Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday warned that efforts to cut beyond a planned reduction of $450 billion over the next 10 years would hollow out the force and not occur on his watch.
A congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is weighing up to $1.5 trillion in additional government-wide savings, and if it and Congress can’t agree on a plan by the end of the year defense spending will be cut by roughly $500 billion more through a sequestration process.
“Sequestration would force across the board salami slicing of the worst kind,” Panetta told the Association of the United States Army annual fall symposium in Washington, D.C. “It would hollow out the force, leaving our military deficient in people, training and equipment, and unable to adapt when that next security challenge comes.
Army Secretary Army John McHugh and Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno echo the secretary’s concerns, each of whom in speeches here during the conference said a potential sequestration would have catastrophic effects on the service.
The former CIA chief said the international security environment continues to increase in complexity and uncertainty. Threats include violent extremism, the pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea, and cyber attacks.
In a period of calm as Iraq draws down and Afghanistan moves to a more secure situation, DoD must build the military the nation needs today and into the future. It will likely be a smaller military.
“We will need to sacrifice some capabilities and curtail some commitments,” he said. “But we cannot afford to render null and void the hard-learned lessons of 10 years of war, we cannot afford to ignore essential capabilities we have let lapse, and we absolutely cannot allow budget pressures to force the services into parochialism and program survival mode.”
Panetta made it clear no one service will bear the brunt of heavy cuts.
“We have to weather these budget storms as a team, putting the needs of all before the needs of one,” he said. “I won’t stand for anything else.”
The stakes are high, he said, and a concerted effort is the only way to remain the best military in the world.
In the future, Panetta said he sees “state and non-state actors arming with high-tech weaponry that is easier both to buy and operate, weapons that frustrate our traditional advantages and freedom of movement.”
Thus, coming up with new ideas and operating principles to counter these types of enemies is the challenge he put before the Army’s combat-hardened soldiers.
As Panetta works to build the military, the fiscal environment and sequestration are not going to result in a hollow force.
“It will not happen on my watch,” he said.