- America will retire one of its aircraft carriers and
scale back plans to build a new generation of fighter jets as part of its
first cuts in military spending since the September 11 attacks, it was
reported yesterday.
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- The Pentagon budget has mushroomed in the past three
years, increasing by more than a third to about $420 billion (£220
billion) this year. Much of the money is funding the deployment of 150,000
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, said to be costing America about $5 billion
a month.
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- But President George W Bush is now under mounting pressure
on Capitol Hill to rein in the budget deficit that surged in his first
term, contributing to the dramatic decline of the dollar. Many Republicans
believe he is abandoning the party's tradition of fiscal discipline.
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- The White House is reported to have asked all branches
of the federal government to prune spending requests for the 2006 fiscal
year which will be presented to Congress early next year.
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- According to the New York Times, the Pentagon has proposed
a $60 billion cut in spending over the next six years.
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- The most high-profile victim would be the navy, although
Pentagon officials stressed that all the services would be affected.
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- If Congress approves the economies, the aircraft carrier
John F Kennedy would be taken out of service next year, the newspaper said.
It is one of the oldest of the 12 carriers, first saw service in 1968 and
recently completed a mission in the Gulf.
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- Plans for a new destroyer may be delayed and there is
also a proposal to reduce expenditure on a new amphibious landing ship
for the marines. The navy had planned to buy five LPD-17 San Antonio-class
vessels for more than $1 billion each.
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- The air force's F/A22 Raptor fighter would begin to lose
funding after 2008. This would mean 160 to 170 would be built, rather than
the 277 the service had hoped for.
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- The army will win in the spending review. While other
services are being trimmed, the army is planning to increase its strength
by up to about a dozen brigades over the next few years.
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- "It doesn't matter if you can win a war 20 years
from now if we lose the global war on terror next year," the Times
quoted one US military official as saying.
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- Eric Ruff, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to comment on
specific cuts, adding that nothing was definite until the budget was submitted
in February.
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- But he fuelled speculation that some of the older high-technology
weapons systems were under threat in the countdown to next year's four
yearly defence review.
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- The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has long regarded
them as costly relics of the Cold War.
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- Mr Ruff said all services were considering their priorities
and how best to focus on agility, flexibility and speed. These were three
of the watchwords of Mr Rumsfeld's desired "transformed" defence
force.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/31/
wus31.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/31/ixworld.html
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