Upcoming spending cuts are likely to end the custom of splitting DoD's budget pie evenly among the Air Force, Navy and Army -- and it's the ground force that's most likely to wind up with a thinner slice/.../ “You’re going to make decisions both on force structure and modernization programs, based on your strategic judgments, and that doesn’t lend itself to a one-third, one-third, one-third” split, Lynn said.
Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, applauds the approach.
“I think that cuts within the defense budget should not be fair and should not be balanced ... I think they should be targeted,” Harrison said, adding that if the ongoing DoD roles-and-missions review calls for fairly even cuts among the services, “that’s a good indication that we have not made strategic choices.”
“Changing the way we do business means that we should not expect DoD to do all of the things, support all of the missions it does today,” Harrison said. “We have to make some strategic choices and that’s something that we have not done over the past decade/.../”
The Pentagon’s current strategy “to be everywhere and do everything” is unaffordable, Harrison said. Canceling lower priority programs will allow DoD to invest greater in higher priority efforts, but there will likely be resistance.