Navy, Air Force short-term funding woes

Afstan ramifications, in part. But I expect the government will come up with most of the money:

Both the navy and air force’s slice of the National Defence budget pie is being increasingly chewed up by the war in Afghanistan, federal documents reveal.

Background records, released as part of the Feb. 26 federal budget, acknowledge what members of the Forces have been saying privately for months: that the deployment in Kandahar is forcing the military to rob Peter to pay Paul.

The records say the war will "affect current defence planning" and additional costs not picked up by the federal Treasury Board will be absorbed in the overall defence budget.

In some cases it "will direct funding away from routine equipment and infrastructure maintenance."

"Readiness of the CF (Canadian Forces) may be affected, dependent on the degree of reprioritization required," the department’s report on plans and priorities said [see "Impact of Operations" at bottom here].

The budget woes come even though the federal Conservatives have increased spending at National Defence to $18.2 billion in the current year — a jump of $1.4 billion over last year.

The navy was particularly candid, stating that "in the current resource constrained environment, it is understood that there are insufficient resources to fully support all the operational readiness requirements."

That could potentially mean tying up ships [déjà vu? See this post from January 2007 At the beginning of the budget process, defence insiders say, the navy is promised a certain amount of dollars for sea days, fuel and expenses.

But the internal juggling act that follows leaves admirals holding their breath on whether they will make it through with enough money to end of the year.

In 2007, the navy needed a $5-million bump up in its budget in order to put to sea for a routine patrol. The navy is currently examining how ships are part of its high-readiness task forces on both coasts.

Things are not much better over at the air force.

Senior planners at the 1st Canadian Air Division in Winnipeg were asked last summer to study a proposed a 32-per-cent reduction in money used for fuel and spare parts.

At the time, defence sources told The Canadian Press that the proposal was being studied for the new budget year and the reduction would lead to less flying time for CF-18s, the C-130 Hercules, CP-140 Auroras and CH-146 Sea Kings.

Published reports on Thursday said Chief of Air Staff, Lt.-Gen. Angus Watt expressed those concerns to government and asked for an additional $540 million over three years [the Ottawa Citizen story by David Pugliese never mentions the three year span for the money--nor that many of the possible effects of budget shortfalls were reported last year].

A spokeswoman for Watt said the request was made last November and the air force has now received an increase for this year’s budget. "Although the initial allocation for the air force was below the required amount to meet all equipment demands, the government has since increased the funding by an extra $97 million [emphasis added]," said Lt.-Cmdr. Natalie Garcia.

The full DND 2008-09 Report on Plans and Priorities is here. See especially "Section II: Analysis of Program Activities by Strategic Outcomes". This from the "Overview" is not encouraging:

...
Overview of Human Resources
...
In order to ensure that the CF are better prepared and equipped to meet evolving domestic and international defence requirements, the Government of Canada indicated its intent to increase the size of the Regular Force to 75,000 and Primary Reservists paid strength to 35,000. CF force expansion is currently targeted at 68,000 Regular Force and 26,000 Primary Reserve paid strength personnel (achieved) by fiscal year 2011-2012 [emphasis added]. This growth will provide additional military personnel resources that will be used in the coming years to sustain international operations, to prepare for Olympics 2010 and to support CF transformation efforts...