Department of Defense senior officials reported that Defense Secretary Gates has ordered the military and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy to find $7 billion in spending cuts for 2012 with cuts growing to $37 billion annually by 2016 to pay for war-fighting costs.
The war on Pentagon waste has been going on for decades, however, if the spending cuts are enacted, they would be institutionalized through out the Department of Defense.
Secretary Gates’s plan offers an incentive to the armed services to cut sending. Each dollar in spending cuts found by a military department would be reinvested in the combat force of that branch, and not redirected for other purposes in the DoD.
The new spending cuts are aimed at three areas:
1) management and personnel, overhead, logistics and base operations, and support missions.
2) The war-fighting programs (i.e. eliminating the 2nd engine for the F-35 and ending production of the C-17)
3) The Defense Secretary’s own Defense Department staff and agencies.
A deadline of July 31 has been set for receiving details on programs and personnel to be cut, which will be included in the budget proposal for fiscal year 2012.
