The US Air Force Space Command cautioned recently that if new budget cuts take effect, some of its round-the-clock missile-warning operations would begin working bankers’ hours – raising concerns about detecting missiles targeting America.
But when questioned about these dire predictions by a concerned lawmaker last week, General Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff, explained that flexibility in the system would let Space Command focus the cuts that take effect on March 1 on redundant, backup radar systems.
“What our Air Force space commander has decided to do is to try and concentrate the … cut … so that we are not at risk of not having warning of an incoming missile,” Welsh told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
Across the military services, officials are sounding similar warnings about the $46 billion in budget cuts beginning March 1 that will slash nearly every military program or activity by a flat percentage.
But even as they raise the alarm about everything from layoffs to reduced flying hours, defense officials are trying to assess how much flexibility they have to protect their most vital missions from the worst effects of the cuts.
Concern about the level of flexibility seems to depend upon where you sit. Military and civilian defense officials say they are facing a trio of converging constraints that give them little leeway to protect the most vital programs and projects.
But some outside analysts say the Pentagon is exaggerating the likely damage to pressure Congress to avert looming cuts.
“What … the service chiefs have been plugging is a classic cherry-picking of some of the most horrendous things you could imagine … won’t deploy a carrier, pull equipment out of maintenance, shut down training exercises, reduce readiness rates,” said Gordon Adams, a professor of national security policy at American University.
Adams, who worked on defense budgets at the White House in the Clinton Administration, said the warnings were a classic Washington Monument strategy, named after an Interior Department decision in the 1960s to respond to budget cuts by shuttering the iconic Washington Monument and other national parks.
