Obama, Now Biden, Guts the Military

[Ryan Ruck]

I remember thinking when Obama got elected, "I hope my 401k manager isn't putting my money in any defense stocks!" Defiitely hoping that now.

[Ryan Ruck]

The Case for Reviving the F-22 Fighter

February 24, 2011

As Congress begins to take up the Obama administration's defense budget, one item not even under discussion needs to be considered. Events of the past 18 months have made clear that it's time to rethink the fate of the F-22 Raptor. The presumptions that led the Senate to cancel funding for this fighter have been turned upside down, as new threats have emerged and old ones have become clearer.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised that America's airpower needs will be served by the still-unfinished F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). But that airplane will be smaller, slower and less lethal than the F-22, and its future is becoming more cloudy with every new development delay. Most importantly, the F-35 simply was not designed to do the F-22's job, leaving America's global air dominance in doubt against emerging threats.

The reasons Mr. Gates gave for recommending that the F-22 be killed included the $250 million cost of each plane, the need to reorient the military to fight today's wars, the lack of any peer challengers, and the presumption that the quantity of F-35s would be equivalent to the quality of the F-22s. In July 2009, Congress agreed with Mr. Gates and voted to strip the program of funding. The result will be a force of 186 Raptors (one having crashed late last year), though of this rump fleet, only 130 or so will be combat- capable. Readiness, maintenance and scheduling demands will reduce the operational force to merely 30 or so F-22s globally available to throw into a fight at any given moment.

This article is available in full by subscription to the Wall Street Journal. The full text will be posted to AEI.org on Monday, February 28, 2011.

[Ryan Ruck]

No, let's not cut welfare for the +24" wheel Escalade driving leaches. Let's instead cut the meager pay and benefits for the guys bleeding, dying, and getting worn down on multiple overseas deployments where they won't see their loved ones for many months if ever again.

Mullen Says Pay, Benefit Cuts 'On the Table'

June 3, 2011

The Pentagon's top officer said Thursday that servicemembers will likely see cuts in pay and benefits as the military plumbs its budget for nearly half a trillion dollars in savings over the next 12 years.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen warned against taking the "relatively easy" choice of cutting hardware while maintaining the increasing costs of paying and providing ongoing health care to troops and retirees.

"Two of the big places the money is, is in pay and benefits," Mullen told defense reporters at a June 2 breakfast meeting in Washington. "And so when I say all things are on the table, all things are on the table."

In May, President Obama proposed sweeping budget cuts totaling $400 billion over the next 12 years -- a fiscal hit experts say will largely come from the DoD. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said health care costs are "eating the Department of Defense alive" -- with nearly 10 percent of the budget going to health benefits for active and retired servicemembers.

"Sustaining … the weapons and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who use them is increasingly difficult given the massive growth of other components of the defense budget, the 'tail' if you will -- operations, maintenance, pay and benefits, and other forms of overhead," Gates said in a May 24 speech. "America's defense enterprise has consumed ever higher level of resources as a matter of routine just to maintain, staff and administer itself."

Mullen went further, saying savings should be found in pay and benefits costs before cuts to programs and personnel.

"We need to avoid just making the relatively easy decision [to] just cash in force structure," Mullen said. "We have to go through everything else -- and 'force structure' are platforms and people -- before we get to that point, because that's why we're here."

He added that these cuts will likely need to be made in the next few years in order to "start to generate cash in the out years."

The U.S. doesn't face the same world it saw after the Vietnam War, Mullen argued, when Congress and the Pentagon slashed defense by nearly 40 percent. The threats to U.S. security are real and growing, so gutting aircraft and ship programs would undercut American defense, he said.

"I'm not satisfied with the idea that 'let's just be the best counterinsurgency force we can be in the future,' and that's it," he said. "We still have high-end warfighting requirements that we're going to have to resource, and those are important programs."

Mullen, who's due to leave his post this fall, said the Pentagon is still working out the options on where to find the $400 billion in savings. And while he wasn't sure where the White House would come down on the issue, he was firm in his belief that preserving future hardware is a top priority for the DoD.

"We're at the point where … we have to present 'here are options to execute this,' and those are then decisions that the president has to make," Mullen explained. "So we haven't gotten to the specifics of [whether] the White House supports X, Y and Z."

[Ryan Ruck]

West Texas Reps Avert Dilution Of B-1 Program

July 8, 2011

B-1 bombers just got another buffer against threatened cuts, thanks to the West Texas delegation.

A new amendment prohibits the military from using funds from the 2012 military spending bill to retire B-1s.

The amendment to the $649 billion bill approved Friday in the House bears the name of three West Texas lawmakers, including Rep. Randy Neugebauer.

"After seeing the retirement of over 700 bombers during the last several decades, it is in the best interests of our national security to make the right decisions with this scarce asset," the Republican from Lubbock said.

Dyess Air Force Base in Neugebauer's district is home to the 7th Bomb Wing and 36 B-1s, the bulk of the Air Force's fleet of 66 planes. Bombers are also assigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

Neugebauer, San Angelo Rep. Mike Conaway, West Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry and South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem pushed the amendment bearing their names.

They cited concerns about how the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty will affect the number of bombers in the U.S. military.

The treaty requires the United States and Russia to cut the number of weapons able to deliver nuclear payloads, possibly leading to more U.S. reliance on conventional bombers like the B-1.

So they pushed the amendment to squelch the funding of B-1 retirements.

"This amendment would give the Air Force time to review our bomber force comprehensively," the lawmakers said in a letter to their colleagues.

The amendment is the latest legislative salvo from lawmakers seeking to preserve B-1s, a workhorse in the wars in the Middle East.

The Senate approved a 2012 defense authorization bill in June requiring the Air Force to submit a detailed plan to Congress before retiring any B-1s.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn pushed for the provision, which doesn't specify which types of B-1s can be considered for retirement.

To meet White House demands, the Air Force has proposed cuts in combat and training aircraft that could shave four B-1s from Dyess.

But the House plan, approved May 26 in the House version of the defense authorization bill, spares Dyess from losing as many as 200 positions and as much as $40 million.

The House bill requires cuts to come from six reserve bombers — not B-1s used for combat and training.

The House plan also forbids retiring B-1s until 2018 or the development of a new bomber.

The fate of B-1s hangs in the balance until the House and Senate hammer out a compromise defense authorization bill setting military policy, as well as a compromise on a defense-spending bill.

Neugebauer said the passage of the amendment Thursday to the House military spending is the first step in a long legislative process.

"I am hopeful my colleagues in the Senate will share my belief that no B-1s should be retired during this time of war against our enemies," Neugebauer said.

[Ryan Ruck]

AF Hopes To Shrink Airlift Fleet

July 18, 2011

The Air Force would like Congress to reduce the number of airlifters it’s required to keep flying, according to a report last week in the Warner-Robbins Patriot. Here’s how the newspaper broke it down:

In his prepared remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Duncan McNabb, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, said the C-5A retirements would “improve aircraft availability by removing maintenance intensive jets from the fleet and allow us to focus our critical maintenance, aerial port and aircrew personnel and resources on a right-sized fleet.”

McNabb said the most recent Mobility Capabilities and Requirements Study 2016 completed in February justifies repeal of the congressionally mandated 316 aircraft minimum.

“The strategic airlift aircraft reduction will allow the Air Force to retire an additional 15 C-5As and provide a substantial savings by freeing up over $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars across the five-year defense plan,” he told the committee.

The Air Force loves its M-variant C-5s — like this one — and it would keep those. The Patriot reports that if Congress agreed, the reduction would leave the Air Force with 27 C-5As, 52 C-5Ms and 222 C-17s.

Looks like they want to downsize an already heavily strained airlift fleet.

See:
Boeing Says To Fund C-17 Production Itself

Russian Aircraft Transports ANG Rescue Helicopters

Pentagon Envisions End Of The C-17

[American Patriot]

Wow...

We don't have that many machines to begin with.

We've got 16 here at Peterson (all C-130s) and almost all of them are pretty old machines, all been upgraded a few times. I forget the models now. We keep something like four of them outfitted most of the time for MAFFSs (the fire fighting units).

[vector7]

Obama's Intent to Gut the Military

By Lurita Doan

7/25/2011

President Obama continues to push the notion that he wants a "balanced approach" to budget cuts, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the only spending cuts he is willing to contemplate are cuts in defense spending. The vast entitlement system that now eats the majority of tax dollars is, by contrast, not only on his list of programs to be sustained, but expanded.

Mr. Obama seems determined to protect the welfare state. He lacks the courage and the candor to admit to the unsustainablity of an entitlement system which has pushed the nation to the brink of insolvency as our debts continue to mount. Instead of addressing the source of the spending problems, it is becoming clear that Mr. Obama intends to hollow out the military. What folly! Only weeks ago, Obama signaled intentions to cut $400 billion from Defense, but key Democrats are already talking about even large cuts of $1 trillion to Defense.

Such a move would signal a broad American retreat from the world and erode our national defense for many years to come. Obama's military budget shenanigans are yet another reminder that the key characteristic of Obama’s involvement in any aspect of U.S. life--economics, policies or participation on the world scene—is that Obama's policies have left Americans with a weaker world presence as a result of his involvement.

Military spending is an area which, traditionally, in past years, Dems have loved to cut. Democrat eagerness to cut military spending is the result of a fundamental, ideological difference: the GOP believes the U.S. is served best by a strong military, both at home and abroad, while Dems believe that a more kumbaya, we-are-the-world, approach is the way to best protect America. Obama, who first launched his apologize-to-the-world tour on this premise, has never been a keen supporter of endeavors military. Obama's recent threats, that our veterans might not receive their retirement and disability checks if a debt ceiling-budget compromise is not reached by 2 August, just prove that point.

It seems clear that the $100 billion in defense cuts proposed in the FY2012 budget are merely the tip of the iceberg. Further cuts will likely be proposed because the budget dollars for defense are so big and because cutting in this area will appease at least one faction of the Dems ideological extremist base.

The Gang of Six proposal called for almost trillion dollars ($886 billion) in cuts from defense. Others have proposed that some direct cuts could come from canceling air craft carrier construction (not surprisingly, the Dems have pointed to the USS George H.W. Bush) as one of the possible candidates for cancellation.

Other proposals include the reduction of U.S. troops in Europe and Asia, as well as at home. Others propose to implement cuts to military health care, reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal and reduce the military research and development efforts and even revise the military pay and compensation scale.

Certainly, any of these proposals would reduce the amount of military spending, and thus reduce overall federal spending, but we would be weaker as a nation as a result. George Washington said: "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite." Obama seeks to render our military neither well-armed nor well-planned which calls into question our nation’s ability to remain a free people for long.

Meanwhile, over at NASA, the U.S. space program has, essentially, been canceled. Instead of pushing the agency to focus on its core mission and core competencies, Obama has allowed NASA to take itself out of the space business, and thus take the country out of space for the next 30 years. NASA's reduction of mission will result in thousands of jobs lost" as contractors for the shuttle program begin to lay off workers."

Worse, to put a man in space, America will now be required to pay Russia for shuttle space. Not too surprisingly, Russia has already stepped forward and declared that the next decade will be "the era of the Soyuz" as Russian space exploration continues.

The next U.S. president will inherit an economic disaster of a country on an epic scale, courtesy of the bungling of Obama, and his team of advisors, whose repeated efforts to stimulate the economy through government subsidies and increased regulation that punishes small business owners, has failed to yield significant growth in the economy or in jobs. The next president, courtesy of Obama's bungling, will also face a monumental, uphill task to restore the superior force and prestige of our military at home and abroad. For that, a new president, who believes in our country and believes in American exceptionalism is mandatory.

November 2012 cannot come soon enough.

[Ryan Ruck]

Could Blue Angels Fall To Federal Budget Ax?

August 5, 2011

The Blue Angels kick off their annual Seafair spectacle Saturday, thrilling the hordes, captivating future Navy enlistees — and burning an awful lot of jet fuel on the taxpayer's dime.

The debt-ceiling deal that President Obama signed into law Tuesday ushered in an era of budget cutting that could slash military spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The bill requires the Pentagon to trim $350 billion on its own. An additional $750 billion cut would kick in automatically if Congress fails to agree on how to shrink the federal budget by $1.5 trillion by late December.

That's the kind of lean budget that might invite a second look at the Blue Angels, which, after all, are essentially a $40 million-a-year aerial ad campaign.

To be sure, no one on Capitol Hill is proposing to ground the Blue Angels, the Air Force Thunderbirds or other flight-demonstration squadrons. But they could get caught in the cross hairs of a Congress that has already taken aim at the Defense Department's sponsorship of NASCAR races and ballooning spending on military bands.

The Blue Angels and similar programs "are going to come under increasing scrutiny," said Laura Peterson, a national-security senior policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, D.C.

The Blue Angels are paid out of the Navy's recruiting and advertising budget. Thus the aviators are not performing core national-security duties, Peterson said.

In a country that ended the draft nearly 40 years ago, the Blue Angels and their 700 mph aerobatics serve as mobile recruiting stations.

The Navy has requested $38.7 million for the Blue Angels for fiscal 2012.

The House last month approved a $649 billion budget for the Pentagon for the upcoming fiscal year, $119 billion of which will pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bill is pending in the Senate.

For Seafair, the Navy has a crew of 72 in town. Most were ferried by the Marines aboard a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft from Pensacola, Fla., said Lt. Katie Kelly, a Blue Angels spokeswoman.

Navy pilots flew the seven Boeing F/A-18 Hornets — older models whose tailhooks have endured plenty of arrested landings on aircraft carriers — from their base in Florida to Seattle.

The Navy charged Seafair organizers its customary fee of $6,000 per day of performance, or $12,000 total (no charge for buzzing Seattle and Bellevue during practice Thursday and Friday).

That nominal fee covers only a fraction of the cost of the flying shows, said Lt. John Supple, spokesman for Chief of Naval Air Training in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Supple did not have a breakdown for the costs of appearing at Seafair, but said they include fuel, lodging and per diem, among other expenses. Based on about 70 performances a year, the actual cost of each Blue Angel appearance would run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Already, an economy-minded 112th Congress has begun chiseling away at once-routine expenditures.

Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, inserted an amendment in the defense authorization bill to reduce Pentagon spending at NASCAR events. McCollum said the Army alone spent $12 million on NASCAR and drag races in 2011. The year before that, the National Guard shelled out $20 million to sponsor NASCAR stars Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon.

McCollum also proposed to take away $125 million from military bands, leaving the musicians with an annual budget of $200 million.

Rep. Norm Dicks of Bremerton, the top Democrat in the House Appropriations Committee and an ardent advocate for the Defense Department, voted for both cuts. House Republicans helped kill the NASCAR measure; the military-band amendment awaits an uncertain fate in the Senate.

George Behan, Dicks' chief of staff, said the looming cuts to military spending are several times larger than any belt-tightening envisioned before by the Pentagon's brass — or by Congress.

Behan said the Blue Angels are popular and serve an important purpose.

"Can we afford it? That is going to be the question," Behan said.

Bill Harper, McCollum's chief of staff, said her aides have discussed the Blue Angels and their high-priced aerial maneuvers.

"We're moving into an era in defense and (other budgets) where this is about essential activities, not extras," Harper said.

[Ryan Ruck]

General: Army To Cut 8.6% Of Troops

September 26, 2011

The U.S. Army in March will embark on a plan to cut 50,000 troops, or 8.6% of its soldiers, over five years, the service's personnel chief tells Army Times.

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick said the cuts will bring the Army's total force to 520,400 active-duty soldiers by October 2016, according to the Army Times report.

“We feel that with the demand going down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and given the time to conduct a reasonable drawdown, we can manage (the force reduction) just as we have managed drawdowns in the past,” Army Times quotes Bostick as saying.

The troop cuts will come in two phases, Bostick told the newspaper, with the first covering the 22,000 troops added to the service three years ago to support the troop surge in Afghanistan. A second phase will cover 27,000 slots added in the Grow the Army program, begun in 2007, he said.

The Army hopes to achieve the cuts through retirements, buyouts and voluntary and involuntary separations, Bostick told Army Times.

[Ryan Ruck]

Renamed this thread since Gates is out.

And wanted to post this...

Early Retirement for a Nimitz Carrier?

October 7, 2011

This is interesting. The Navy is thinking about retiring the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George Washington sometime in the next decade — roughly 25-years early, Defense News is reporting.

The move, designed to save money, would make the GW, commissioned in 1992 and originally slated to serve for 50-years, the very first Nimitz class carrier to be decommissioned.

According to Defense News’ Chris Cavas, the ship wouldn’t receive the mid-life refueling of her nuclear reactors that’s scheduled for 2016. She’d then serve until her current supply of nuclear fuel runs out — which is expected to happen sometime between 2016 and 2021.

Navy officials are also apparently considering disbanding one of the sea service’s 10 carrier air wings to coincide with the retirement of the GW — both moves would cut thousands of personnel positions and save equal sums of cash.

The Navy would need Congress’ permission to retire the GW early, since this would reduce the Navy’s big deck carrier force to 10 ships and U.S. law mandates an 11-carrier Navy. The currently has ten Nimitz class carriers along with the 50-year old USS Enterprise. The Enterprise will be replaced by the brand new USS Gerald R. Ford in 2015.

While the Navy isn’t confirming this, Chris Cavas is incredibly well sourced and knows the service and its ships better than just about anyone I know. It’s more than safe to assume this is under active consideration at the Pentagon as officials there try to shave $464 billion from DoD budgets over the next decade.

The other thing that’s safe to assume is that the Navy will get plenty of pushback both internally and externally on this idea. Nobody needs to be told that carriers are the backbone of the Navy and one of the keys to U.S.’ military dominance. Reducing the carrier fleet by just one ship will undoubtedly alarm some people given the fact that China is fielding its first, albeit refurbished carrier, and reportedly set to commission two brand new carriers in the coming years.

Remember this fact that Cavas points out:

Congress raised its collective ire only a few years ago when the service asked for permission to temporarily drop to a 10-ship fleet during the time when the Enterprise is decommissioned in 2013 and the Ford is commissioned in 2016. But when the request was resubmitted in an off-election year, virtually no objections were raised.

One veteran observer opined that the Navy could cancel or defer the refueling overhaul, but leave a specific request to decommission the ship until after the election.

Click here for the story.

[American Patriot]

Retire the Nimitz? wtf?

[Ryan Ruck]

Lawmakers Nix Light-Attack Aircraft Proposal

October 14, 2011

Lawmakers continue to reject the Pentagon’s attempts to deploy light-attack aircraft to Afghanistan as part of a combat experiment.

The House Appropriations and Armed Services committees and Senate Armed Services Committee rejected a $17 million U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) request for the Combat Dragon II program, according to a Pentagon reprogramming document.

For more than a year, the Pentagon has wanted to test propeller-driven planes outfitted with reconnaissance sensors and precision-guided weapons in combat to see if they can improve coordination between ground troops and aircraft.

But, lawmakers have not been receptive.

Last year, the House Armed Services Committee and House and Senate Appropriations committees rejected a $22 million DoD reprogramming request to deploy light-attack aircraft to combat as part of the Navy-initiated Imminent Fury program.

During the first phase of the Imminent Fury program, the Navy — and eventually Air Force — tested an Embraer Super Tucano, which featured integrated intelligence sensors and guided-weapons.

The services wanted to deploy four light-attack aircraft for six months as part of the second phase of Imminent Fury.

CENTCOM initiated the Combat Dragon II initiative late last year. Both Embraer and Hawker Beechcraft — which builds the AT-6 attack plane — had expressed interest in the Imminent Fury II program.

Military officials have been considering using 1960s-era OV-10 Broncos for the Combat Dragon II demonstration, according to sources.

A light attack aircraft like the Super Tucano in a COIN environment is greatly needed and, makes so much more sense than sending air superiority fighters like the F-15s and F-16s into the fight.

The A-1s and OV-10s were great assets in Vietnam and we've needed something like that in the WOT for a long time.

[American Patriot]

They tore UP the parking lot three weeks ago. They are removing about 200 parking spaces and "adding a road" right up to our west portals.


So much for security. And saving money. And not walking 600 yards into work through fences and security points. And... now we will walk 800 yards probably now.

And you know what? They are gaining... an extension of the west road right up to the portals. Apparently someone really didn't want to have to walk far, so fuck all those handicapped slots and the car pool slots we just lost.

And they can't fund a God Damned plane??????????

[vector7]

Obama Gets Defense Plan to Cut $450 Billion From Future Budgets

November 30, 2011, 4:08 PM EST

More From Businessweek

• Obama Says Congress ‘Must Act’ on Payroll Tax Cut Extension
• Obama to Speak on Payroll Tax Cut at 1:30 p.m. White House Says
• Enlists Clinton, 3M, Alcoa in $4 Billion Energy Initiative
• Obama Offers ‘Condolences’ to Pakistan Leader for Border Attack
• Senate Approves 2012 Pentagon Budget of $644.3 Billion

By Roxana Tiron

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon has given President Barack Obama a draft of its strategic budget review, one of the final steps before the Defense Department releases the results, according to an administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Pentagon is seeking to trim about $450 billion in spending over 10 years to meet deficit reduction targets as a result of the Budget Control Act, which Obama signed Aug. 2.

When asked about the timetable, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s spokesman said the Pentagon chief “directed a methodical, strategy-driven review of the defense budget to determine where we can find savings of more than $450 billion over ten years.”

“The Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership have been part of the process, and we have consulted along the way with the White House and the Office and Management and Budget,” spokesman George Little wrote in an e-mailed statement.

The Pentagon is “nearing completion” of the strategic review, which will guide the budget request for fiscal year 2013, according to Little. That request, which will go to Congress early next year, will be accompanied by a funding plan through fiscal 2017.

Panetta said the fiscal 2013-2017 budgets will be reduced about $260 billion as part of the $450 billion in cuts.

Weapons Cuts
The Defense Department won’t rely on weapons program cuts as the main way to meet its spending reduction goals, Deputy Comptroller Mike McCord said. “We are not going to look only at modernization,” McCord said today at a defense industry conference in New York.

The number of uniformed personnel, compensation, retirement and continued savings from efficiencies are getting more attention than major cuts in acquisition, according to McCord. The review is taking a “balanced” approach, he said Nov. 17.

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2013 budget request is not expected to reflect additional cuts up to $600 billion over 10 years, mandated after a special congressional supercommittee last week failed to reach an agreement on ways to reduce the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion.

Under the budget control law, the Pentagon would be hit with half of those automatic cuts starting in 2013. The remainder would come from other agencies.

Several U.S. lawmakers, including Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, say they will prepare legislation early next year to reverse the automatic defense cuts.

Representative Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, the California Republican who leads the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, said he will also introduce legislation to reverse the cuts.

“I will not be the armed services chairman who presides over crippling our military,” McKeon said in a statement Nov. 21.

[Ryan Ruck]

Army Slashing 8,700 Jobs As Budget Cuts Begin

December 9, 2011

With deeper budget cuts looming, the Pentagon is starting to cut back by trimming the Defense Department’s civilian workforce.

The Army said Thursday it is moving forward with plans announced in July to cut about 8,700 positions, using a mix of early retirement offers, buyouts and attrition to trim the jobs by the end of the fiscal year in late September.

“Army commands and agencies are continuing to take necessary actions to reduce their civilian on-board strength to meet funded targets established by the secretary of defense and reflected in the President’s budget,” Thomas R. Lamont, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said in a statement. “To the maximum extent possible, the Army will rely on voluntary departures to achieve these manpower reductions.”

The cuts will come in 37 states at 70 different locations across eight commands and agencies with nearly 90 percent of the cuts taking place within the Installation Management Command, Army Materiel Command and the Training and Doctrine Command. Most of the cuts are likely to occur in Virginia and Texas, where most of the DOD’s civilian workers are located.

In addition to eligible workers who retire, commanders will be able to use voluntary early retirement offers and buyouts to cut jobs, the Army said.

The failure of the bipartisan debt supercommittee means the Pentagon budget could be cut by a total of $1 trillion over the next decade — what defense leaders warn is a “huge” cut that would amount to a 23 percent reduction in the defense budget, resulting in furloughs and layoffs of “many” civilians and a reduction in the size of the military. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has warned that the cuts could be “devastating” for the Pentagon, creating a “substantial risk” that the country’s defense needs might not be met.

[Ryan Ruck]

Last F-22 Raptor Rolls Off Assembly Line

December 13, 2011

The final F-22 Raptor fighter jet rolled off the assembly line during a ceremony at the Lockheed Martin aircraft plant at Dobbins Air Reserve Base. The U.S. military is turning to the less costly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to complement its operational fleet of 187 Raptors, amid concerns in Washington that the $153 million F-22 is too costly and too high-tech for its own good.

Although foreign governments have expressed interest in purchasing the F-22, Congress banned its sale overseas out of concerns that the technology it carries is too sensitive to share. While the aircraft's supporters said such technology made the F-22 a formidable deterrent against emerging foreign powers, critics charged it was no longer needed in a post-Cold War environment -- pointing out that no F-22 has seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The F-22's official price tag of $153 million does not include research and development costs or retrofits and upgrades that were required to resolve a series of mechanical and software issues.

Although estimates are disputed, some critics say factoring in these additional expenses more than doubles the official cost of the plane.

Still, some members of Congress were reluctant to scrap the F-22 program because of the jobs it created.

F-22 production supports more than 900 jobs at Lockheed Martin's assembly plant in suburban Atlanta. However, company officials expect the discontinuation of the F-22 product line to have a neutral impact on jobs because of other projects underway at the facility.

Lockheed Martin's Marietta plant also produces C-130J military cargo planes, as well as installing wings on P-3 Orion aircraft and retrofitting huge C-5 transports.

Approximately 300 employees at the Georgia facility are building the center wing assembly for the F-35. And company officials say that number could increase to 1,000 as F-35 production ramps up.

[vector7]

Pentagon trimming ranks of generals, admirals

By Craig Whitlock, Published: December 28

With the Iraq war over and troops in Afghanistan on their way home, the U.S. military is getting down to brass tacks: culling generals and admirals from its top-heavy ranks.

Pentagon officials said they have eliminated 27 jobs for generals and admirals since March, the first time the Defense Department has imposed such a reduction since the aftermath of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The cuts are part of a broader plan to shrink the upper ranks by 10 percent over five years, restoring them to the their size when the country was last at peace, before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The changes are projected to save only a modest amount of money, but defense officials said they are symbolically important as the Pentagon adjusts to an era of austerity. The Obama administration proposes to squeeze $450 billion from defense budgets over a decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts will be triggered if Congress cannot agree on a deficit-reduction plan in the next year.

Thinning the ranks of generals and admirals is also necessary to make the military more nimble, said Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

“If 10 years of combat have taught us anything, it’s that flat is faster,” said Gortney, who was appointed last year by then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to review the number of top officers.

In March, Gates approved a plan to reduce the number of authorized billets reserved for generals and admirals from 952 to 850, giving the armed services five years to implement the changes.

In addition, 23 billets will be downgraded in rank; a job previously reserved for a three-star general, for example, will now go to a two-star.
Gortney said the military has eliminated 27 command slots since then — many of them key positions from the war in Iraq — leaving the Pentagon more than a quarter of the way to its goal of cutting 102 jobs.

Other command jobs are falling by the wayside as part of reorganizations that are eliminating the Army’s Accession Command, based at Fort Knox, Ky., and the Navy’s Second Fleet, based in Norfolk.

‘Brass creep’
In ordering the cuts, Gates said the military had succumbed over the years to “brass creep,” by adding a disproportionate number of jobs at the top. The number of four-star generals and admirals today, for instance, is roughly the same as in 1971, during the Vietnam War, even though the number of active-duty troops has shrunk by half.

The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are all expected to continue shrinking because of budget cuts, the end of the war in Iraq and the Obama administration’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Leon E. Panetta, the current defense secretary, backs Gates’s plan, according to Pentagon press secretary George Little. “The Secretary supports this initiative, and he is pursuing it in a way that ensures that outstanding leadership remains an indelible hallmark of the U.S. military,” Little said in an e-mail.

Some lawmakers, after years of questioning growth at the top, have praised the Pentagon for committing to a smaller military leadership. “The fact of the matter that you are looking . . . to deal with star creep is a very good thing,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Defense Department officials at an Armed Services subcommittee hearing in September.

[vector7]

Pentagon military review 'will axe US troops'

Comments (93)

The US is changing its military strategy after leaving Iraq and drawing down troops in Afghanistan

Related Stories

• US formally ends its war in Iraq
• Obama vows Asia-Pacific priority
• Panetta sworn in as defence chief

The US is to axe thousands of troops as part of a far-reaching defence review aimed at coping with huge budget cuts over the next decade, officials say.

The changes - to be unveiled on Thursday - are likely to end a decades-old policy of maintaining the strength to fight two wars at once.

President Barack Obama will announce the plans with Defence Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on Thursday.

The Pentagon faces more than $450bn (£288bn) in cuts in the next 10 years.

Another $500bn in cuts could be looming at the beginning of 2013, after a congressional committee failed to act on finding budget savings last year.

Despite this Mr Obama, wary of the upcoming presidential election, is expected to emphasise that the US military budget is continuing to grow, albeit at a slower pace.

US officials have sought to portray the president as taking a deliberate approach to defence spending, insisting any troop reductions will be informed by a review of strategy by commanders.

This review of US strategy is prompted by three broad factors.

There's the growing pressure on the defence budget in an age of austerity.

The commitment of US combat forces in Iraq is over and the developing draw-down of US numbers in Afghanistan makes this a good moment for a re-appraisal.

There is also a broader desire to re-orientate the focus of US defence policy away from the Middle East and towards Asia.

Today will not be the moment for detailed announcements about troops cuts and weapons programmes delayed or cancelled. But cuts there will be in due course, with more US troops likely to be brought home from Europe.

The US Army and the Marine Corps will be reduced in number and the US Marines will return to their traditional role as a rapid intervention force.

The focus for the future looks to be on what the Pentagon calls "the Air-Sea Battle" - the creation of forces capable of containing a rising military player in the Asia-Pacific region. Nobody says so explicitly, but it's China they clearly have in mind.

White House spokesman Jay Carney described the planned cuts as "surgical". The president is also reported to have been closely involved in the decision-making process.

No specific cuts or troop reduction figures will be announced on Thursday, reports say, but the White House said the review "will guide our budget priorities and decisions going forward".

Reuters news agency says officials are considering a 10-15% reduction in the US Army and Marine Corps over 10 years - equivalent to tens of thousands of troops.

Future in Asia The US is expected to make several large long-term strategic changes as a result of budget pressures, including reducing the overall number of ground troops and strengthening air and naval power in Asia.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says more US troops are likely to be brought home from Europe.

Our correspondent says the focus for the future looks to be on what the Pentagon calls "the Air-Sea Battle" - the creation of forces capable of containing a rising military player in the Asia-Pacific region. He says it is clearly China that the US officials are thinking of.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta made clear last autumn that Asia would be central to US security strategy, including countering China's influence in the region, describing the Pacific as a "key priority".

Backing away from a potential two-war footing has been debated in the Pentagon for years.

In June 2001, then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress the two-war strategy was "not working".

And when the US was in fact fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - the military suffered a shortage of manpower.

The expected change in strategy would prepare the US to fight one war while waging a holding operation elsewhere to "spoil" a second threat.

Officials say they are using recent examples to guide their decisions.

"As Libya showed, you don't necessarily have to have boots on the ground all the time," an unnamed official told Reuters. "We are refining our strategy to something that is more realistic."

Yet many of the Nato allies in Libya are facing similarly tight defence budgets, and Mr Obama is likely to face criticism from defence hawks in Congress, including Republicans and those seeking to challenge him for the presidency in November.

[vector7]

Obama, Leon Panetta to unveil ‘more realistic’ vision for U.S. military

Reuters Jan 4, 2012 – 5:03 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 4, 2012 5:06 PM ET



WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will join top Pentagon commanders to unveil a new “more realistic” vision for the U.S. military, including cuts to ground force numbers as a result of budget strains, officials familiar with the plans said on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will hold a news conference fleshing out the contents of the strategic review of U.S. security interests after Obama’s brief remarks on Thursday at the Pentagon, the officials said.

They said the review would emphasize military investment in Asia as well as U.S. air and maritime power, while reducing the pace of growth in Pentagon budgets overall and relying less on ground troops for American engagement abroad.

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• US and Australia begin Deepening Military Ties
• Latin America and Caribbean States Forge New Anti-American BLOC
• SecDef Gates Floats Trial Balloon Of Eliminating The Marine Corps

Obama plans to cut tens of thousands of ground troops

Published: Thursday, 5 Jan 2012 | 9:56 AM ET



WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will unveil a "more realistic" vision for the military on Thursday, with plans to cut tens of thousands of ground troops and invest more in air and sea power at a time of fiscal restraint, officials familiar with the plans said on Wednesday.

The strategic review of U.S. security interests will also emphasize an American presence in Asia, with less attention overall to Europe, Africa and Latin America alongside slower growth in the Pentagon's budget, the officials said.

Though specific budget cut and troop reduction figures are not set to be announced on Thursday, officials confirmed to Reuters they would amount to a 10-15 percent decline in Army and Marine Corps numbers over the next decade, translating to tens of thousands of troops.

The most profound shift in the strategic review is an acceptance that the United States, even with the world's largest military budget, cannot afford to maintain the ground troops to fight more than one major war at once. That is a move away from the "win-win" strategy that has dominated Pentagon funding decisions for decades.

The move to a "win-spoil" plan, allowing U.S. forces to fight one campaign and stop or block another conflict, includes a recognition that the White House would need to ramp up public support for further engagement and draw more heavily on reserve and national guard troops when required.

"As Libya showed, you don't necessarily have to have boots on the ground all the time," an official said, explaining the White House view.

"We are refining our strategy to something that is more realistic," the official added.

President Barack Obama will help launch the U.S. review at the Pentagon on Thursday, and is expected to emphasize that the size of the U.S. military budget has been growing and will continue to grow, but at a slower pace.

Obama has moved to curtail U.S. ground commitments overseas, ending the war in Iraq, drawing down troops in Afghanistan and ruling out anything but air power and intelligence support for rebels who overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The number of U.S. military personnel formally assigned to bases in Europe - including many now deployed in Afghanistan - is also set to decline sharply, administration sources said, while stressing that the final numbers have not been set.

'BASICALLY DISAPPEAR'

"When some army brigades start coming out of Afghanistan, they will basically disappear," one official said.

Many of the key U.S. military partners in the NATO alliance are also facing tough defense budget cuts as a result of fiscal strains gripping the European Union.

The president may face criticism from defense hawks in Congress, many of them opposition Republicans, who question his commitment to U.S. military strength.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to hold a news conference to flesh out the contents of the review after Obama's remarks, which are also expected to stress the need to rein in spending at a time when U.S. budgets are tight.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the defense cuts stemming from an August debt ceiling deal - worth about $489 billion over 10 years - need to be enacted carefully.

"The president made clear to his team that we need to take a hard look at all of our defense spending to ensure that spending cuts are surgical and that our top priorities are met," Carney told reporters this week.

The military could be forced to cut another $600 billion in defense spending over 10 years unless Congress takes action to stop a second round of cuts mandated in the August accord.

Panetta spent much of Wednesday afternoon briefing key congressional leaders about the strategic review. Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said after speaking to Panetta that the review was an attempt to evaluate U.S. strategic priorities for the future rather than identify specific budget reductions.

Maintaining a significant presence in the Middle East and Asia, especially to counter Iran and North Korea, was a leading priority in the review, Smith said. So was making sure that military personnel are sufficiently cared for to guarantee the effectiveness of the all-volunteer force. Reductions in the size of U.S. forces in Europe and elsewhere are a real possibility, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain John Kirby said with the military winding down a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is appropriate to re-evaluate the role of U.S. forces abroad.

"From an operational perspective it's ... an opportune time to take a look at what the U.S. military is doing and what it should be doing or should be preparing itself to do over the next 10 to 15 years," he said on Wednesday.

"So, yes, the budget cuts are certainly a driver here, but so quite frankly are current events," Kirby said.