Friday, July 23, 2010

As the Pentagon's budget begins to flatten, multiservice joint programs could translate into savings in some areas, but are not the be-all, end-all solution for cutting costs, the Air Force's top programmer said this week.

Of late, the Air Force and Navy have been increasingly been working together to create efficiencies, most notably on the air service's Global Hawk and sea service's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance programs, which share a similar airframe.

"There are clearly areas where joint programs . . . are what we are doing and where we are getting some efficiencies," Lt. Gen. Christopher Miller, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs (A8), said during a July 22 presentation at an Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, VA.

"There may be . . . the opportunity to eliminate some overlap and duplication," he said. "If you look at the way we are inherently set up within DOD with the organize, train and equip tasks being assigned to the services, there are absolutely career synergies at the joint operational level."

Still, the three-star noted that joint programs are "not a panacea," and that all the services are feeling the growing pains associated with joint basing.

"It also presents some challenges in terms of deciding how the two or more departments will resource something," Miller said. "It requires us to coordinate more closely across the departments as we're all going through some pretty complex resourcing processes to make sure we get it right."

The Air Force and Navy are working together on an AirSea Battle concept, which includes plans for working together in a joint fight. During warfighter talks earlier this year, both services discussed how they would fund related initiatives in the fiscal year 2012 program objective memorandum.

-- Marcus Weisgerber