Gates readies big cuts in weapons

[kpete]

Source: Boston Globe



WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Robert M. Gates, whose two years as defense secretary had been devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt compelled to warn his successor of a crisis closer to home.

The United States "cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything," Gates said. The next defense secretary, he warned, would have to eliminate some costly hardware and invest in new tools for fighting insurgents.

What Gates didn't know was that he would be that successor.

Now, as the only Bush Cabinet member to remain under President Obama, Gates is preparing the most far-reaching changes in the Pentagon's weapons portfolio since the end of the Cold War, according to aides.

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/03/17/gates_readies_big_cuts_in_weapons/

[Captain Hilts]

1. The Zumwalt destroyer and Ford Class carrier, I hope. BURKEs and NIMITZs can do the job. nt

[depakid]

15. That would be a knee jerk response

[Angleae]

18. Cancelling those two would cost more than building them.

Due to cancellation clauses in the contracts.

[defendandprotect]

2. "Star Wars" bankrupting budgets -- myth and BS ---

[defendandprotect]

3. Land Mines, dirty weapons -- bunker busters, new nuclear weapons, depleted uranium . . !!!

[defendandprotect]

5. ...and 45,000 private contractors in Iraq . . . !!!!!!

[bemildred]

4. About twenty years late ... nt

[ramapo]

6. That can be said for a lot of things n/t

[Gregorian]

7. Substitute productive jobs for those empoyees who lose jobs over this.

This is crucial. The country rides on the military jobs. The military peripheral jobs are far reaching.

Substitution will make this happen. Hopefully on a permanent basis.

The war on war is a war I am happy about.

[AndyTiedye]

10. Bush** Managed to Give us a War and a Recession AT THE SAME TIME

[Gregorian]

11. The book of matches approach to dependency.

It may not have been "engineered", but they knew what they were doing. Kick the legs out from under regular people, by way of their savings, and they'll be needy for a long time. Needy is subservient.

What I don't get is that Bernake was appointed by Bush. He seems pretty well suited to the Fed Reserve job.

[Lasher]

13. I feel the same about Bernake.

An actual middle class champion. Go figure.

[FloridaJudy]

8. Finally!

It ain't happened yet, but we can hope...

[Posteritatis]

14. The Pentagon itself has been requesting these cuts

I'll still be surprised when they're announced, but a year ago I would've been astonished right into a heart attack. Here's hoping.

[bemildred]

9. Pentagon says jobs not a factor in budget choices

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates will disregard possible job losses when deciding the fate of weapons programs and systems in the Pentagon's 2010 budget, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

"It's not the responsibility of this building to worry about the economic impact of budgetary decisions," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.

"It's the responsibility of the secretary and this building to provide recommendation to the president about what's in the best interest of our national security. And that's the advice he will give," Morrell said.

Some defense firms have highlighted the number of jobs they say depend on their big-ticket programs as they lobby against potential cuts in the budget for fiscal year 2010, which begins on Oct. 1 this year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSN1737694120090317

[DCKit]

12. Lobbyists for Defense Co.s are going to be wracking up some serious hours.

This fight is going to get fugly - I can't remember the last time anyone said "No" to them (and made it stick).

[Mr. Hyde]

16. I was under the impression that most of "us" considered the terrorist threat to be overblown

so I have to wonder why we're wrapping our defense budget around "fighting insurgents" especially when Obama has suggested that we wouldn't be fighting insurgents for much longer. Something doesn't add up.

[Johnyawl]

17. "fighting insurgents"

Our next war will be along our southern border, and while I would hesitate to call the drug cartels "insurgents" the tactics will be much the same.

[Oak2004]

19. It's current military thinking

For better or worse, a lot of fine minds spend a lot of time thinking about warfare. A fair bit of their thinking is less about specific threats that it is about the general nature of warfare itself. And much of their current thinking is that we are not as likely to be fighting conventional wars with fixed fronts and clearly identifiable enemies in the near future as we are to be fighting insurgencies.

An excellent illustration of why this is likely to be so is Gulf Wars 1 and 2. Gulf War 1 was a conventional war, and the very formidable, in international terms, Iraqi Army was utterly crushed by our well-beyond formidable conventional capabilities, which were developed to defeat the Soviets in a superpower war.

In the second Gulf War, Saddam Hussein did not even attempt a serious conventional defense. What he did instead was look at the forces that have recently defeated the superpowers- the US in Vietnam and Somalia, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan - and set up arms caches, positioned troops (not all uniformed) to engage in ambushes, etc. In fact he openly spoke of modeling Iraqi resistance after Vietnam just before the war, and the talking heads pooh poohed it (saying, more or less, that the US was defeated by the jungle in Vietnam. Hello??!??).

It is unlikely any enemies for the foreseeable future will try to pit their conventional armies against ours only to see the armies destroyed in the first 24 to 48 hours. What is more likely is that they'll go the Vietnam/Somalia/Afghanistan/and now Iraq route, preposition supplies and people for an insurgency, and their leaders will go into hiding early to avoid the airstrikes. Wouldn't you, if you were an opponent of the US facing war with America, opt for the one strategy that has a prayer of success?

Note: the above is not a personal endorsement of wars of aggression. It's just explaining current military thinking.