Impending Military Spending Freeze

[Dusty]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

The Pentagon will have to cut spending by $78 billion over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, forcing the Army and Marine Corps to shrink the number of troops on active duty and eventually imposing the first freeze on military spending since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

This Story
Gates wants to drop $14 billion Marine landing-craft program
Pentagon to cut spending by $78 billion, reduce troop strength
The surprise announcement from Gates was a reminder for the military establishment - which has benefited from a gusher of new money over the past decade - that it will not remain exempt from painful austerity measures that federal lawmakers say will be necessary to control the soaring national debt.

In a news conference to announce the cuts, Gates said he hopes that "what had been a culture of endless money . . . will become a culture of savings and restraint" at the Defense Department.

Gates had hoped to spare the Pentagon from the budget ax. Over the past two years, he cut dozens of expensive weapons programs and more recently sought to persuade lawmakers that the military had adopted a newfound thriftiness that would justify small but steady percentage increases in the size of its budget for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday, he said the armed services had successfully carried out a directive he issued in May to squeeze $100 billion in savings over the next five years by eliminating low-priority programs, thinning command structures and reducing overhead at the Pentagon. In return, he said, the Army, Navy and Air Force will get to reallocate nearly all of that money on new weapons systems and other combat-related projects.


But the fiscal realities facing the federal government led the Obama administration in recent weeks to order Gates to cut an additional $78 billion from its long-term spending plan.

The Pentagon will see a short-term boost in its budget next year to about $554 billion, excluding the cost of fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After that, however, annual spending increases will dwindle until they flatten completely in 2015 and 2016, with no extra money beyond the rate of inflation.

As a result, Gates said, the Army will cut the number of soldiers on active duty by 27,000 and the Marines by 10,000 to 15,000. Those trims will not take place until 2015, which is when Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pledged that his country's armed forces will take the lead responsibility for security there.

There are currently about 202,000 Marines on active duty, up from 175,000 in 2007. The Army has about 569,000 soldiers on active duty, including a temporary boost of 22,000 forces that will lapse separately in 2014.

[Pete]

If folks remember back before 2007. Think back, all the Dem's were crying big tears for the troops. All the stretched to thin stuff. The R's used that to pound away and get the few extra thousand troops we have now.

We talked about it here. You can't snap your fingers and Shazam - there's a full up Brigade ready to go to war.

Just think of all the money we could save if we disband all the Military and just send the welfare folks to fight when needed. Hmmmm. Maybe a new class of surrender monkeys - let the enemy feed them.

[DevilSide]

Reminds me of an old Gaelic saying, about not having them in peace and you will not have them in war. But what do I know? I'm in high school and they are college graduate politicians

[Richard]

Knowing how efficient and thrifty the DOD is, I'm sure it will be quite difficult to find any areas of unnecessary or wasteful spending that could be readily identified and trimmed from their budget.

Richard

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by Richard

Knowing how efficient and thrifty the DOD is, I'm sure it will be quite difficult to find any areas of unnecessary or wasteful spending that could be readily identified and trimmed from their budget.

Richard

They could start with that slush fund Obama set up and hasn't spent and leave the Military alone.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Richard

Knowing how efficient and thrifty the DOD is, I'm sure it will be quite difficult to find any areas of unnecessary or wasteful spending that could be readily identified and trimmed from their budget.

Richard

Cute, since the only department I have seen volunteer to cut their budget is DoD.

Why doesn't everyone else cowboy up and take a 10-20% cut out of their budget?

TR

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Cute, since the only department I have seen volunteer to cut their budget is DoD.

Why doesn't everyone else cowboy up and take a 10-20% cut out of their budget?

TR

TR,

That will be the day!......... The 2nd coming of Jesus will happen "before" they would ever consider what you just purposed......... The D's and R's wouldn't even consider it.............

Big Teddy

[Buffalobob]

Well, if you will remember Gates tried to reduce a unneeded military unit in Virginian and all the Virginia politicians of both parties turned out as we predicted to object to it. Budget cuts are only good when it is some one else's donkey in the ditch.

if anyone doesn't remember the thread I can go searching around for it.

I guess we will also be getting lots of jet engines that are not needed because it is patriotic to have lots of jet engines that don't have an aircraft to go into.

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Cute, since the only department I have seen volunteer to cut their budget is DoD.

Why doesn't everyone else cowboy up and take a 10-20% cut out of their budget?

TR

Will never happen voluntarily.........

DOJ was cut 18% across the board, we are going to be doing cases on bikes next. Guess Homeland Security needed to pay for some more toys that do not work.

[Snaquebite]

This was released today:

DOD Announces $150 Billion Reinvestment from Efficiencies Savings

Specifically, the Department of the Navy is proposing to use efficiencies savings to:

Accelerate development of a new generation of electronic jammers to improve the Navy’s ability to fight and survive in an anti-access environment;
Increase the repair and refurbishment of Marine equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Develop a new generation of sea-borne unmanned strike and surveillance aircraft;
Buy more of the latest model F-18s and extend the service life of 150 of these aircraft as a hedge against more delays in the deployment of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF); and
Purchase additional ships – including a destroyer, a littoral combat ship, an ocean surveillance vessel and fleet oilers.

The Department of the Navy proposed efficiencies savings of more than $35 billion over five years to include:

Reducing manpower ashore and reassigning 6,000 personnel to operational missions at sea;
Using multi-year procurement to save more than $1.3 billion on the purchase of new airborne surveillance, jamming, and fighter aircraft;
Disestablishing several staffs (but not the associated platforms) to include submarine-, patrol aircraft-, and destroyer-squadrons plus one carrier strike group staff; and
Disestablishing the headquarters of Second Fleet at Norfolk, Va., and transferring responsibility for its mission to the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command.

For the Department of the Air Force, this efficiencies process made it possible to:

Buy more of the most advanced Reaper UAVs and move essential ISR programs from the temporary war budget to the permanent base budget. Going forward, advanced unmanned strike and reconnaissance capabilities must become an integrated part of the service’s regular institutional force structure;
Increase procurement of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle to assure access to space for both military and other government agencies while sustaining our industrial base;
Modernize the radars of F-15s to keep this key fighter viable well into the future;
Buy more simulators for JSF air crew training; and
Develop a new long range, nuclear-capable penetrating bomber, which will be designed using proven technologies, an approach that should make it possible to deliver this capability on schedule and in quantity.

The Air Force proposed efficiencies measures that will total some $34 billion over five years and include:

Consolidating two air operations centers in the United States and two in Europe;
Consolidating three numbered Air Force staffs;
Saving $500 million by reducing fuel and energy consumption within the Air Mobility Command;
Improving depot and supply chain business processes to sustain weapons systems, thus improving readiness at lower cost; and
Reducing the cost of communications infrastructure by 25 percent.

The Department of the Army would use its savings to:

Provide improved suicide prevention and substance abuse counseling for soldiers;
Modernize its battle fleet of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and Stryker wheeled vehicles;
Accelerate fielding to the soldier level of the Army’s new tactical communications network.
Accelerate procurement of the service’s most advanced Grey Eagle UAVs; and
Buy more MC-12 reconnaissance aircraft to support ground forces, and begin development of a new vertical unmanned air system to support the Army in the future.

The Army proposed $29 billion in savings over five years to include:

Terminating the SLAMRAAM surface to air missile, and the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, the next-generation missile launcher originally conceived as part of the Future Combat System;
Reducing manning by more than 1,000 positions by eliminating unneeded task forces and consolidating six installation management commands into four;
Saving $1.4 billion in military construction costs by sustaining existing facilities; and
Consolidating the service’s email infrastructure and data centers, which should save $500 million over five years.

http://www.defense.gov/releases/rele...eleaseid=14178

That totals $98 Billion Army/Navy/Air Force

[Richard]

It's like the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show:

"Hey, Rocky...watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat...."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRW7p...eature=related

But I wouldn't discount Gates' political acumen in all this:

The plan also identifies a separate $100 billion in savings, including the cancellation of a $14 billion amphibious Marine vehicle. But here's the catch: The Marines, like the other military services, will be able to plow a lot of the savings into other programs; they'll upgrade their current amphibious vehicle.

"My sense is that he's actually pulled off one of the great Houdini acts of our time," said Kori Schake, who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. "What Gates has actually done is move $100 billion from his existing budget to his existing budget."

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/06/132712...on-from-budget

And so it goes...

Richard