The Defense Department has been forced to absorb nearly $540 billion in reductions to date from statutory spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, including a $200 billion cut to its weapons modernization account. The National Defense Strategy Commission, an independent group of defense experts established to assess the new National Defense Strategy, tallied the impact of the BCA as part of its findings that the Pentagon requires a budget with annual real growth of 3 percent to...