Editor’s note: This story is the third in a series about the economic impact of the defense industry in Vermont. Click here to read the first and second pieces, Vermont’s defense industry grows “under the radar,” and Cuts and F-35 debate raise doubts about military jobs.
“It’s almost impossible to terminate large defense contracts,” observed former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in a Memorial Day column. “Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others have made spending on national defense into America’s biggest jobs program.”
His main example was the F-35. After more than a decade in development the Pentagon and other nations want fewer of the aircraft than originally planned. But defense contractors, along with their allies in Congress, have fought effectively to protect the funding. Reich noted that lawmakers rarely vote to cut military programs, especially if the weapon will be built or stationed in their district.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has frequently called the F-35 costly and unnecessary, part of an effort to avoid across-the-board cuts by axing selected, overpriced weapons. But some members of Congress, including prominent Democrats like Sens. Patrick Leahy and John Kerry, have fought to preserve funding for the F-35’s alternate engine. In Leahy’s case it is a matter of jobs at the GE plant in Rutland.
The plane is supposed to ensure continued air superiority over Russia and China, whose aerospace ambitions provide a rationale to continue this division of the arms race. The primary developers, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, want an engine built by Pratt & Whitney. General Electric makes a competing engine and has spent years lobbying for the funding to develop its version.
Gates and senior Air Force brass don’t want GE’s model. And yet, in the midst of threatened military cutbacks, they may get it anyway. Due to the persistence of Leahy and others who want to help favored firms back home, hundreds of millions in new funding may be appropriated for a second engine program.
Reich’s overall prescription: save billions without jeopardizing national security by “ending weapons systems designed for an age of conventional warfare. We should shrink the F-35 fleet of stealth fighters. Cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. And take a cleaver to the Navy and Air Force budgets.”
Needless to say, that agenda is not on the budget table. But the Pentagon does hope to save $487 billion over a decade. The House of Representatives has nevertheless approved a $642 billion defense authorization bill for next year that basically blocks any meaningful changes in personnel and programs. Republicans have vowed to protect the defense budget even if it means breaking the sequestration deal made in 2011.
The House GOP budget, which includes deep cuts in domestic programs, would bring defense spending back to a pre-austerity level. In the Senate plans for future Air Force National Guard jobs are on hold – at least for a year – while governors, rarely receptive to defense cuts affecting their states, are given an opportunity to weigh in.
When service cuts were contemplated earlier this year the initial rationale was that the Air Force had already drawn down enough active duty members. The Air Guard therefore needed to shrink for the sake of balance. But advocates like Leahy have now countered with the argument that reservists cost the government far less than active duty forces.
During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing last week on the National Guard and Reserve budgets, Leahy charged that the Air Force has just not made its case for the benefits of cutting the Guard.
Another provision being discussed in the Senate is capping reimbursements for federal contractor salaries at $237,000. The industry calls this idea naïve.
Adapting to uncertainty
Even if sequestration comes to pass Vermont’s Air Guard is not likely to feel significant impacts for a year or more. Part of the reason is the persistence and clout of Vermont’s congressional delegation, particularly Leahy, and Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, who was confirmed last week as new deputy commander of the Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the military’s homeland defense mission.
Prior to his appointment, Dubie led the Vermont National Guard for six years, along the way helping to get Burlington on the short list for bedding the F-35. His brother Brian Dubie, former lieutenant governor, trained on F-16s as a member of the Guard before going to work for Simmons Precision as a project manager. While in office he helped to found the Vermont Aerospace and Aviation Association, a division of the Chamber of Commerce that has actively promoted Burlington as a defense-friendly, preferred F-35 basing location.
In 2010 a high-profile VAAA event, held at the Heritage Aviation Facility, focused on Vermont as the ideal place for F-35s – small; affordable to modify, staff and maintain; and home of the 158th tactical fighter unit, the Green Mountain Boys. It was co-hosted by defense contractor Liquid Measurement Systems, which Leahy assisted in obtaining contracts for work on a crashworthy fuel gauging system for Blackhawk fuel tanks.
Gov. James H. Douglas signed a proclamation for the occasion, declared that February to be Aerospace and Aviation Appreciation Month, and presented a $30,000 check to fund preliminary work on a Burlington Aviation Technical Training Center. Among the 250 people attending the festivities were Stephen O’Bryan, Lockheed Martin’s “Customer Engagement” vice president for the F-35, Burlington Airport director Brian Searles, and Bill Gural, who represented General Dynamics.
This March, the U.S. Air Force proposed reductions of 3,900 active-duty, 5,100 Air National Guard and 900 Air Force Reserve positions. But the overall number assigned to the Vermont Air Guard base is expected to increase next year by six full-time positions. That will come mostly from replacing full-time guardsmen with active-duty personnel.
Although the precise plans could change, Vermont is currently expected to get 52 active-duty associates and 14 Air National Guard civilian technicians. They will replace about 60 guardsmen currently on full-time status who would return to part-time, announced Vermont Air Guard Brig. Gen. Steve Cray in March. Many Vermonters in the Air Guard currently work in Virginia at an air control alert facility on Langley Air Force Base that is slated for closure.
“The return to Guard status from activated status is usually what happens when you have drawdowns at the end of conflicts,” explains Stephen Pomeroy of Norwich University, a leading educational recipient of defense contracts.
As influential as the budget forecasts – and as likely as the F-35s is to influence the Air Guard’s future profile in Vermont – are declining retention numbers. Gen. Harry “Bud” Wyatt III, director of the Air Guard, notes that “uncertainty is beginning to take a toll on people. They’re wondering about their futures and whether they have time to invest in a unit that might not be here next year or changing to a mission that they don’t know what that might be.”
Active-duty transfers to the region are supposed to compensate for the fewer Vermonters working full time for the Guard. But the 66 on the way “do not replace the 57 full-time authorizations because community basing is an ongoing program,” Cray told lawmakers. The active airmen transferred to Vermont will be mainly pilots and technicians.
Even this may be re-considered. Leahy and other senators complained last week that proposed Air National Guard reductions are out of proportion with other cutbacks offered for the service. In the Senate, under questioning by Leahy, Wyatt told the Appropriations Committee members that as head of the Air Guard he still has questions about the justifications for the proposed cuts.
What concerns him primarily is what he does not know. “Not only not seeing that (Air Force) analysis,” Wyatt explained, “but also how we got to that analysis.”
