via Breaking Defense...
* The US Army is cutting 10 combat brigades AND will be down to 495,000 people by 2015. In my opinion thats INCREDIBLY fast.
* The US Navy has laid up 11 cruisers, cut the number of LCS to be procured, is not going to refuel an aircraft carrier, and is talking about possibly going down to 8 flattops.
* The USAF is dropping aircraft, squadrons and trimming personnel. Same for the Marine Corps...battalions are going away, personnel are being cut etc....
Yet even with the cuts that have been announced, and the ones under consideration, leadership still asks for cuts to pay raises and benefits for those that remain and now talk in congress revolves around another round of base closures.
We're missing something when it comes to the defense budget...or something really weird is going on.
Rep. Adam Smith has warned his colleagues repeatedly that Congress must make “unimaginable” choices to cope with the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. In particular, Smith says they must consider closing military bases using a new round of base closures (BRAC), a process that’s always politically painful and which many in Congress argue was discredited by the 2005 round, which they say cost more money than it saved. The administration asked for another BRAC in its 2015 budget submission, but Rep. Buck McKeon left it out of his version of the National Defense Authorization Act. Smith had filled his put-BRAC-back amendment with all sorts of caveats and restrictions, apparently hoping against hope to assuage his colleagues’ concerns, but McKeon isn’t having any of it.Consider this.
* The US Army is cutting 10 combat brigades AND will be down to 495,000 people by 2015. In my opinion thats INCREDIBLY fast.
* The US Navy has laid up 11 cruisers, cut the number of LCS to be procured, is not going to refuel an aircraft carrier, and is talking about possibly going down to 8 flattops.
* The USAF is dropping aircraft, squadrons and trimming personnel. Same for the Marine Corps...battalions are going away, personnel are being cut etc....
Yet even with the cuts that have been announced, and the ones under consideration, leadership still asks for cuts to pay raises and benefits for those that remain and now talk in congress revolves around another round of base closures.
We're missing something when it comes to the defense budget...or something really weird is going on.
