Panetta's plan for cuts will detail shrinking military
Panetta's plan for cuts will detail shrinking military
The New York Times
© January 3, 2012
By Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is set this week to reveal his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from its budget, and with it the Obama administration's vision of the military that the United States needs to meet 21st century threats, senior officials said.
In a shift of doctrine, Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military - and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once.
Instead, he will say that the military will be large enough to fight and win one major conflict, while also being able to "spoil" a second adversary's ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other, smaller operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-fly zone.
Pentagon officials are in final deliberations about potential cuts to virtually every important area of Pentagon spending: the nuclear arsenal, warships, combat aircraft, salaries, and retirement and health benefits.
http://hamptonroads.com/2012/01/panettas-plan-cuts-will-detail-shrinking-military
unhappycamper comment: Here's my suggestions:
* Stop spending $2+ billion dollars a week on the Afghanistan adventure.
* Stop building $5 billion dollar Zumwalt-class destroyers.
* Stop building $5~$7 billion dollar Virginia-class submarines each and every year.
* Stop building the $40 billion dollar Ford-class aircraft carriers.
* Stop building the not-ready-for-prime-time quarter of a billion dollar F-35.
