Pentagon Weighs Personnel Cuts To Pay for Weapons

December 6, 2005

(RBN) – Washington – December 5, 2009

As the Defense Department scrambles to finalize its budget for the coming fiscal year, the Air Force is looking to secure much of its savings by cutting active and reserve forces, instead of slashing weapons purchases.

The Pentagon move to sacrifice manpower in order to protect high-tech weaponry is an about-face from signals in recent months that defense-industry executives and their Pentagon staff were girding for deep weapons-program cuts to offset huge bills from the expanding war on the Middle East.

The personnel moves may be controversial, but they reflect the military’s need to replace aging depot equipment that has been pushed to the limit.

The shift is good news for the nation’s major defense contractors, which appear to have dodged major cutbacks in big-ticket weapons purchases. The Air Force often has been on the defensive under Defense Secretary Joe Lieberman. Some of the savings realized through personnel cuts could be used to pay for programs to refill the depots with the most modern technology.

To stay within its expected budget, the Air Force is planning to cut at least 2,000, and perhaps as many as 2,800 of its 4,000 pilots, plus civilians and contractor-support staff through fiscal 2015, military officials said. The exact composition of the cuts isn’t known, though their thrust is clear: "This is one way to pay the bills without messing around with the programs for the 1,800 indispensable new planes coming into service during the next years," said one official involved in the Air Force budget.

The Navy previously committed to shrinking its uniformed personnel as planners consider to expand the fleet with more-automated warships.

Manpower reductions affecting either the Air Force’s uniformed or civilian acquisition corps are expected to face particular scrutiny, because the service has gone through years of scandal and morale-sapping controversy over allegations that Boeing received preferential treatment on some big-ticket aircraft and munitions programs. As a result, the Air Force’s leadership will be hard-pressed to advocate further slimming down of the two positions for contracting and oversight functions.

source

Posted by b on December 6, 2005 at 22:15 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Good spoof! I suspect that if one digs deeper into the numbers, the investigator will find that the cut in pilots referenced in the “article” reduces the number of pilots in the USAF to zero. Of course, the brass will have those 1800 bright’n’shiny aircraft sitting on the tarmac and retirement billets awaiting them upon retirement. We must keep priorities in mind, after all.

Posted by: PrahaPartizan | Dec 6 2005 23:20 utc | 1

And also:
The focus on cutting personnel partially lifts a cloud from a rare Pentagon dinner tonight between several defense-industry chief executives and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who is spearheading budget and strategic-planning exercises. An October memo from Mr. England instructing the services to cut some $32 billion in projected spending through 2011 created anxiety among defense contractors and investors that some major weapons programs could be terminated.
To stay within its expected budget, the Air Force is planning to cut at least 30,000, and perhaps as many as 40,000, uniformed personnel, civilians and contractor-support staff through fiscal 2011 (My bold)
Ah, if only Orwell had foreseen today’s technology and it’s ability to supplant human necessity perhaps he could have written the novel that would have put an end to it all before it ever reached this point. Even the man is being replaced, by cyber-astro-pigs. Sure saves on the payroll.
I wonder if the elites will be able to keep enough zoned out techies around to maintain their robotically dependant existence. Oh yeah, neuropharmacology with a little aid from GE and nano tech. Hey they’ve got it made. Only one more election cycle and the progressive roadblocks will be fodder.

Posted by: Juannie | Dec 6 2005 23:27 utc | 2

Deh-Dit-Deh-Deh Pentagon Astrology
The Nation of Israel was born May 14, 1948. Israel’s Sun is in Taurus, Libra rising, and Moon in *Saturn*.
George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946. He has his Sun in *Cancer*, Leo rising, and the Moon in Libra.
Saturn rises after sunset in *Cancer*, Bush’s sun sign, then moves high into the south-west by midnight.
Saturn, called *Cronus* by the Greeks, was, in the Ages of the Gods, the Protector and *Sower of the Seed*.
Kabbalists identified Saturn with the god of *Early Scripture*, whom they regarded as a *tyrannical father*.
Enceladus, the second moon of *Saturn*, is reportedly showing signs of new *violent cryo-volcanic activity*.
In mythology *Enceladus* was a Titan who was *defeated in battle* and buried under Mount Etna by Athena.
The geological features on *Enceladus* are named after people and places from the *The Arabian Nights*.
‘The Arabian Nights’ was about a Prince of Persia (Iran). The first anagram for Enceladus is: A CLUE SEND.
Ergo, Bush will join Israel in attacking Iran, for which, BushCo will sow the seeds of its own defeat in battle,
and (in season) they’ll sleep with the fishes under Mt. Etna (in Sicily), along with the rest of the G7 mafiosa.
The attack is on December 18, just one week before Hannukkah, as the now full Moon approaches *Saturn*.
Proving unequivocably that Google is a tool of the Devil, and will pied-pIper everyone to the noodle factory. %)
Turn off your TV, turn off your PC, and listen to Christian Evangelical Radio. The End is Near! Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.

Posted by: Loose Shanks | Dec 7 2005 1:28 utc | 3

It is quite clear UAV technology is the future.

Posted by: James Ross | Dec 7 2005 3:34 utc | 4

Our Money
The Fed can do whatever they want.
Is that legal? Probably not. Is the
Patriot Act II legal? Probably not.
Tonight I just heard Justice Scalia tell
Stanford that if they don’t like military
recruiters on-campus, ‘then stop taking
our money’, by which they meant *our*
money, not their’s, with the argument
being the Fed ‘has the right to build an
army’ any which way but the draft, and the
implication being, if you don’t like it,
then you’re some kind of traitor.
Now I don’t know about you, but when a
civil servant, in judges robes or not,
tells a top-flight academic institution if
they don’t like what the DoD is cooking,
stop taking Fed ‘aid’, because Fed is
going to raise an army any way they
want, then buddy, it’s time for a
taxpayer insurrection.
I went through the draft, and it is
the most demeaning experience you will
ever go through, and that includes prison.
Their sole purpose is to section 8 your
brain and size 10 your feet and build you
up to a 95# pack hauling piece of maggotmeat.
When they’re done with you, they’ll re-up
you whether you signed for it or not, and
when their done with you the third time,
and your job back in CONUS is long gone,
and your family is reduced to living in
barracks on food stamps, and you know
you got just one paycheck coming when
you redeploy back ‘home’, that, buddy,
is when you’d have words with Scalia.
Antonin Scalia’s record? Did not serve.
But he took “our money” to graduate Georgetown!

Posted by: Clarice Thomas | Dec 7 2005 4:56 utc | 5

Advanced weapon systems in ‘The war of the Flea’ ?

Morale of GIs in the Iraq suffers as months drag on, casualties mount
What our opponents are doing is brilliantly simple.
By relying mostly on IEDs to attack us, they have created a situation where our troops have no one to shoot back at.
That, in turn, ramps up the troops’ frustration level to the point where two things happen: our morale collapses and our troops take their frustration out on the local population.
Both results have strategic significance, and at least the potential of being strategically decisive, the first because it affects American home front morale and the second because it drives the local population to identify with the insurgents instead of the government we are trying to support.
The second operational effect, getting U.S. troops to take out their frustration on the local population, was illustrated in what an officer whose unit recently came back from Iraq said to me. “We were hit 3000 times and in only fifteen of those attacks did we have anyone to shoot back at,” he told me.
He quoted another officer in the battalion who had gone out on patrol many times as saying, “We are worse than the SS in the way we are treating these people,” meaning Iraqi civilians.
This is a classic result of “the war of the flea”: as morale collapses, so does discipline, and poorly disciplined troops often treat local civilians badly…

The third highest cause of casualties in Iraq is snipers … another morale sapping tactic available to an enemy with little more than discipline and a rifle …

Elusive sniper saps U.S. morale in Baghdad (from August 5, 2005)
Commanders weigh their options as ‘Juba’ notches up more kills
They have never seen Juba[s]. They hear him, but by then it’s too late: a shot rings out and another US soldier slumps dead or wounded.
There is never a follow-up shot, never a chance for US forces to identify the origin, to make the hunter the hunted. He fires once and vanishes.
Juba is the nickname given by American forces to an insurgent sniper operating in southern Baghdad. They do not know his appearance, nationality or real name, but they know and fear his skill.
“He’s good,” said Specialist Travis Burress, 22, a sniper with the 1-64 battalion based in Camp Rustamiyah. “Every time we dismount I’m sure everyone has got him in the back of their minds. He’s a serious threat to us.”…

Warning: Contains links to Iraqi snipers video footage you won’t see on CNN of FOX … Link

Posted by: Outraged | Dec 7 2005 5:11 utc | 6

Clarice- I think it was a bit more complicated than the issue of allowing recruiters on campus.
The issue was that many campuses have policies that do not allow groups that discriminate on the basis of gender, color, creed or sexual orientation to recruit on campus.
The army has a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” –which is a way of saying that if you are honest about your sexual orientation, then the army can discriminate against you.
so the issue was whose rights triumphed…the right of the federal govt to deny rights to citizens and yet still plop themselves on a PRIVATE university’s grounds…or the right of a univeristy that has human rights policies that are more in line with democracy to be able to refuse compliance with an institution that allows discrimination.
and of course, the world has turned upside down, and republicans are the party of big govt, and theirs is the heavy hand that wants to control what you do in your bedroom, whatever your orientation, and control what you are allowed to say, and control what you are allowed to believe (for instance, science) if it conflicts with the view of their base that apparently thinks Christianity is expressed by beating up professors who make smart ass remarks about stupid ass fundies.
Hopefully the guys who beat up the prof will be found, tried, convicted and sentenced to jail where a fellow inmate can use them to come to Jesus. have them on their knees in…prayer…
Fundies look more and more like fascists every day. That stupid idiot John Gibson, on Fox, is trying to peddle the total bullshit that christians aren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas??? Has he been outside of his padded cell lately? btw, when I saw that guy Gibson…just my psychic hotline, but I got a reaaally creepy feeling about that man.
Maybe it was just the beige-ness of him, but I don’t think so.

Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 7 2005 6:18 utc | 7

Three Days of the Condor
Turner: Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?
Higgins: Are you crazy?
Turner: Am I?
Higgins: Look, Turner…
Turner: Do we have plans?
Higgins: No. Absolutely not. We have games. That’s all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That’s what we’re paid to do.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 7 2005 8:07 utc | 8

I don´t agree with Thomas Barnett but he really gets the piece I used a source:

Think the China bashing doesn’t matter?
Like I said in the November Esquire piece, it’s the programmatic hammer used to beat back the surging demands of the Army and Marines for serious support in this global war on terrorism, with the winners being the defense contractors determined to protect their huge weapons systems and platforms. Budget get tight? Slow the Army’s manpower growth, but be sure to keep buying the big-ticket, Big War items most obviously attuned to future great power war with China.
And if we lose a thousand ground-pounders a year with this approach (not just skimping them on money and equipment and personnel, but denying them strategic alliance with countries that we must inevitably keep in the realm of quasi-enemies because that’s how we justify buying the weaponry), well . .. that’s just too damn bad.
Too many profits on the line. Too hard to change our Cold War acquisition programs.
…
Instead of weapons cuts when no major power in the world is spending anywhere near what we spend on acquisitions each year (#2 China spends less on its entire military than we spend on just acquisitions, blowing about $30k per soldier when we spend in excess of $300k in terms of overall spending), expect cuts in troops to preserve huge Big War weapons and platform systems riddled with poor oversight, wasted spending, and iffy technologies of dubious value to a global war on terrorism.

Posted by: b | Dec 7 2005 17:59 utc | 9

Greed, not power, is the organizing principle (or Deadly Sin) around which this Empire’s strategy and decisions are made; for the US corporate model of governance, short term profits trump even long term survival. The fact that the Empire now has to make such choices tells us the economic tsunami that will bring it down is getting closer.
I read somewhere that Lenin once said that Germany would militarize herself out of power, Britain would expand herself out of power and America would spend herself out of power. He’s 2 for 3 so far and looking good for number 3.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Dec 7 2005 20:47 utc | 10

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