3 Year Freeze on Discretionary Spending

[phrogdriver]

Is this limited to procurement and other tangibles, or are we going to see massive cuts in flight hours as well?

Which would YOU prefer?

I'd guess that the first thing you'll see cut are what a business would call "variable costs." Flight hours, parts,TAD, Servmart budgets, on to buying fewer copies of whatever we were getting anyway.

Once the "easy" cuts are made in the "fat," which isn't really fat, but anyway, they'll have to make cuts in the fixed costs. Cut bases, people, entire programs. As one example, rather than make a lot of small cuts in many programs, the USAF wants to mothball ALL the B-1s. That gets rid of a lot of logistics and facility requirements that wouldn't happen if they just spread the pain equally.

My personal opinion is that we're better off slashing entire programs, bases, and yes, even total numbers of personnel. That's where the real savings are. Besides, we're better off having a smaller number of well trained and equipped warriors than a huge ill-trained, hollow force.

 

[helolumpy]

The hammer is starting to fall....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/us/politics/23budget.html

From the article:
But the first signs of pressure on military spending have surfaced, as both the House and the Senate are moving to trim the administration’s Pentagon budget request for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

The Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week to cut $8 billion from the Pentagon’s request for an $18 billion increase in its basic operations."

 

[SkywardET]

A creative perspective on the problem set to enjoyable music.

We are experiencing a bipartisan depression and we need nonpartisan, not bipartisan, solutions.