CSBA in the News

The Pentagon’s 2013 budget unveiled today by the Obama administration contains no big surprises. Most of the bombshells were dropped by Defense Secretary Panetta two weeks ago.

The federal budget to be released Monday will shed more light on President Obama’s vision for a slimmer military, and it will be closely watched in Hampton Roads, where defense spending is a pillar of the economy/…/

The U.S. Defense Department’s fiscal 2013 spending plan draws more than 40 percent of proposed reductions from weapons accounts that contribute less than a fifth of the budget, based on Pentagon projections.

Whom the military is defending 20 years after the end of the Cold War is a separate question, and not one answered by Panetta or the Obama administration’s rhetorical blasts against the next round of budget cuts – the so-called sequestration that is set for next January. “Sequestration would be a doubling of the cuts,” Panetta warned last month. “That would require they take place through a meat axe approach that would hollow out the force and do severe damage to our national defense for generations.”

Military personnel costs for retirees versus active-duty service members are among the “most politically sensitive” competing interests within the fiscal 2013 Defense Department budget process, according to a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

It said the Pentagon’s planned cuts would result in delays or a shutdown of production lines that would cost highly skilled manufacturing jobs.