budget slashes re-enlistment bonuses, puts the kibosh on the vehicle component of the Future Combat Systems and calls for more military construction in Afghanistan.
The proposed $142.1 billion in spending includes for $444 million for re-enlistment bonuses, $450 million for enlistment bonuses and $77 million in retention bonuses for officers, all for the active-duty Army, officials said.
That compares with $626 million in re-enlistment bonuses, $549 million in enlistment bonuses and $134 million in bonuses for officers had been slated to be spent this fiscal year, said Kathleen S. Miller, who works for the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management and Comptroller).
The Army has already cut re-enlistment bonuses for this fiscal year because it met its authorized end-strength of 547,400 in January and is now close to 549,000, Army officials said.
The "primary reason" the Army was able to expand much faster than planned is that more soldiers are staying in the service due to the bad economy, said Col. Debra Head, of Army G-1.
"As a result, we quite frankly don’t need to retain as many people as we were previously retaining," Head said in a recent interview.
Head said the Army has already made most of the cuts in re-enlistment and retention bonuses for this fiscal year, but she cautioned there could be more to come if the Army looks like it will end fiscal 2009 above its authorized end-strength.
In April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he was cutting the vehicle component of the Army’s Future Combat Systems despite objections from Army leadership.
Gates later told reporters that he worried FCS had not integrated lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, the initial design for the FCS vehicle called for it to have a flat bottom low to the ground, even though the Iraq war has shown that such vehicles are vulnerable to explosions from underneath.
"It just seemed to me there was — it was necessary to stop, take a deep breath, and kind of look at this whole thing freshly, based on the experience of these two wars," Gates said April 7.
While he has recommended putting the vehicle component of FCS on hiatus, the funding would remain intact in the hope that the project could move forward again in fiscal 2011, he said April 17 at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
The Army is also calling for $83.1 billion in "Overseas Contingency Operations Request" to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The overseas contingency funding includes $924 million in construction for the extra U.S. troops that are headed to Afghanistan, Army officials said Thursday.
As combat operations wind down in Iraq, the U.S. Army is pivoting its combat power to Afghanistan, where about 30,000 extra U.S. troops are heading to combat the resurgent Taliban.
"We don’t have the infrastructure in place in Afghanistan that we have developed over six to seven years in Iraq, and so there are a fair number of one-time costs that we have to incur in order to stand up the number of BCTs that are going to be [increased in] Afghanistan," said Lt. Gen. Edgar E. Stanton III, military deputy for budget.
The money would go toward construction such as troop housing, airfield operations, chow halls and fuel handling systems, said William H. Campbell, acting director of the Army Budget Office.
The Army has also asked for money to train more helicopter pilots, because the demand for helicopters is much greater in Afghanistan than Iraq, which is relatively developed, Stanton said.
"It’s, as you know, very mountainous, you can’t move. … It’s a very poor country, the road structure is not there," he said.
