Army budget request slightly larger than 2010 - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Army budget request slightly larger than 2010

The $246 billion Army budget request submitted Monday to Congress is about 1 percent larger than last year, and includes more than $100 billion for operations related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Pentagon’s combined budget request of $708 billion, will, with the approval of Congress, provide a 1.4 percent pay increase for service members.

Robert Hale, Defense Department comptroller and chief financial officer, said defense officials will ask Congress to keep the pay raise capped at 1.4 percent.

Hale noted that during deliberations for the 2010 budget, lawmakers authorized a pay hike of 3.4 percent, which was 0.5 percent more than requested.

Hale said any increase beyond 1.4 percent is not warranted given current cost-of-living conditions, and would have to be paid for at the expense of other military programs.

The Army’s base budget request of $143.4 billion is designed to support a force of 547,400 active-duty soldiers, 358,200 National Guardsmen and 205,000 Army Reservists, according to Lt. Gen. Edgar E. Stanton, the service’s senior uniformed budget officer.

Those figures do not represent any changes in the service’s authorized manning levels for 2010.

However, they do not take into account an ongoing 22,000-soldier expansion of the active component that could bring the service’s personnel strength to nearly 470,000 by the end of 2011.

This manning increase will be funded for $11.9 billion in the “overseas contingency operations” portion of the budget, a sure sign that the Obama administration views the expansion as a temporary condition that will go away as troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The base budget is designed to support a force structure of four corps headquarters, 18 division headquarters, 73 brigade combat teams and 21 aviation brigades as stipulated in the Quadrennial Defense Review, which also was released Monday.

The brigade structure will include 45 active component 28 reserve component BCTs.

This maneuver force will include 40 infantry brigades, 25 heavy brigades and eight Stryker brigades.

The organizational plan also calls for 21 combat aviation brigades of more than 100 aircraft each.

Thirteen of the CABS will be in the active component, and eight in the reserves.

The Quadrennial Defense Review, required every four years by Congress, is the Obama administration’s latest statement of national security strategy.

Spending on the Army’s military personnel programs are projected to cost $59 billion in 2011, which will account for 41 percent of the service’s total budget.

Other sections of the budget would provide $43.9 billion for operations and maintenance, $21.3 billion for procurement, $10.3 billion for research and development, and $5.3 billion for military construction.

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