House committee votes to cut FCS money

[unhappycamper]

2009 called a critical year for FCS
Money will instead go to Guard, reserve equipment.


House committee votes to cut FCS money
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 14, 2008 21:52:48 EDT

The House Armed Services Committee agreed Wednesday to cut the Army’s Future Combat System to provide money for National Guard and reserve equipment.

The 33-23 vote to cut $233 million from the FCS program was along party lines.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee’s air and land forces panel and a supporter of the MRAP funding, said the committee’s version of the 2009 defense policy bill includes money for most of the Bush administration requests for the Army, including $2.2 billion for upgrading Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker vehicles; $3.4 billion for tactical vehicles including $947 million for heavily armored Humvees; $3.1 billion for helicopters; and more than $1 billion for munitions.

However, the bill also makes a 5.5 percent reduction in funding for the Army’s FCS program. Abercrombie said the cut is needed so that money can be shifted to higher priorities, like readiness, and also reflects a “history of delays and cost overruns” in the program.

“It is $110 billion over budget and five years behind schedule,” he said. “I hardly think they have been cut short. And, it has not produced a single deployable system in six years of development.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/05/military_army_mraps_051408w/



uhc comment: Future Combat Systems are to the Army what Deepwater is to the Navy.

[rpannier]

1. Having served in the army I can honestly say

Anytime they want money they say it's a critical year.

It's not so much a lie, as it is, they want the money.
In all honesty, if I want money I'd say it was critical too.

[unhappycamper]

2. Well, the military's budget for 2009 is already $735,700,000,000.

I would prefer to cut the military budget by 1/2, and use the 'savings' to pay for veterans care. $400,000,000,000 or so should be enough for 'defense'.

[rpannier]

3. I'd be interested in seeing how much of that budget goes into KBR's pocket?

The Army is often a place with a high amount of inefficiency.

And I don't mean that in a MASH way.
They are responsible for providing goods and services to over 200,000 service members and then probably 200-400 thousand family members.
That's a lot of logistics.

The problem is, if you try and clean up the inefficiency, you are accused of hating the troops and being un-American.
Plus,for the most part, soldiers vote. Largely because you are given the opportunity to do so.
We were downrange and they brought everyone back to the barracks who wanted to vote.
Needless to say, our batallion had a near 100% vote.
In 92, I left to vote and I was told that if there were long lines and I couldn't make it back to duty that day it was ok.
I left at lunch and the line was soooooooooooo long (at the Pizza Hut buffet) that by the time I got to the polling place and voted it was already 2:45.
So I never went back.

Getting back to my point: Any reform has to be done in a way that it doesn't appear to service members and their families, that they're gonna get screwed.

This is just the army. Throw in the AF and Navy/Marines and that's a lot of voters.