By Claudette Roulo
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT, Feb. 9, 2015 – Deputy Defense
Secretary Bob Work departed today for a multi-day trip to discuss budget
priorities, meet with nuclear enterprise troops and to tour the U.S. Navy’s
newest mobile landing platform.
For his first stop, Work is scheduled to deliver the keynote
address at the U.S. Naval Institute’s 2015 WEST Conference in San Diego, where
he will underscore the department’s three key budgetary themes.
“We feel very strongly that the 2016 president’s budget
submission is a strategy-driven, resource informed budget. The choices that we
made throughout the fall review were aligned precisely with the 2014
[Quadrennial Defense Review],” he said.
The most efficient way to undermine this effort -- to
implement a budget-driven strategy -- is for sequestration to be allowed to
return in 2016, Work said.
“Sequestration will prevent us from executing a strategy
that we think is in the best interests of the United States at this point in
time,” he said.
“For all of the people who say this isn’t a strategy-driven
budget, I’d say, ‘Just wait. Wait until you see what happens if we go to
sequestration.’”
The president’s budget is about $154 billion over the cap
set by sequestration, Work said. But, he added, even at that level, maintaining
a balanced defense program is difficult.
The Defense Department needs one to three percent real
growth per year in order to maintain balance between personnel, current and
future readiness and modernization, the deputy secretary said.
“We’ve had flat budgets for three years. So, because our
forces are in high demand, we have to keep force structure … set, and that’s
expensive. We’re trying to dig our way out of the readiness hole, and that’s
expensive,” Work said.
As a result, he said, modernization budgets have stayed flat
over the past three years.
“So, we believe that our technological superiority is
eroding, and that’s one of the things we wanted to address in this budget,” the
deputy secretary said.
The president’s budget includes an additional $21 billion
over last year’s request, he said, almost entirely directed toward advanced
capabilities.
Mobile Landing Platform
Following Work’s speech, he will visit the National Steel
and Shipbuilding Company shipyard where the Navy’s newest mobile landing
platform is under construction.
The ship he will see is configured as an afloat forward
staging base and is equipped with a helicopter landing deck and boat bay. The
ship’s adjustable ballast tanks facilitate the movement of forces, equipment
and vehicles by raising and lowering the ship’s draft as needed.
Mobile landing platforms are intended to become the
centerpiece of the sea base mission. The MLP is designed for use across a wide
range of military operations, including humanitarian assistance and disaster
response, theater security cooperation and major combat operations.
The visit is, in part, aimed at reassuring the defense
industry after several years of flat modernization budgets, Work said.
This will be the deputy secretary’s first opportunity to see
an MLP in this configuration, he said, adding, “It’s an exciting new capability
for our force.”
The configuration is proving to be so capable that the
department has added a third ship, expected to be ready in 2017, the deputy
secretary said.
The Nuclear Enterprise
Work’s next stop will be Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota,
the nation’s only nuclear base to host both bombers and nuclear missiles.
As chair of the Nuclear Deterrent Enterprise Review Group,
the deputy secretary said he has received a great deal of input from the Air
Force and Navy’s nuclear forces as the department seeks to correct the
deficiencies uncovered last year.
“So I want to go out and talk with the folks and compare
what they’re saying,” he said. “Are they seeing the improvements that I’m being
told are happening?”
Work said the members of the nuclear enterprise should know
that if any defense mission is growing in importance, it is theirs.
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