Our units in theatre can bear witness to the need
for sustainability better than any manual, policy or
white paper can ever articulate. The need is real, it
is immediate and it must be part of our funding deci-
sions in order to deliver it.
Challenges of Fiscal Efficiencies and Process
Transparency
The challenge many see is how to incorporate a re-
quirement for sustainability when the defense budget
is facing drastic unprecedented cuts. Obviously there
is no new funding to support a whole scale overhaul of
equipment and facilities to make them suddenly sus-
tainable. Indeed, there is not enough funding to even
completely maintain the current Army inventory...
and that is before Secretary of Defense Gates’ efficien-
cies are implemented. In August 2010, Secretary Gates
called for a comprehensive review of how all services
operate with a goal of identifying $100 billion in ef-
ficiencies over the next 5 years from all the services
(Gates 2010b). He provided a statement on 6 Jan 2011
that $29 billion of the $100 billion would come from
the Army (Gates 2011). In addition to these cuts, the
supplemental appropriation “Overseas Contingency
Operations” (OCO) is projected to end by FY17 (Casey
2011). This creates an extremely tight budget for the
Army. Any validated requirements that are not able
to shift into the base budget will become completely
unfunded.
This also means that scrutiny of funding decisions
will be plentiful. Already the Department of the Army
undergoes several external audits on an annual basis
and nearly every program is subject to this examina-
tion. Important to realize is that the massive public