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May 8, 2012
February 14, 2012
The Congress directed CBO to review the modeling techniques that the military services use to generate their budget request for activities associated with operational readiness. CBO focused on identifying models used to inform the operating forces portion of the services' base budgets for operation and maintenance. CBO included only those models used at the services' headquarters.
CBO found that:
Using models does not guarantee good budgeting; not using them does not equate to bad budgeting.
Operating forces is the largest budget activity within the services' budgets for operation and maintenance. Funding for operating forces pays for the training of combat and support units, as well as the maintenance and operation of most service installations. CBO did not review budget models outside of the operating forces activity.
For the purposes of this study, CBO defined a model as:
a set of mathematical relationships or similar logical expressions that link a military service's activities, such as training and maintenance, to the cost of those activities.
Additionally, CBO:
February 9, 2012
Through September 2011, about 740,000 veterans from overseas contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had been treated by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). That number is slightly more than half of all recent veterans eligible for care by VHA.
VHA spent about $2 billion in fiscal year 2010 to provide medical care to all recent combat veterans.
Using data for recent veterans treated by VHA from 2004 to 2009, CBO found that:
Average Costs for First Year of Treatment | |
Recent Veterans | |
With PTSD | $8,300 |
With TBI | $11,700 |
With PTSD and TBI | $13,800 |
Recent Veterans with Neither Condition | $2,400 |
Those amounts do not include initial care provided by the Department of Defense (DoD) or care by other providers outside of VHA. For comparison, VHA estimates that the average cost of care in 2011 for veterans of all eras will be $9,100.
VHA’s average costs for patients were highest during the first year of their care and declined and then stabilized in subsequent years. In the data CBO analyzed, VHA’s average costs for patients with TBI (including those with both TBI and PTSD) appear to increase in the third and fourth years. That result is probably generated by a policy change (occurring in the middle of the period CBO analyzed) related to screening for mild TBI. Without that change, costs for those patients would probably also have been highest during the first year of care and declined and stabilized thereafter.
Those results exclude about 500 patients with severe multiple injuries that received treatment in VHA's polytrauma centers; costs for those patients were significantly higher.
CBO’s study examines data from veterans who sought treatment at VHA. Those data may not be representative of the overall population of recent veterans. A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the prevalence of PTSD and TBI within the population that deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other researchers have estimated that:
The Navy established a goal for a fleet of 33 amphibious ships in its 2012 30-year shipbuilding plan. Those ships are designed primarily to carry marines and their equipment into combat but also to perform other missions.
Under the current plan, between 2012 and 2041, the Navy will:
At any given time:
In 2007, the combatant commanders requested nine ships for routine deployment. That request could be accommodated with the existing fleet.
By 2010, the combatant commanders asked for 18 ships. (The number increased because the combatant commanders were being asked about "unconstrained" demand—how many ships they wanted in the absence of any fiscal or force structure constraint.)
Meeting the request for 18 ships with the existing force would substantially increase deployment time and reduce time in ships' home ports.
Over a 27-month (117-week) operating cycle: