Washington: Faced with a $487 billion slash in its budget over the next 10 years, the Pentagon has announced downsizing its military forces by 1,00,000, even as Defence Secretary Leon Panetta asserted that US will remain a force to contend with anytime and anywhere.
"The military will be smaller and leaner, but it will be agile, flexible, rapidly deployable and technologically advanced. It will be a cutting-edge force," he told reporters at a Pentagon news conference announcing the defense budget.
"In this budget, we plan to gradually resize the active Army to 490,000. That's down from present force level of 562,000. And the active Marine Corps will go to 182,000. That's down from 202,000. That transition will take place over the five years. We won't reach those numbers until 2017," Panetta announced.
This plan maintains a very significant Army and Marine force. Both services are at larger levels than they were at prior to 9/11, he said, adding that they will be fundamentally reshaped by a decade of war.
They will be far more lethal, battle hardened and ready, he noted.
"The changes to the size of our ground forces allowed us to examine the Air Force's airlift fleet. Our intensive review determined that we could reduce, streamline and standardize our air fleet with minimal risk. So we are retiring some aging C-5As and C-130s, but we will maintain a very healthy airlift capability," he said.
The Defense Secretary said they have decided that they could eliminate six of the 60 Air Force tactical air squadrons and one training squadron. None of that will impact US ability to dominate the skies, he asserted.
The Navy, he said, is protecting America's highest-priority and most flexible ships, such as the Arleigh-Burke destroyers and the littoral combat ships.
It will retire lower-priority cruisers that have not been upgraded with ballistic missile defense capability or that require significant maintenance as well as some combat logistics and fleet support ships, he said.
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