Work: FY 16 Budget Request Targets Modernization Efforts Published Feb. 3, 2015 By Claudette Roulo DoD News WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2016 budget request for the Defense Department is strategy-driven and resource-informed, and will meet the United States' 21st century national security needs, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said today. The surest way to guarantee the opposite -- a resource-driven, strategy-deprived budget -- is to allow sequestration to return to full strength in 2016 as is mandated by law, Work told reporters during a news briefing announcing the budget request. Accordingly, he said, the requested budget is above the sequestration caps. The department's request for FY 2016 is $534 billion, he said, $36 billion above FY 2016 sequestration caps. In addition to the base budget, DoD is requesting $51 billion in overseas contingency funds to support the drawdown in Afghanistan and continue forward operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Ideal Balance of Ends, Ways, Means "At the requested levels," Work said, "we believe quite strongly that this budget is the best balance of ends, ways and means that we could possibly achieve, given the level of resources." The deputy secretary said that, even at the president's budget level, achieving a healthy balance between capacity, capability and readiness will remain a constant challenge. "And this is especially true with regard to maintaining our technological superiority in the 21st century," he said. The defense strategy as outlined in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review calls for a joint force to defend the nation, conduct a partner-centric global counter-terrorism campaign and to operate forward in multiple theaters, Work said. "This is a strategy that is designed to preserve U.S. global leadership and to help preserve global peace in the 21st century," the deputy secretary said. Global Security First Responder Like it or not, he added, the United States is the global security first responder of choice -- a status proven repeatedly over the past year as the nation responded to a variety of international crises. "The U.S. first led NATO in responding to Russian aggression in the Crimea and Ukraine, then formed an international coalition to fight against [the Islamic Sate of Iraq and the Levant] in Iraq and Syria, and finally, [responded] to the Ebola crisis in Western Africa," Work said. These responses come on top of an already volatile security environment that puts a heavy burden on the joint force, the deputy secretary said. "Today, there are about 211,000 servicemen and women around the world in 136 countries trying to preserve the peace or fighting against our adversaries," he said. "Now, in this very stressing and volatile environment, we constantly try to scrutinize whether our strategy, force structure, and global allocation of forces, if they're aligned with what we see happening in the world, and if it's keeping pace with emerging threats." Request Supports QDR Priorities The budget request takes the strategic environment into consideration, Work said, and supports the five key priorities of the 2014 QDR. Those priorities include the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, a strong commitment to Europe and the Middle East, a partner-centric global counter-terrorism campaign, strengthening key alliances and partnerships and prioritizing key modernization efforts. Sequestration delivered a "punch to the gut" to readiness and modernization efforts, the deputy secretary said. The compromise budget delivered by the Bipartisan Budget Act helped, he said, but modernization efforts are still being deferred and the department is accumulating risk. "The best way to say it is we've been surviving, but not thriving, over the past three years," Work said. The White House added about $21 billion in requirements over their proposed FY 2015 budget, specifically for modernization, the deputy secretary noted. "This is a deferred modernization problem and we're trying to tackle it in this budget and we need help above sequestration caps to do so. ... We look forward to Congress in addressing this problem," Work said. "We think this is the right budget." It's easy to say what the department will be unable to purchase if the budget request isn't approved, he said, but it's much harder to get at the strategic implications. "At that point, you would have to ask yourselves: 'All right, would you still be able to [respond to two crises] simultaneously? Would you still be able to have the same level of presence in our forward theaters? Would you still be able to respond in the timelines that we think we can respond to today?' And the answer to all three of those, in our view, is: not likely," Work said.