Gates: Cuts in Pentagon Bureaucracy Needed

Gates: Cuts in Pentagon Bureaucracy Needed – Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates vowed Saturday to lead an effort to cut as much as $15 billion in overhead costs from the Pentagon’s $550 billion budget and warned that without the savings, the military will not be able to afford its current force.

Under Gates’s plan, the billions taken from the Pentagon’s vast administrative bureaucracy would be used to pay for weapons modernization programs and the overall fighting force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates also hinted that additional cuts to major weapons programs would probably be necessary in the coming years.

The Pentagon’s budget has almost doubled over the past decade, but the faltering national economy and surging U.S. debt will impose new austerity on the military, Gates warned…

More at The Washington Post.