Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, keen to end Congressional talk of cutting the military’s ever-growing budget, today announced a series of relatively minor weapons programs were being ended.
Amongst the weapons cut was the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which was aimed at modernizing Normandy-style beach landings by US troops, who have in recent years been fighting wars largely in mountains and deserts.
The cuts sparked lamentations of woe from weapons contractors, but seem to do little about the overall military budget problems. Rather, they aim at slightly slowing the overall growth of military spending enough, or at least so they hope, that Congress will stop considering it a priority.
Just yesterday House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R – VA) said that Congress would be looking into cutting military spending. He downplayed the notion that this might effect the ongoing (and upcoming) US wars, but it seems clear that the cuts will go deeper than a few amphibious landing vehicles.
Obama's first flaw was that he kept Gates in office. The guy is power hungry, and of course he wants no budget cuts.
Spoken like a true chicken-hawk warmonger, who probably never saw combat, nor has a loved one serving in Afghanistan
What kind of cuts can anyone in the "gubbamint" propose at this point that would make a difference? It's such a joke…almost like Donald Trump promising to cut back on his fast food purchases when he stands to default on all his properties and businesses.
Wait a minute, according to bbc.com these amount to $78bn of cuts, which come on the back of a further $100bn. Surely that can't be called 'relatively minor', even by the defence budget's scale.
A few billion in cuts is just squirrel nuts. I suspect most of the eliminated positions will come in the form of attrition while the cuts in hardware are more than likely obsolete garbage contractors have been sucking us dry over for years.
wouldn't want that "blue chip rating" to slip now would they