Unveiling "realistic" military plan
Reuters
1-4-12
Laura MacInnis
[Alleged] President Barack Obama will join top Pentagon commanders to unveil a new "more realistic" vision for the military, including cuts to ground force numbers as a result of budget strains, officials familiar with the plans said on Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will hold a news conference fleshing out the contents of the strategic review of U.S. security interests after Obama's brief remarks on Thursday at the Pentagon, the officials said.
They said the review would emphasize military investment in Asia as well as air and maritime power, while reducing the pace of growth in Pentagon budgets overall and relying less on ground troops for American engagement abroad.
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Danger Room: Air Force Will Lose Hundreds of Planes in New Pentagon Plan
The Air Force is preparing to trim hundreds of aircraft from its aging fleet in order to meet an Obama administration austerity order. The move will strike many Air Force supporters as ironic. Because just as the fleet is set to shrink, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is getting ready to argue, at least implicitly, that the country needs it more than ever.
Danger Room has learned that around 200 airplanes, mostly older models, will eventually be retired without replacement. That represents about a 5 percent reduction in the overall fleet of about 4,000 aircraft. Exactly which planes will go is unclear. But under any scenario, the positions of thousands of airmen who fly and maintain those planes will be phased out. The majority of those airmen will be reservists and Air National Guardsmen.
On Thursday, Leon Panetta will announce a new American defense strategy — one that military observers say will stress the centrality of the Pacific region, and by extension, the U.S. Air Force and Navy. But these services will not be exempt from the new pressure in Washington to rein in federal spending. In addition to scrapping the older planes, Danger Room is hearing that the Pentagon is still considering delays to the Air Force’s planned next-(next-)generation bomber, a program unveiled by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates just a year ago.
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Pentagon to abandon two-war strategy
Christian Science Monitor
Anna Mulrine
The Pentagon appears to be on the cusp of abandoning a long-held strategic principle: that the US military should have the ability to wage two conventional wars simultaneously.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to announce the results of a large-scale strategic overview Thursday that will instead call for the military to be able to fight one large conventional war, and act as a “spoiler” for potential enemies in any other conflict that might crop up.
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