WASHINGTON, August 6 (RIA Novosti) - It will take a serious event for the United States Congress to rethink its defense spending policies, Brett Lambert former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, told RIA Novosti Tuesday responding to warnings in the recent National Defense Panel (NDP) report dealing with the impact of defense cuts on military preparedness.
“I think the only way we will get relief from sequestration, unfortunately, will be an event,” Lambert told RIA Novosti at the 2014 Defense Acquisition Modernization Symposium. “If there is an event, I think that Congress will all of a sudden say, ‘Wow, maybe we should spend more on this,’ which is frankly also irresponsible. But [an event] will likely change the scenario.”
Lambert, who is now an executive at Renaissance Strategic Advisors, was responding to a warning issued by the National Defense Panel in its review of the Quadrennial Defense Review, stating grave concerns about military preparedness to address the threats now facing the United States.
The NDP report, released on July 30, states that due to shortfalls including reduced capacity, readiness, and responsiveness, the US is taking on greater risk in the future.
"The growing gap between the strategic objectives the US military is expected to achieve and the resources required to do so is causing risk to accumulate toward unacceptable levels," the report says and concludes that in a worst-case scenario, the US “could find itself in a position where it must either abandon an important national interest or enter a conflict for which it is not fully prepared.”
Lambert agreed with the assessment and the concerns raised by members of the NDP saying, “We are accepting this level of risk.” He continued, “There is no shortage of threats. There’s a group within the Department [of Defense] that focuses on the capability we currently have and what kinds of threats we are likely to face. It used to be that was a pretty short number.” However, because of the rise in asymmetric threats, Lambert noted it has become incredibly difficult to execute a thirty-year program to meet threats “that are somewhat nebulous right now and will only materialize in bursts.”
The NDP report also raised concerns that the US military would not be able to carry out some part of the national military strategy, a problem Lambert says rests with the Congressional decision to authorize rapid, sudden cuts through the 2013 and upcoming 2016 sequestration. “We had uncomfortable meetings on the Hill quite often because everyone expects that the military will be there when you pick up the phone. There are times, increasingly times, when they can’t be there. They physically can’t be there.”
The sheer amount of money cut from defense spending is not so much a problem as the pace of the cuts, according to Lambert, who likened sequestration to a drop down an elevator shaft, as opposed to a ride down an escalator. A previous round of sequestration analyzed by Sean O’Keefe, former Secretary of the Navy and current North American director of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), noted that for every dollar saved from sequestration the cost was sixty cents.
“I give that commission a great deal of credit... I think it’s questioning the fundamentals of the QDR,” Lambert said about the NDP review.
