Automatic budgets cuts will force the Pentagon to slash its ranks or trash its plans to buy new weapons, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Wednesday.
The budget cuts known as sequestration forced the Pentagon to trim $46 billion from its budget this year and, if left in place, would require $500 billion in reductions over the next decade. Hagel laid out the Pentagon's view of austerity following a planning exercise called the Strategic Choices and Management Review.
The choice, Hagel said, is between troops and modern weapons. To preserve the U.S. edge in weapons, the Army would shrink to as few as 380,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps to 150,000 troops. There would also be fewer Navy aircraft carriers and Air Force bombers. Current plans envision an Army of 490,000 soldiers in coming years, and a Marine Corps of 182,000.
The Army hasn't been that small since before World War II when it had 267,767 soldiers.
"This strategic choice would result in a force that would be technologically dominant, but would be much smaller and able to go fewer places and do fewer things, especially if crises occurred at the same time in different regions of the world," Hagel said.
It's notable that Hagel said such cuts would not break the military's overall strategy of deterrence, homeland security and shifting forces to the Asia-Pacific region, said Todd Harrison, a budget expert at the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It would be able to do less, but it would preserve the nation's edge in military technology.