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Aids to US Defense Chief Propose Deep Troop Cuts
Assistants to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have made a proposal calling for deep cuts to the nation's military forces so as to save money for facilitating the development of high-tech weaponry and a missile shield.
The proposal, part of a defense review to come out next month, called for slashing about 56,000 troops, or 2.8 of the 10 divisions in the Army, 16 of the 61 fighter squadrons in the Air Force, and one or two carrier battle groups in the Navy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Rumsfeld and top generals of each military service were briefed on the recommendations for the first time on Tuesday.
Savings from the troop cuts could be used to boost the Bush administration's favorite missile defense program, which got a 60 percent increase to about eight billion dollars in its 2002 budget, a defense official said.
The force reduction, the newspaper said, would also provide more funding for the Pentagon's research and development of new advanced weapons systems, battlefield sensors and unmanned aircraft so that the U.S. military would become even agiler, stealthier and more deployable to meet the needs of a future war.
At present, it isn't clear where the largest reduction of forces would be carried out in the world under the current proposal. "The assumption is that cuts would primarily come out of Europe," a senior military official who was apprised of the review was quoted as saying.
The assumption seems to fit into earlier reports that Rumsfeld and his strategists had been trying to shift America's military focus from Europe to Asia and the Pacific, a move that had agitated the Western European allies as well as generals in the U. S. military services.
The force reduction proposal apparently ran counter to a separate review, conducted by Lt. Gen. Bruce Carison and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which concluded that the U.S. military services would need to maintain the same size or even expand to some extent, the Wall Street Journal said.
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