As we barrel headlong toward Monday’s U.S. budget announcement, which will give some guidance as to how the Pentagon plans on achieving $487 billion in budget cuts over the next 10 years (and almost a trillion dollars if sequestration goes into effect), the friendly folks at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments(CSBA) have given us some perspective (PDF) on how that all stacks up, historically.
To kick off the process, we know that the fiscal 2013 base defense budget request will be about $525 billion, $46 billion less than last year’s projection, and $6 billion less than Congress enacted for fiscal 2012. The biggest fights to look for in this whole budgetary process break down like this, according to CSBA's Todd Harrison:
• Service vs. Service: With less money and a shift away from ground operations in the Middle East and Asia to air and sea missions in the Pacific, this one might get messy.
• Active vs. Guard and Reserve: “Will the services shift more capabilities into the guard and reserve to reduce peacetime costs, or will the Services cut the guard and reserve to protect active duty force structure?" Harrison asks.
• Retiree vs. Active Duty: “Total military personnel costs soared over the previous decade, growing at an annual, inflation-adjusted rate of 4.2%. This growth was driven in no small part by the cost of new and expanded benefits for military retirees, such as Tricare for Life, which did not exist before 2001 and now costs $11 billion annually.”