The cost of the Army’s future combat systems modernization effort could eventually eat up over half of its annual procurement budget, leaving little money for purchasing other weapons systems such as helicopters or support equipment such as generators or ammunition, the Congressional Budget Office has said.
The Army estimates that the FCS program will require $8 billion to $10 billion each year starting in 2015, when it plans to start buying enough equipment for 1.5 brigades per year, CBO said in the study.
It said that if the service’s procurement funding remained at the same level in 2006 dollars, the program’s share of the service’s planned $21 billion procurement budget would rise from almost 6 percent in 2011 to roughly 50 percent in 2015 and remain at or above 40 percent through 2025.
However, the program has already experienced significant cost growth since it entered the development and demonstration phase in spring 2003 when the total cost for 15 brigades of equipment was $80 billion; the latest estimate for the same about is around $130 billion, or about 60 percent more than the original estimate.
Further, research and development costs in the Pentagon’s major programs tend to growth on average from 16 percent to slightly more than 70 percent and procurement costs increase from 11 percent to roughly 70 percent, CBO warned.
