Choose Your Own Defense Cuts

"The Obama Administration is planning a 10-percent cut to defense spending beginning with the 2010 budget. Personnel cuts are not in the cards.
“We are going to cut weapons systems,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Armed Services Committee, said during a news conference on Friday. “That’s not just me speaking. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs [of Staff] have spoken about [how] we have got to face the reality that there’s going to be a reduction somewhere in the defense budget.”

Good. At more than $500 billion and 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, U.S. defense spending is too high. Excess encourages waste, including cost overruns totalling $300 billion in the top tier of acquisitions programs. It’s time to cut, not just to save money, but to return clarity, economy and humility to military budgeteers.

Time for an exercise. If you were in charge, what would you cut? And having cut a given program, how would you replace the capability it provided — or would you drop the capability entirely?"
War is Boring