Secret Brief On DoD Readiness Woes Set For House Members; HASC Hopes To Sway GOP Leaders

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/11/hasc-eager-to-sway-gop-leaders-on-dod-readiness-risks-sets-secret-brief-for-house-members/



Secret Brief On DoD Readiness Woes Set For House Members; HASC Hopes To Sway GOP Leaders
By Colin Clark
on November 08, 2013 at 12:01 PM

CAPITOL HILL: The House Armed Services Committee will hold an extraordinary classified briefing Thursday, open to all House members, on the state of readiness in the US military. Rep. Randy Forbes and other HASC members who pushed for the briefing hope it will help convince Speaker John Boehner and other key GOP leaders that the combined effects of the last 18 months of sequestration, the federal government shutdown, and the absence of a defense appropriations bill have had deep and worrying impact on the readiness of American’s military forces.

(Updated: The Government Accountability Office just released its own report on the impact of sequester so far. GAO's take, in brief? "DOD was able to mitigate some near-term effects" in fiscal year 2013, but as the service chiefs told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, their '13 tricks won't work in 2014, which will require much harder choices).

Now we wait for the Budget Conference Committee from the House and Senate to meet and come up with a plan by Dec. 13 to avoid the continuing run of spending crises we’ve suffered through the last few years. Few Washington insiders believe that the conference can do it, though we insiders certainly get it wrong from time to time. Forbes’ view?

~snip~

Thursday’s classified briefing “will focus on the current state of readiness of the combatant commanders to meet their wartime missions, the services’ readiness to provide trained and ready forces, and the challenges presented by sequestration. Briefers will also be prepared to discuss recent trends in service and unit-level readiness, prioritization of mission requirements, and levels of assumed risk within major war plans as a result of recent defense cuts,” according to the email send to all House members yesterday afternoon.


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