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NGAUS News Summary is compiled from various news outlets throughout the United States and is intended for informational purposes only. Republishing, reproducing, transmitting, or distributing this publication by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, outside of the organization is strictly prohibited. Use of these news items does not reflect official NGAUS endorsement.
Defense Budget Cuts Emerging
Source: CQ Budget Tracker
By George Cahlink
Jan 26, 2012
The Pentagon is this week previewing its fiscal 2013 budget request, which will seek lower defense spending as cuts are expected to hit the Army and weapons programs.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta hosted a bipartisan dinner Wednesday evening with the leaders of the congressional defense panels, where the budget was expected to be discussed, and on Thursday afternoon the Pentagon chief will preview the cuts for reporters. Full details are not expected until the president sends his request to Congress on Feb. 13. The Office of Management and Budget has already set the total amount for national defense in fiscal 2013, including nuclear weapons programs at the Energy Department and a few other activities, at $546 billion, as required by last year’s Budget Control Act (PL 112-25). War spending is not included in that amount, but, with the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s expected to be far less than last year’s $115 billion. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration will request $525 billion for the Pentagon in fiscal 2013, $6 billion less than the $531 billion appropriated for defense and military construction for fiscal 2012, while a Reuters report said the request would come in even lower, at $523 billion, with a war spending request of $82.5 billion.
The Defense Department will have to cut $450 billion over the next decade to meet spending caps set in the debt accord. Several media outlets, including AOL Defense and Bloomberg, are predicting cuts in weapons programs, among them the Air Force’s $13.9 billion Global Hawk RQ-4 unmanned surveillance plane, planned upgrades of Army Humvees and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program. The Pentagon is also expected to slash about 80,000 soldiers from the Army as part of its new national security strategy, which calls for smaller and more agile forces. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Army would be reduced from about 570,000 soldiers to roughly 490,000 over the next decade, but that no reductions would be made in special operations forces.
Pentagon to request 2 new rounds of BRAC
Source: Air Force Times, http://bit.ly/yD6Ugg
By Kate Brannen and Marcus Weisgerber - Staff writers
Jan 26, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to request, as early as Thursday, two new rounds of military base closures in the United States as part of the Pentagon budget-cutting process, according to defense sources. Panetta is scheduled to brief reporters at 2 p.m. ET Thursday on how the Defense Department will begin cutting $487 billion from projected spending over the next 10 years to meet the initial spending caps in the Budget Control Act.
To close or consolidate military bases in the United States requires legislation from Congress to create a bipartisan Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC), which then studies the problem and makes recommendations to the president and the defense secretary. The last round of BRAC took place in 2005 and the changes itimplemented were only completed in this past fall.
The new requests would seek authorization for the first BRAC in 2013, to be followed by another in 2015, one source said. The two new rounds of closures could reap savings in five to eight years, sources predict, but would cost money up front. Closing bases is hugely expensive in the short-run, one former Pentagon official said. There are the costs of relocating people and equipment, plus the costs of shutdown and the associated environmental impacts. Proposed base closings often are contentious, too, as legislators fight to keep jobs and spending in their districts.
“It’s going to be a tough sell,” a defense source said.
However, others see additional base closures as logical because the services are expected to cut tens of thousands of troops in the coming years. In September 2010, retired Gen. Roger Brady, then commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, said the Pentagon should close more bases, an opinion rarely voiced publicly by military officials.
“There’s big money there”, the general said at the time. “We have to have a BRAC where we actually close bases.”
Base closures could hit Army and Air Force installations hardest, because of the other cuts the Pentagon is planning, one industry source said.
Current plans, put in place before the Budget Control Act was passed in August, call for the Army to shrink from 547,000 troops to 520,000 by 2016. Most people expect that number to fall even further, possibly to 490,000 active duty soldiers, as part of an overall strategic shift. In a sign of changes to come, Panetta recently announced plansto withdraw two of four BCTs in Europe, starting in October. The Associated Press cites unnamed U.S. officials as saying the Army plans to slash the number of combat brigades from 45 to as low as 32 in a broad restructuring, and cut about 80,000 soldiers, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plans. Fewer soldiers require fewer bases.
With the Air Force, base closures could be tied to the type of aircraft the Pentagon decides to divest. For example, if the Defense Department decides to retire its B-1 Bomber fleet, it could make sense to close the bases devoted to that aircraft, one defense analyst said. While overseas bases could also face closure, the Pentagon does not require a congressional commission to make those recommendations.
In 2005, the BRAC commission recommended the Pentagon begin its next round of base closures in 2015. Sincethe last round of BRAC, the Pentagon has closed several installations and consolidated a number of service-specific bases into joint installations. For example, in New Jersey, McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix and Naval Air Station Lakehurst have been combined to form Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. The nearby installations now share administrative and support facilities.
The base closure announcement is part of a much broader effort to cut projected defense spending over the next 10 years. The Defense Department, according to sources, will also seek a commission to recommend changes to military retirements and other benefits. On Jan. 26, Panetta, along with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to unveil some of the details from the Pentagon’s 2013 budget. The Pentagon’s full five-year spending plan will not be made public until Feb. 13, when the White House sends its budget request to Congress. The Pentagon’s base budget is expected to be $525 billion, with an additional $82 billion provided for overseas contingency operations, which includes funding for troops in Afghanistan. The base budget number is directly shaped by the Budget Control Act’s cap on security spending, which is set at $686 billion for 2013. That has to cover funding for the Defense Department as well as the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
To meet these spending caps, the Pentagon is cutting some programs while boosting funding in other areas. As the budget rollout gets closer, details of the Pentagon’s decisions continue to emerge. The Army plans to cancel its Humvee recapitalization effort, known as the Modernized Expanded Capacity Vehicle, an industry source confirmed. The Air Force plans to cancel a number of aircraft programs as it shifts focus back to
core missions, including long-range strike missions. The service is expected to cancel the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft program, a joint effort between Alenia and L-3 Communications and a Huey helicopter recapitalization effort, known as the Common Vertical Lift Support Platform. The Air Force is also poised to stopproduction of one variant of the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk, a high-altitude reconnaissance drone.
Panetta Jumps Into Budget Fray With Plan To Cut Billions In Military Spending
Source: DEFCON Hill, TheHill.com Defense Blog
By Jeremy Herb
January 25, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday will delve into the details of a 10-year, $487 billion cut to Pentagon spending for the first time, ushering in a battle over the military budget that will rage all year long. Among the biggest changes that Panetta will announce is a reduction of 80,000 soldiers, a move that will lower the Army's force level from a record high of 570,000 to 490,000 troops, U.S. officials confirmed to The Hill. That would amount to a reduction of eight brigades, an official said. Panetta has also said that two of the four U.S. brigades in Europe would be withdrawn.
Some weapons programs are also likely to face the budget ax, such as the Air Force's RQ-4 Global Hawk drone and upgrades to C-130 planes. The F-35 fighter plane, the Pentagon's largest weapons system, will see delays in production, analysts said.
The Obama administration's budget request for 2013 is expected to include $524 billion for base Pentagon spending, a decrease of more than $45 billion from the 2013 budget projection that was provided last year. The figure is also a $7 billion cut from the $531 billion 2012 base budget approved by Congress last month, which would be the first reduction in Pentagon spending since the 1990s. That budget reduction, which was agreed to in last year's debt-limit deal, does not take into account an additional $500 billion in sequestered defense cuts that will take effect in January 2013 if Congress does not come up with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts.
President Obama outlined the new U.S. military strategy earlier this month during a trip to the Pentagon, with a shift toward the Asia-Pacific region and a reduction in the number of ground troops. "I've proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget," Obama said Tuesday at the State of the Unionaddress. The president's speech on the strategy revamp was light on details, however, and the full extent of cuts won't be known until the administration's budget is released Feb. 13.
Panetta's announcementThursday is designed both to highlight the biggest changes that are being made ahead of the budget release, as well as set the stage for the political fight to follow, defense analysts said. Some areas in the military will be affected more than others by the cuts, as the shift to the Asia-Pacific region places a higher emphasis on the Navy and Air Force. Panetta said over the weekend on the USS Enterprise that the Navy would not reduce its 11 aircraft carriers, which had been previously viewed as a potential target for cuts.
"The bottom line here isthat the next several years are likely to be a good time for sea power and long-range air power and a difficult time for ground forces," said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute.
It's still unclear whether some unresolved issues in the Pentagon budget, such as how the National Guard and Reserve forces are handled and whether there are changes to military benefits, will be tackled by Panetta on Thursday.
Once the administration produces the full budget, the budget debate will shift to Congress. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Hill that the top-line numbers are essentially locked in, although he complained that Republicans continued to criticize the new strategy and the budget cuts surrounding it.
"Certain Republicans are screaming bloody murder about it, even as they voted for the budget that required these numbers," Smith said. He added that having the top-line set could actually ease the congressional budget debate -- unless there is a strong pushback against some of the proposed cuts. "If you save $20 billion here, and Congress says no … then the strategy starts to fray, because then you have to find that $20 billion somewhere else," Smith said.
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), an Armed Services Committee member, said Republicans have accepted the initial $487 billion reduction from the debt deal, but are anxious about the potential for more cuts through sequestration -- which they say would decimate the military. Conaway told The Hill that Republicans would likely oppose some of the ways the president proposes to trim the defense budget. "I can't imagine that many of us on our side of the aisle are going to agree with the president's priorities, particularly if he was bragging on the clean-energy stuff he talked about [at the State of the Union], if he's going to require the services to invest in it," he said.
Russell Rumbaugh, co-director of the Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program at the Stimson Center, said Thursday's budget preview is in some ways a political event meant to help the Pentagon get out in front of the issue. "I'm expecting them to make a big deal about how this was really hard, and use a bunch of examples to showhow much they're doing to cut," Rumbaugh said.
"By rolling out this press conference, Panetta is arming himself and the services to have the defense budget go down the way they want it."
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