WASHINGTON — Experiments with hybrid vehicles, huge bonuses for psychologists, personal finance lessons. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s recommended spending blueprint for fiscal 2009 illustrates how Defense Department funds go for lots more than weapons.
Few corners of government are untouched by the 560-page report, released last week, which represents the committee’s recommendations on the defense authorization bill now working its way through both houses of Congress.
The Senate panel noted, for example, that a task force of the Defense Science Board reported in February that the Pentagon “systematically underestimates” the cost of fuel for weapons and the benefits that could arise from requiring fuel efficiency in vehicles.
One step being taken, the committee said, is that “designs for the manned ground combat vehicles of the Army’s Future Combat System will use hybrid electric drives.” The panel itself added $6 million to the advanced technology budget for combat vehicles to develop military hybrid engines and $10 million for an advanced military vehicle battery development and testing initiative.
Increased spending on personnel
The committee also recommended that the Defense Department pay bonuses of as much as $400,000 to psychologists who make active-duty commitments of at least four years to various branches of the military. The proposal is based on a report by the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which found that “38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of Marines report psychological problems” and that “the number of active-duty psychologists is insufficient and likely to decrease further” without action by the Pentagon.
“We need to ensure that we have adequate numbers of uniformed mental health providers who can train and deploy with our troops and be there when they are needed,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told the Senate committee in March. “And we must give our service members the tools they need to be able to cope with the stress of combat and the experiences that many of them face each and every day.”
Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel who specializes in military matters, said the recommendations for increased spending on personnel, including the recruitment of more psychologists, result because the Pentagon “feels completely responsible for everything that happens in your life, even when you go home or retire.” He likened military service to joining a religious order.
The committee report also concluded that “service members and their families have been the target of aggressive predatory lending practices” and that military leaders recognize something should be done about it. The panel’s recommendation is that the Defense Department’s Education Activity, which runs schools around the world for about 87,000 students from military and Pentagon civilian families, should “develop a comprehensive, research-based financial literacy curriculum for grades kindergarten through 12.”
The panel said quick action also is needed if the military is to continue testing its ever-growing fleet of unmanned aircraft, such as the Predator and the Global Hawk, and train people to fly them.
The Defense Department “is unprepared to meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements” to operate in U.S. airspace, the committee determined. The Global Hawk, the intelligence surveillance aircraft that can cover targets in the Middle East from its base at Beale Air Force Base in California, is “under temporary flight restrictions.” The Army is developing its own unmanned aircraft at the El Mirage Flight Operations Facility, also in California, but tests cannot be conducted at night.
The Senate panel directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to seek an agreement with the FAA on the disputes that limit operations of unmanned aircraft.
Security for the Defense secretary
The issue of Gates’ personal security was raised by the Pentagon, which wants to give the next secretary authority to rent one of the grand homes at local military installations that today are given to flag officers. The reason: Putting a defense secretary “in established quarters on a secure military installation is far more cost-effective than installing, maintaining, and protecting sensitive Department of Defense equipment, along with secure information facilities and security and detection systems, in private residences,” according to the committee report.
It also would “substantially reduce” the logistics burden and disruptions to the public caused by protecting the defense secretary, according to the report.
The private home Gates lives in has been turned into a fortress. Security details guard it day and night, and communications equipment has been installed so he is securely linked to the Pentagon at all times.
The committee also showed its concern with the practice of farming out Defense Department work to private contractors, proposing to expedite the Pentagon’s authority to hire civilian employees.
The panel reported that as the workload has grown in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the number of contract personnel increased from 750,000 to more than 1.5 million last year.
At the same time, the number of Defense Department civilian employees has remained “virtually unchanged at just under 700,000,” according to the report.
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