We have a new nominated Secretary of the Army and I will try to avoid any obviously way too cute headlines or puns.
He is another New York billionaire from outside of the DC establishment: Vincent Viola and vincent-viola
Not much on him. Military experience is:
- Graduated from West Point 1977.
- I gather he served a full five years in the Army (bio doesn’t state, but that was the standard at the time).
- Is a reserve major.
- Has been involved in founding and funding the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and several other projects.
Anyhow, I gather the real challenge with the Army over the last few years has been the budget. With DOD taking 50% of the sequestration cuts (which were really a big deal), it does appear that the Army took about half of those defense cuts. The nature of things is that the Army does not have a lot of big ticket production items, like F-35s and Littoral Combat Ships, that are difficult to cancel and hard to cut. Instead their costs are in personnel, which are easier to cut (except for the people who get cut). In the last 5-6 years the Army has dropped from around 570,000 to around 480,000 people and was slated to drop to 450,000. Trump has said he is bringing the Army back up to 540,000. Not sure where that figure comes from and have my doubts that it will actually occur.
See: us-military-personnel-1954-2014Â and end-strength
Anyhow, the budget for the Army is not going to be determined by Mr. Viola, although it may be influenced by him. There are lots of players involved in determining the budget and balancing the budget. The Trump’s administration’s first real budget will be next year, FY2018.
