Pentagon in cross hairs of debt ‘trigger’

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

The prospect of $600 billion in additional defense cuts over the next decade is enough to make Pentagon generals wince and to compel the U.S. military to make big changes to its global strategy. But the cuts can be made without gutting the current force, defense budget analysts said.

The White House already has ordered the Pentagon to come up with about $400 billion in savings over the next 12 years, a reduction that would slow the growth in defense spending to about the current rate of inflation.

The larger and more painful cuts of an additional $600 billion would be triggered only if Republicans and Democrats cannot come to an agreement on a second round of spending cuts in the next four months.

“You could reasonably make those cuts as long as you were willing to rethink our military strategy, not allow for any sacred cows and cut ruthlessly,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an influential defense think tank with close ties to the Pentagon.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-in-cross-hairs-of-debt-trigger/2011/08/01/gIQAhSt9nI_story.html

[Historic NY]

1. Well building a 117 of these is over the top..

there aren't that many submarines in the water.....to detect that aren't already known.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeing-tapped-to-replace-117-navy-anti-sub-planes-2011-01-25

Another Aircraft Carrier well you tell me.

[Mopar151]

5. Seems like Boeing and Northrop/Grumman

Could build some pretty sweet high-speed rail cars for that pile of boodle.....

[Angleae]

11. Not that many subs, but it's a bloody big ocean.

[BigDemVoter]

2. Yeah right. . .

Like that will fucking ever happen.

[gratuitous]

3. Out of an annual budget of $700 billion

Ten years of cuts at $60 billion a year doesn't hardly dent their budget at all, and gives the Pentagon plenty of time to restore the prospective cuts. One terroristic attack, either real, foiled or imagined, and we'll be right back to a defense budget with daily expenditures approaching and then exceeding $2 billion.

We won't be "rethinking" any strategies.

[russspeakeasy]

4. Bullshit !

[EFerrari]

15. You're right. Their cuts are 50 bilion LESS then they were

scheduled to be. (Heard this am on Democracy Now!)

[cstanleytech]

6. Is that 600 billion total

because its a sick joke if thats all they are cutting or is the goal to reduce it so the defense budgets cut so we are spending 200 billion per year in 10 years rather than the 800+ billion per year we are spending now?

[boppers]

7. It's a "sick joke", then.

The grand bargain fell through, only smaller cut targets were agreed to by everyone at the table.... so, using your numbers, over ten years, instead of 8 trillion (800 billion a year, over ten years) being spent.... 7.4 trillion will be spent.

Same thing with other spending, which is why the hyperventilation is a bit odd.

When it's applied to the pentagon, it's so small as to be a "sick joke", but if it's to doctors charging for bunions, it's an immoral attack on the very fabric of our society.

[rpannier]

8. There have been things allocated by Congress that the military said they didn't want

But because they benefitted some congresspersons constituency they (congress) wouldn't cut it.
Maybe now they will

[Proletariatprincess]

9. Sounds like chump change compared to defense spending....

[saras]

10. Two easy cuts - Fatherland Security and any secret projects

America can't afford to be pouring money down black holes. It's one thing to debate a weapon system that we actually have data on - we can make reasonable decisions about what services it can and can't provide. Buying a pig in a poke as an intelligence product has already repeatedly proved to be a bad idea.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. They'll never get 1 red cent cut from the MIC:

The Teabag contingent will see to that: "Why don't you support our Troops/Why don't you love America/you're a Muslim-socialist-whatever/DEMS are weak on Defense/etc., etc., etc.." You can see this coming, not even from a mile away, but from fucking outerspace.

"Democrats," now coming pre-folded.

[FlyByNight]

13. "Significant" Pentagon cuts?

I'll believe that when I see it. (Quotes are mine, not from article.)

Too much money is made by well placed war whores in/around DC for that to happen, so lets just say I'm skeptical.

[JackRiddler]

14. "a reduction that would slow the growth in defense spending to about the current rate of inflation."

That's a "reduction" only in the criminals' dictionary.

Meanwhile, Social Security doesn't even get the current rate of inflation any more.