The failure of the supercommittee to reach a deficit deal will likely trigger what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has called a "doomsday" scenario for the Pentagon: sweeping cuts that would reduce military spending by a total of around $1 trillion over the next decade. But if it's an apocalypse, it will be one in slow motion. Defense officials and budget experts say the stage is now set for a prolonged fight in Washington over the specific items to be cut. And the Pentagon has room for some creative accounting that could help soften the impact of the across-the-board budget cuts.
The military has one potential relief valve built into the budget: Wartime costs are funded largely by separate emergency appropriations and aren't directly affected by the forced cuts."I think it's highly likely that we'll see the department and Congress using this loophole to dampen the effects of the proposed budget cuts," said Todd Harrison, a defense-spending expert at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Basically what it does is allow the department to get around the caps by moving things from the base budget to the war budget."