Our next two speakers are from the Army, Assistant Secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller Office. We have Lieutenant General Edgar Stanton. He is the military deputy for budget. And also Ms. Kathleen Miller, she is the acting director for Army Budget. And what they’ll do is talk you through some slides. I’d ask hold your questions until the end and we will have a few minutes for questions. Thank you very much. 

 

General Stanton … 

 

GEN. STANTON: Thank you very much. And to all, welcome to the Army’s presentation of our FY ‘11 budget. We had in the back of the room and hopefully you have before you and if not we’ll be delighted to provide to you a copy of our budget highlights, a green tab media release, a copy of the charts and then included in that packet was one chart that addresses the Army’s supplemental request for the FY ‘10 OCO. 

 

So what I’ll just address that chart quickly and then we’ll go through the base appropriation and then the ‘11 OCO. But for the ‘10 supplemental, the Army’s request is $20 billion (dollars). I think Undersecretary Hale mentioned to you that the OSD request is $33 billion (dollars). And essentially what this does is it funds two brigade combat teams and a training brigade as well as the Marine Corps regimental combat team and the 30K surge in terms of the support the Army provides. 

 

The request is predominantly operational maintenance, almost $12 billion (dollars), just under $2 (billion dollars) for the military personnel costs. And this of course funds the deployed entitlements that our soldiers are due when in harm’s way, as well as the cost of the mobilized reservists who are serving in the theater. Most of the cost goes to operational maintenance as we said and then a little bit for procurement, procurement in OCO request now is limited to battle losses, washouts, some recapitalization and equipment used in the fight — in the theater. And then force protection. So when we get to the question and answer session if you have questions on this, we’ll be glad to address them.   

 

So I’d like to begin then with the first chart entitled “The Army FY 2011 Budget Priorities”. And this is unchanged from last year. The Army leadership focus is caring for our people — that’s our soldiers, our families and our civilians — all with the intent of sustaining the volunteer force. We focus on training and equipping soldiers and units for the current fight and then we revitalize our people both the entire gamut of our people, our soldiers and our civilians for whatever the next contingency might be. Included in this of course is training and development and professional development of our soldiers and our leaders. 

 

And then lastly we transform and modernize for those contingencies that we don’t yet know about as we look to the future. 

 

Turning to the next chart which is the FY 2011 Obligation Authority is the title, and you see before you two pie charts there. The first addresses the president’s base request and the second is the OCO request, of course being submitted together. You see that for the base, we are requesting $143.4 billion (dollars), and this is up a bit from onlines enacted number which was just under $141 (billion dollars), at $140.9 (billion dollars). So a modest increase in the base request. 

 

And in fact, to characterize those for you in terms of the functional piece parts of the budget, our military personnel request is $1 billion (dollars) more than was enacted in ‘10, the operational and maintenance is about $3.7 billion (dollars) more, and we will talk to the piece parts of the growth. Procurement up $2 billion (dollars), RDT&E down $1 billion (dollars), and BRAC down $4 billion (dollars). So the net of that for all Army appropriations included in the base as compared to the ‘10 enacted is an increase of $2.5 billion (dollars) or 1.8 percent which is essentially inflation. 

 

So that’s kind of the big picture of the budget. As you see on the pie chart, in the base, we’re very heavy in terms of military personnel, which is no surprise since we are all land based, we’re fighting force. Our operational maintenance accounts of course funds all that we do to operate the Army to include our civilian workforce as well as our contract and labor force. And you see RDT&E in procurement make up about 22 percent of the budget, much smaller in the Army budget than you would see for example in the Navy or the Air Force with regard to the investment accounts. We again, being heavier in the military personnel account. 

 

The pie chart below reflects the OCO request and you can see that it is by far operational and maintenance heavy and this is everything from pre-deployment, training, transportation to the theater, transportation within the theater, all of those costs associated with the operational tempo and the logistics support for the force. 

 

And then you see the what we call pass-throughs included in the OCO request for the Iraqi security forces for the Afghan security forces and for the joint improvised explosive device defeat fund, JIEDDF. So — and of course that makes up a fairly high percentage of the total OCO request. We will address the details of that towards the end of the brief. 

 

Turning to the next chart, Army Based Budget Request, and this essentially reflects the Army’s appropriations and it serves as a good outline for the ensuing charts that Ms. Miller who is the Director of the Army Budget is now going to address for you. So this is the Army Base Budget Request and then we will introduce and discuss the OCO request for ‘11.

Go to http://www.defense.gov/news/d20100201armyslides.pdf to view briefing slides associated with this transcript. To view the rest of this press briefing, please click here.