San Diego Union-Tribune December 26, 2001
Pentagon budget changes slowly, but trend for area is up
By Bruce V. Bigelow
The world may have changed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, but the Pentagon budget didn't. At least not much.
As the House and Senate moved last week to approve a $317.4 billion spending bill for the Department of Defense in fiscal 2002, analysts said they didn't see much change from the military priorities set before Sept. 11.
"The ship that is the defense budget turns very slowly," said Chris Hellman of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. "When you spend 24 or 36 months planning for a 12-month budget, changing it quickly is hard to do."
For all the talk about restructuring the U.S. military to deal with "asymmetric threats" such as terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare, Hellman said, "There's very little that's significantly different from where we were in August."
By and large, the 2002 outlook for San Diego's defense sector calls for a modest spending increase and continued support of well-established military programs.
"San Diego has a very good high-tech defense business still, believe it or not, after all these years," said Gene Ray, chairman and chief executive of Titan Corp., a longtime local defense contractor.
Some local benefits of the 2002 Pentagon budget include more than $500 million to continue construction of a new fleet of Navy cargo ships at National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., or NASSCO, in San Diego; more than $168 million for the high-altitude Global Hawk robotic spy plane, developed by Northrop Grumman's Ryan Aeronautical Center in Rancho Bernardo; and $22 million for the Predator, a propeller-driven robotic spy plane built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.
Work on the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter, or JSF, which the Pentagon awarded to Lockheed Martin in October, could bring an estimated $5 billion to TRW's space and electronics business over the next 30 years or so.
To accommodate the new JSF program, TRW's San Diego-based Radio Systems expects to hire between 120 and 150 engineers and programmers next year, said David Vandervoet, a TRW vice president and general manager.
TRW's San Diego unit now makes aircraft electronics that integrate communications, navigation and identification systems for three major defense programs: the JSF, F-22 Raptor fighter and RAH-66 Comanche aircraft.
One of the biggest changes in the 2002 defense budget is a $7.8 billion appropriation for ballistic missile defense -- a 32 percent increase over 2001.
The boost reflects President Bush's abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and may represent a boon to Information Systems Laboratory, or ISL, a San Diego-based startup with a missile defense program.
ISL expects to get about $3 million in 2002 defense funding to develop plans for its anti-missile system, which calls for deploying interceptor missiles outside the United States, in so-called "forward" zones.
Launching interceptor missiles from the United States head-on at an incoming ballistic missile only provides about five seconds for targeting, said R. Michael Dowe, ISL's chief executive.
But interceptors based overseas have the advantage of following behind the incoming missile and pouncing from above, an approach that ISL calls TOP HAT, for Trajectory OPtimized High Altitude Targeting.
"The major reason this wasn't pursued more aggressively in the past is that forward-basing the interceptors would have been a violation of the ABM treaty," said Robert Miller, an ISL vice president.
More support
If anything, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 mark a watershed in political support for broad increases in defense spending sought by Pentagon boosters like Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido.
The change from the mid-1990s has been like night and day to Tom Sheffer, chief executive of the San Diego Defense & Space Technology Consortium.
"What we're trying to do now is like the opposite of defense conversion," Sheffer said. "In the 1990s, the major effort was in retraining people to go from defense to commercial companies. Now we're trying to do just the opposite."
Next year's defense budget represents a $19.2 billion increase over the 2001 military spending plan -- a 6.7 percent gain, but a trend that appears likely to continue for at least several years.
"What the United States needs, what the so-called analysts and deep breathers are missing, is that instead of figuring out where we're going to be hit next, we need to have a broad capability," Hunter said.
Hunter, who oversees military research and development for the House Armed Services Committee, hopes to advance a variety of innovative technologies.
His list includes a fast naval warship for use in coastal waters, an "affordable" naval weapon with a 600-mile fire support capability, and a stealthy general-purpose jet capable of vertical takeoffs and landings.
DuPont Aerospace, a small, privately held company in El Cajon that's unrelated to the DuPont chemical company, has already built a half-scale prototype of the jet, called the DP-1.
The goal is to develop a full-scale aircraft that's big enough to carry troops, or a Humvee combat vehicle, said Tony DuPont, the firm's president. Such aircraft also could be used to conduct combat search and rescue operations.
For homeland
Not included in the 2002 Pentagon budget was a separate, $20 billion supplemental appropriation for homeland security -- the second half of a $40 billion special appropriation.
"Where you're going to see significant amounts of new money is not in the Department of Defense, but in law enforcement and the border patrol," said Hellman of the Center for Defense Information.
The second installment of the supplemental appropriation includes $8.2 billion to help impacted areas recover from terrorist attacks and $8.3 billion for homeland security.
To maintain broad military capabilities, Hunter contends that U.S. forces must be equipped to fight massed tank battles as it did in Desert Storm, fly deep airstrikes as it did in Kosovo, and use special operations forces as it has in Afghanistan.
Hunter, who has been pushing to increase the defense budget by $50 billion a year or more, said America's military capabilities have fallen dramatically since the 1991 war against Iraq.
"For the last five years or so, we've crashed more planes than we have built," Hunter said. "We are not spending enough on national security."
Since Desert Storm, Hunter said, the United States has gone from 18 active Army divisions to 10; from 546 warships to 314; from 24 fighter air wings to 13.
However, analysts say some military programs are benefiting from a sharper focus -- especially those focused on information technologies and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR.
"On the modern battlefield, even against a fourth-world Stone Age adversary, information management and battlefield awareness is what makes the U.S. military the fighting force it is," said Hellman. "We now have that information management infrastructure, from satellites and remotely operated vehicles to commanders in the field."
In San Diego, companies such as Titan and Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, have long specialized in providing and integrating information technology systems.
"Lifting the fog of battle has been the lesson learned for at least the past two decades," said John Pike, founder and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a national security Web site. "That was the lesson from Grenada and from Desert Storm."
© Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
