Current Weapon Procurement Plan Unaffordable, Says Jones.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: General James L. Jones, commandant of the Marine Corps. - Interview

The Defense Department cannot afford to pay for all the new weapon programs that the four military services want in the foreseeable future, said Gen. James L. Jones, commandant of the Marine Corps.

"I think that if you look at the things we are trying to do in national defense ... it's kind of easy to see that we cannot afford to do all of those things simultaneously," he said in a recent interview.

Generally, he said it would be impossible to pay, all at once, for the Army's new medium-weight brigades, the Air Force aircraft-replacement program, the Navy's ship and aircraft procurement plan and "other things the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard want to do."

Without delving into specifics, Jones said that, overall, the Defense Department has significantly more weapon programs on its long-term budget blueprint than it can afford. This assessment reinforces previous studies by independent think ranks and by the Congressional Budget Office, which pegged the Pentagon's "modernization funding gap" at anywhere between $20 billion to $100 billion during the next five years.

The Marine Corps' modernization effort, meanwhile, will suffer as a result of Navy budget shortfalls, since Marines travel on Navy ships, and naval aviation accounts fund 100 percent of Marine aviation programs, he explained. "When they [the Navy] struggle, we struggle," said Jones. "We are working ourselves through some difficult times, trying to move the Navy from a 300-ship Navy in the direction of a 400-ship Navy. But now, we are going the other way."

Decisions that affect amphibious vessel programs are of particular concern to the Marine Corps. In the fiscal year 2001 House-Senate defense appropriations conference, lawmakers removed about $1 billion out of $l.5 billion that the Navy had requested to procure two San Antonio-class amphibious ships, also called LPD-17. The conferees decided to shift funding to the out-years. The Navy, therefore, would buy the ships incrementally, rather than pay for them in one year.

"We do feel a strain between requirements and resources," said Jones. But LPD-17, he stressed, is "not an issue of requirement. It is a political issue ... It's a question of process, not requirement. ... There isn't any committee that doesn't support the LPD-17. The question is, what is the best way to pay for it?"

The sky-high price tags for new weapon systems also slow down the pace of defense modernization, suggested Jones. He did not, however, want to start pointing fingers at contractors. But he believes the lack of competition in the industry may partly be to blame for the unaffordable prices.

"As far as the industrial base goes, at some point you have to be concerned that there isn't enough competition," said Jones. "I think it would be interesting to calculate the inflation rate [for defense products], versus the national inflation rate. I think you would find that the inflation rate for weapon systems is higher than the national inflation rate."

The reason, he added, "has to do with the fact there's less competition out there than there has been in the past." Foreign competition could help bring prices...