‘Disastrous’ Defense cuts looming as deadline nears
Without action from Washington, on January 2, 2013, the U.S. defense budget will undergo the most dramatic and massive cuts in its history.
The supercommittee failed to agree on a deficit reduction plan resulting in the 2011 Budget Control Act automatically cuts about $500 billion from the defense budget. These cuts fall on top of the already agreed-upon $487 billion in reductions.
All told, the cuts would amount to about $1 trillion over a decade.
Back in November, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described these cuts as a disaster.
“Under current law, that 23 percent reduction would have to be applied equally to each major investment and construction program,” Panetta writes. “Such a large cut, applied in this indiscriminate manner, would render most our ship and construction projects unexecutable — you cannot buy three quarters of a ship or a building — and seriously damage other modernization efforts.”
“We can’t yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation,” Army General Martin Dempsey told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. “We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visible globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict.”
The Pentagon would be facing a 20 percent cut in weapons systems, training, equipment — all elements of the budget.
“It was designed as a meat ax,” Panetta said. “It was designed to be a disaster. Because the hope was, because it’s such a disaster, that Congress would respond and do what was right. And so I’m just here to tell you, yes, it would be a disaster.”