Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Key Issues HADES deployment SAOC contract FORGE framework
Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
The $30 billion batch of pre-Christmas cuts to Pentagon weapon systems could be a harbinger of even deeper cuts to big-ticket programs in the coming months, as the Defense Department prepares to launch a sweeping strategy review that is expected to further change what the military acquires.
The pre-Christmas decision to terminate the F/A-22 program after fiscal year 2008 will soon give way to a debate in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill over just how many of the stealthy fighters the Air Force can afford with the money that remains.
The Pentagon is preparing to ax nearly $30 billion from its spending plans over the next six years and deal significant blows to nearly its entire roster of major weapon programs.
The biggest single blow in the Pentagon's round of pre-Christmas budget cuts will not be felt by the Navy, whose share of the $30 billion in reductions over the next six years is $14.8 billion, or the Air Force, which is slated to shoulder $15.7 billion in cuts.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has slashed the Air Force's No. 1 modernization program by more than half in a pre-Christmas budget adjustment that trims the F/A-22 Raptor program from 277 aircraft to 180 aircraft and ends funding in four years.
The budget ax is set to fall on as much as $10 billion the Pentagon had planned to spend on new weapons in 2006 as senior military leaders search for ways to pay for 11th-hour cuts directed by the White House Office of Management and Budget.