HomeNewsArticle Display

Secretary discusses AF budget during summit

  • Published
  • By Mike W. Ray
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  In an era of smaller budgets, the U.S. military has to be "more effective and more efficient" -- do more with less -- Frank Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said Tuesday.

"We'll have to get more value for the money," he said during his keynote address at the Oklahoma Aerospace and Defense Summit and Expo held in Norman.

The Department of Defense is in the midst of its biggest contraction since the "dramatic reduction" following the collapse of the communist Soviet Union in 1989, he said.
The Department is shaving approximately $450 billion in expenditures over the next 10 years. And if Congress does not reach a budget agreement by the end of the year, another $500 billion will have to be carved out of the Pentagon budget, the secretary noted.

"Sequestration" -- $1.2 trillion in across-the-board federal-government budget cuts over a 10-year period, divided equally between security and non-security programs and scheduled to go into effect Jan. 2, 2013 -- would be "devastating," Mr. Kendall asserted. "Reductions are in place" and will be implemented unless Congress repeals sequestration sometime in the next seven months, he emphasized.

In developing the Pentagon budget and establishing priorities, "We had to make hard decisions, tough choices," Mr. Kendall said. "Everything was on the table."

Recently, the DOD peered into the future "to see where we need to be" in 2020, Mr. Kendall said. After analyzing the data and consulting with the White House and top military leaders, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a document that outlines "strategic guidance for the DOD" in the years ahead.

Among its conclusions:
· The United States will have to remain on guard against terrorists. "That trend is not changing," Secretary Kendall said. In addition, the U.S. will need to keep a close eye on rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, and rising powers in Asia, particularly China and Russia.

· Of necessity, "We will rebalance" from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region, and will favor air and naval forces over ground forces, Mr. Kendall said.

In a related matter, he noted that, "We are still at war in Afghanistan" and still have "a lot to do" there. The task of withdrawing from Afghanistan will be more difficult than it was in Iraq, he said. A key reason is that Afghanistan is landlocked and much of the military materiel used there has to be transported by air, he explained.

· "We are not going to field large land forces," Mr. Kendall said. The strategic guidance document announces that, "Whenever possible, we will develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives... U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations."

The Defense Department will "continue its quest for efficiency" which started under former Defense Secretary Gates, Mr. Kendall said. "All of us have to be cost-conscious."
One element of that process is to reduce the bureaucracy, he said. "We're trying to streamline our processes."

Secretary Kendall also maintained that the Defense Department needs more competition in military procurement. "We need to take the time to get the best business deal for the taxpayer."

Finally, he blasted the "use it or lose it" attitude of budgeting: spending all of a public agency's funds one year in anticipation of receiving the same amount or more the next year. The waste of tax dollars in such a fashion "ought to be anathema to everyone," Mr. Kendall declared.

Secretary Kendall has nearly 40 years of experience in engineering, management, defense acquisition and national security affairs in private industry, government and the military. He was vice president of engineering for Raytheon, and served in the U.S. Army for 10 years. He is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from California Institute of Technology, a Master of Business Administration degree from C.W Post Center of Long Island University, and a juris doctor from Georgetown University.