O’HANLON: DOUBLE THE CUTS

The $30 bil­lion in pro­posed bud­get cuts to the Defense Department already have lob­by­ists, paper-​​pushers, and Congresscritters squirm­ing. But, accord­ing to the influ­en­tial Brookings Institution defense ana­lyst Michael O’Hanlon, the sav­ings aren’t nearly deep enough. In a Baltimore Sun op-​​ed today, he calls for shav­ing twice as much from the Pentagon ledgers.
How would he do it? By real­lo­cat­ing forces and by “mod­ern­iz­ing what we put on planes, ships and vehi­cles — elec­tron­ics, sen­sors, radios, robot­ics, com­put­ers, muni­tions — rather than the weapons them­selves.” For instance:

- Delay the Army’s “future com­bat sys­tem” by five years and cut research fund­ing by more than half in the mean­time…
– Cut U.S. nuclear forces even more quickly and deeply than envi­sioned by the Moscow Treaty, allow­ing retire­ment of some Minuteman mis­siles and more con­ver­sions of Trident subs to con­ven­tional mis­sions. In addi­tion, the Pentagon should scale back the cost of mis­sile defense pro­grams to $6 bil­lion a year rather than $10 bil­lion…
– The Navy, rather than keep­ing a per­ma­nent pres­ence in cer­tain key areas, will increas­ingly surge ships to par­tic­i­pate in exer­cises or respond to crises. But it will main­tain a pres­ence in places such as the Persian Gulf and Western Pacific, home port­ing more ships near those areas to do it more afford­ably.
The Navy should increas­ingly “rotate crews, not ships.” With this approach, already used on spe­cial­ized ves­sels today, ships can remain over­seas 18 to 24 months; crews are rotated in and out by plane, con­serv­ing the time that at present is usu­ally wasted in transoceanic travel. As a result, the Navy could get by with 10 car­ri­ers and 10 per­cent to 20 per­cent fewer sur­face ships. 

January 12th, 2005 | Money Money Money | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.