Service Chiefs Critique Hagel’s SCMR: ‘Rosy’ & ‘Dangerous’ Assumptions

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/11/service-chiefs-take-on-sec-hagels-scmr-study-rosy-assumptions/



Service Chiefs Critique Hagel’s SCMR: ‘Rosy’ & ‘Dangerous’ Assumptions
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on November 08, 2013 at 11:30 AM

CAPITOL HILL: We’ve had nearly two years of hearings about how hard the automatic budget cuts called sequestration would hit the Department of Defense. Yesterday, we saw something new. For the first time, the uniformed chiefs of all four services publicly told Congress that they have big problems with their civilian bosses’ plan to cope with sequestration, the Strategic Choices and Management Review.

The SCMR, they said, makes dangerously optimistic assumptions about how big the next war will be, how long it will take to win, how big a force we need to win it, and how quickly that force can be made dready to fight.

Secretary Chuck Hagel’s SCMR – pronounced “skimmer” or “scammer” depending on your degree of cynicism – laid out a range of options that are supposed to guide Pentagon planners as they thrash out two alternative budgets, one assuming full sequestration and one assuming lesser cuts, for fiscal year 2015 and beyond. It’s also become the de facto first step of the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

With the Army’s money, manpower, and missions coming under the heaviest fire inside the Pentagon, it’s no surprise that the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, has already made public some doubts about the SCMR: It makes “somewhat rosy assumptions” that are “somewhat dangerous,” he told a House Armed Services Committee hearing in September. But at Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Odierno went much further – and was joined, for the first time that I’ve seen, by the other three service chiefs. Literally sitting in a row, they chimed in one after the other to back Odierno up.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Interesting--wonder who will win, the SecDef or the Chiefs who are

hanging on to their budgets for dear life? If the money isn't there, though, it isn't there. Cuts are coming whether they want them or not, and Repubs in Congress have stopped being interested in giving the Pentagon whatever it wants.