October 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, Security
PARIS — Despite calls from French lawmakers for the nation's defense industry to receive extra financial support from the government to counter the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2021 defense budget will remain unchanged.
Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said last week that the 2021 defense budget — planned before the pandemic as part of the 2019-2025 military program law — represents “the third year in a row that we have followed the military program law to the letter: This is an unprecedented effort, with an additional €1.7 billion [U.S. $2 billion] or so every year.”
She added that the armed forces since 2019 have had €18 billion more to spend than in 2017, noting that between 2019 and 2023, the military investment budget will total €110 billion, which is more than the €100 billion national recovery plan announced by the French government last month to support a suffering economy.
But Françoise Dumas, president of the National Assembly's National Defense and Armed Forces Committee, had called for “defense to be at the heart of the future recovery plan." And Cédric Perrin, vice president of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, argued “there is no specific component of this €100 billion plan for the defense industry sector.”
The €49.7 billion French defense budget for 2021 includes payment appropriations of €39.2 billion, which is an increase from the previous year, as planned in the 2019-2025 military program law. Of this, a record €22.3 billion is earmarked for modernizing equipment and buildings; €12.3 billion will go toward wages; and €4.6 billion is appropriated for operating costs.
The government's department focused on veterans' affairs is to receive €2 billion of the total defense budget, and the remaining €8.5 billion will go toward pensions.
What about the recovery plan?
In early June, the government revealed a series of recovery plans aimed at specific industries particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Though the defense sector was not the sole target of the €15 billion aeronautics recovery plan, it nevertheless benefits from the funds, given France's aeronautic giants — Airbus and Dassault Aviation — are active in both the civilian and military sectors, as are their two major suppliers, Safran and Thales.
There are about 1,300 companies ranging from startups to major firms in the French aeronautics sector, and they employ approximately 300,000 people.
The recovery plan is not aimed at the four major companies, but rather in helping their supply chain involved in specific projects, such as modernizing production tools, research and development efforts, and digital transformation.
As a condition for receiving the government funds, the four large companies promised to “consider favorably” offers made by suppliers in France and within the European Union based on global cost, while also taking into account litigation risks, the reliability of after-sales services, the conformity of products and services, their societal and environmental responsibility, and their innovation.
The Armed Forces Ministry is participating in the recovery plan by spending €832 million on five measures to ensure “an immediate workload for the whole sector.”
The first measure was to anticipate an order for three A330 Phénix multirole tankers, a move enabling the Air and Space Force's two A340 aircraft to retire from service this year instead of in 2028, and its three A310 aircraft to retire in 2021 instead of 2023.
The second measure is an order for a light surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft; the third is an early order for eight H225M Caracal helicopters for the Air and Space Force; and the fourth is for a naval airborne drone system (known by its French acronym SDAM) and an onboard mini-drone (SMDM).
The fifth measure is for 12 helicopters (two EC-145s and 10 EC-160s) for the Gendarmerie and the civil security force.
The ministry's contributions also include €300 million in subsidies for suppliers and subcontractors, as well as €1.5 billion spent over the next three years to support R&D and innovation.
What are the defense funds going toward?
Under the defense budget, the Army will procure:
The Navy is procuring:
The Air & Space Force is acquiring:
The service is also ordering one HIL light joint helicopter; 367 MICA NG air-to-air missiles; 150 Mica NG training missiles; and 13 Syracuse IV ground stations. Two major programs for the service will also be launched in 2021: the Mentor training aircraft and the future combat air system demonstrator.
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February 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump's defense budget request for fiscal 2021 includes major investments in research and development portfolios as well as “crucial” technologies as part of what the Pentagon is branding an “irreversible implementation” of the National Defense Strategy. However, the budget also features overall cuts to the Army and Navy top lines, as well as the divestment of legacy platforms from the Air Force. The president is requesting $705 billion for the Defense Department, including $69 billion in overseas contingency operations, or OCO, wartime funds. Total national security spending, including for the National Nuclear Security Administration and other outside agencies, is $740 billion, as set by a congressional budget agreement last year. Although not included in the budget documents, total top-line projections over the Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, are $722 billion in FY22, $737 billion in FY23, $753 billion in FY24 and $768 billion in FY25, according to a senior defense official. Service budget top lines are $178 billion for the Army, a drop by $462 million from FY20 enacted levels; $207 billion for the Navy, down $1.9 billion from FY20; and $207 billion for the Air Force, up $1.7 billion from FY20. The budget also requests $113 billion for defensewide efforts, which includes the so-called fourth estate agencies, down $6.5 billion from FY20. Overall procurement funding sits at $136.9 billion. The OCO request of $69 billion is down dramatically from last year's $164 billion, and it comes in three flavors: $20.5 billion in “direct war requirements,” or funding for combat operations that will end at some point in locations like Iraq and Syria. $32.5 billion in “enduring requirements,” which covers funding for the sustainment of bases, as well as pots of money like the European Deterrence Initiative. $16 billion in “OCO for base,” a funding mechanism for money that could be in the base budget but is classified as OCO for the purpose of skirting budget caps imposed by Congress. Projection for OCO funding falls $20 billion in FY22 and FY23, and then to $10 billion for FY24 and FY25, as “certain OCO costs” are absorbed by the base budget, according to the White House's summary tables. There's no nondefense discretionary OCO proposed for FY21 or the out years. “This is a budget that makes difficult choices but they are actually choices that support the National Defense Strategy,” a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity ahead the budget rollout. “We can't have the best of everything in all areas,” the official added. “The low-hanging fruit is gone.” Among the tough choices: retiring 17 B-1 bombers, 44 A-10 planes, 24 Global Hawk drones, as well as 16 KC-10 and 13 KC-135 tankers from the Air Force. “When you look at these aircraft, they disproportionately take too much of the readiness account. That's where we've got to go,” the official said. “Those are really the tough choices we had to make. Because we can now take the additional manpower, the [spare parts], all those things we need to make those other aircraft more operationally available and have more flight hours available in the mission we need them to do.” Congress usually revises presidential budget submissions substantially before passing them into law. A prime target for lawmakers this year will be the Trump administration's favoritism for defense spending over nondefense, which contradicts the rough parity between two that's characterized bipartisan budget deals in recent years. Congress will also likely upend the administration's FY21 proposal to cut the nondefense base budget by 5.1 percent while adding 0.08 percent to the base defense budget. There are slim odds for Trump's proposal extending budget caps — set to expire next year — through 2025, wherein defense would increase by roughly 2 percent each year as nondefense discretionary decreases 2 percent each year. ‘Irreversible' Budget documents were branded with the phrase “irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy,” a notable signal in an election year that, should Trump not be reelected, could result in major changes to the national budget and American strategy come January. The branding in support of the NDS can be found throughout the document, even at lower levels. For instance, the Pentagon's security cooperation account has been rebranded the “NDS Implementation (NDS-I) account.” Missing from the budget request are funds for Trump's border wall with Mexico. However, CNN reported this weekend that “billions” of defense dollars will be going toward the wall effort, with an announcement expected later this week. Key defense spending accounts break down like this: Mission-support activities: $66.8 billion Aircraft and related systems: $56.9 billion Shipbuilding and maritime systems: $32.2 billion Missiles and munitions: $21.3 billion Space-based systems: $15.5 billion Ground systems: $13 billion C4I systems: $11.9 billion Missile defeat and defense programs: $11.6 billion The department is requesting $106.6 billion to fund research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) efforts, an increase of $2 billion over the FY20 enacted figures — something another senior defense official called the “largest [RDT&E] request in over 70 years.” Funding for that came from savings from the defensewide review, which found $5.7 billion in money to reprogram in FY21, as well as the retirement of older platforms. Four “crucial” technologies are now bunched together under a new acronym — ACE, which stands for advanced capability enablers: hypersonics at $3.2 billion, microelectronics/5G at $1.5 billion, autonomy at $1.7 billion, and artificial intelligence at $800 million. However, for the second straight year, science and technology funding for early technology development (the Pentagon's 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 accounts) is requested at $14.1 billion; that includes $3.5 billion for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Congress plussed that funding to $16.1 billion in FY20 enacted levels, meaning the request here is $2 billion less than what the Pentagon received this current year. Cyber activates total $9.8 billion, including $5.4 billion for cybersecurity-focused projects. The rest of the funding goes toward supporting defensive cyber operations. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2020/02/10/pentagon-budget-request-increases-rd-funding-cuts-legacy-planes/