Infrastructure, manpower, incentive pay funds sought

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By Christian Lowe
Staff writer

The Marine Corps will ask Congress for close to $1 billion more to fund incentive pays and other manpower bills and hundreds of millions in extra dollars for infrastructure — including new bachelor enlisted quarters — through 2013, while cutting aircraft and amphibious vehicles to make up the costs, according to a preliminary five-year budget estimate.

The Corps plans to build 16,330 bachelor enlisted quarters for staff sergeants and below and refit the barracks and other facilities at The Basic School in Quantico, Va., with $230 million from 2008 through 2013, according to a draft of the executive summary of the Corps’ Program Objective Memorandum ’08 — a yearly budget estimate looking forward five years.

The new construction and manpower perks will come at the cost of two of the Corps’ most sought-after weapons programs, including a 14-month delay in the fielding of a jump-jet version of the F-35 Lightning II and a cut in yearly MV-22 Osprey buys totaling 25 aircraft through 2013. Budget officials also slashed the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle budget by 43 percent to pay for more tactical vehicles to transport troops in a variety of environments, the summary said.

The POM summary, obtained by Marine Corps Times, was first reported by “Inside Defense” newsletter.

The budget summary comes as Congress is still wrangling over the 2007 defense appropriations bill, which would fund military operations and pay — not including the cost of operations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are typically funded by supplemental bills — starting Oct. 1.