New Delhi, November 18, 2022: The head of U.S. Marine Corps budgets said he’s more confident the Corps’ needs will be addressed in the upcoming fiscal 2024 budget than he was at this time last year about the FY23 budget.
In the last two budget cycles, several of the Marines’ needs have been pushed out of the budget, as the Navy — which funds the construction and maintenance of the amphibious ships the Marines use — grapples with more needs than it can afford.
The Marines rely on these larger ships to haul Marine Expeditionary Units, and they want the new light amphibious warship to move around smaller formations as part of emerging operational concepts.
Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney, speaking Thursday at a Marine Corps Association event, referred to Marine items cut in the FY23 budget-making process as ones “we were trying to defend, that we were trying to appeal, that we were trying to recover and get those resources back.”
As the mid-October deadline to finalize the Department of Navy request grew closer, however, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith told Defense News top Navy and Marine Corps leadership were “making genuine progress to ensure that operational commanders have the amphibious ships they need to execute the missions they have been assigned.”
Neither the Navy nor the Marine Corps has disclosed the details of a potential compromise.
“We’ll see what happens in the budget, but as I stand here right now, going into the … post-program review for ‘24, I feel a lot better,” Mahoney said. “Whether it’s wholeness of the program costs, scheduled performance of each of our or other items, I feel better.”
Mahoney, who spoke at length about the Marines’ vision for its future under its Force Design 2030 modernization effort, said early talks about the FY25 submission are already taking place, and the clarity of the requirement for Marine spending in outyears makes him “feel very, very good about how we entered into the planning and then the programming phase of ‘25.”
