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Coming DoD cuts will hit some services harder

The Pentagon’s just-released military strategy document will shape budget reductions across the Defense Department beginning in 2013, cuts that will not be distributed proportionately.

Top DoD officials hope the much anticipated strategy — officially titled: Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense — will change the budgeting culture within the services.

“Sometimes the behavior of the department when it’s had to tighten its belt a little bit has been to simply hand out proportional cuts, look and see what the services come back with, and then try to build a strategy out of the ashes,” Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Jan. 5 briefing at the Pentagon.

“In this case, we’ve chosen deliberately to assess the geopolitical environment, what kind of technical change is out there, how is warfare changing in the 21st century, and the fiscal environment we’re in, which is clearly changing,” he said. “We’ve crafted a strategy that now can guide our budget decisions … and that is a terribly important cultural change for the department.”

President Obama made a rare appearance in the Pentagon briefing room to endorse the new strategy, which includes shifting the military’s focus from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific region.

“We’ll continue to get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems so that we can invest in the capabilities that we need for the future, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, counterterrorism, countering weapons of mass destruction and the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access,” Obama said.

The strategy is intended to inform $487 billion in cuts to planned defense spending over the next decade, as mandated by the Budget Control Act, which went into effect last August.

Since the review began last year, military analysts have said it would only be a meaningful change if it recommended a disproportionate split of funding among the services.

Obama noted that although the budget will not grow at the pace is has for the past 10 years, it will still increase.

“It will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership,” the president said.

The strategy also calls for truncating U.S. ground forces, reducing the nuclear stockpile and investing in weapons that can penetrate denied regions. It also hints at a reduction of forces in Europe, while still remaining engaged with NATO.

While specific end-strength numbers and programs were not addressed in the eight-page strategy document, senior defense officials said they would be unveiled with the 2013 budget proposal, which the White House is expected to send to Capitol Hill next month.

The document did state that a new Air Force stealth bomber is critical for anti-access operations.

DoD will look to protect its investments in “special operations forces, in new technologies, like [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and unmanned systems, in space, and in particular in cyberspace capabilities; and also our capacity to quickly mobilize if necessary,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the new strategy would help protect the industrial base, “even if we’re not able to buy in those in areas at the rates or in the volume that we had planned before we were handed this $487 billion cut.”

Although officials would not discuss specific programmatic decisions, “major changes” were made during the 2013 budget build, Carter said.

Members of the National Security Council, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, intelligence community and DoD all contributed to the strategy review, which began last spring.

Lawmakers’ responses to the strategy were mixed, as expected.

It is tough to judge the new strategy until the Pentagon unveils its budget, according to Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It is important to understand … that a new strategy is not a matter of concepts,” he said. “It is a matter of how forces and resources are allocated by mission. Accordingly, anyone who really cares about national security needs to understand that it will be necessary to wait until the key details are clear to make any judgments.”

The lack of programmatic detail in the strategy means investors should sit tight, according to Byron Callan, an industry analyst with Capital Alpha Partners in Washington.