Center for American Progress slams Navy/Marine Corps Budget allocations.

The Center for American Progress has published a write-up of the latest from the House Armed Services Committee.  Suffice it to say that they're not pleased with continued funding of many of the service's programs.  Read more here.

The HASC bill also includes $65 billion for Navy and Marine Corps procurement despite Secretary Gates’s recent speech before the Navy League calling on the service to reexamine its force posture in the current operating environment. As Gates noted, the United States will maintain 11 carrier strike groups through 2040 when no other country has more than one. The $65 billion includes $5.1 billion to fund two Virginia class submarines—the first time the committee has ever authorized two of these boats in one year. And the committee’s FY 2011 authorization includes $1.7 billion in advance funding toward the purchase of two more Virginia class hulls in FY 2012. Including funding for the advanced purchase of these two submarines creates a strong incentive for lawmakers to allow the program to proceed in next year’s budget, which essentially ensures that the same misguided spending evident in this year’s markup will continue in FY 2012.
The list goes on. The HASC bill includes $361 million over what the administration requested for funding for ballistic missile defense despite the fact that the Pentagon already increased the budget by over $300 million from a year ago. The increased funding, which then-Senator Obama campaigned against, would fund missile defense at George W. Bush administration-levels if approved by the House and the Senate. HASC also revived funding for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an unnecessary and deeply flawed amphibious vehicle that is vulnerable to the types of improvised explosive devices used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm not sure about many of the issues raised here.  What I do know is that the statement regarding the EFV is false.  It has been re-engineered to survive IEDs similar to those encountered in Iraq/Afghanistan.  I wonder what else they got wrong.