Senate Panel Funds Ships, Drones Military Doesn’t Want -- Danger RoomFor the first time in over a decade, the Pentagon’s budget has to shrink, thanks to a deal to cut the deficit that Congress and President Obama struck last year. Yet a key Senate panel voted on Thursday to fund big-ticket hardware — ships, cargo planes and drones among them — that the U.S. military is trying to get rid of in the name of saving cash.
When the Pentagon rolled out its requested budget in February, there were some conspicuous absences. The a version of the Air Force’s high-flying Global Hawk surveillance drone, known as the Block 30, was chopped. So was the C-27J, a propeller-driven cargo plane used for Afghanistan. For its part, the Navy opted to retire nine old ships and reroute the cash it would take to modernize them into other priorities.
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My Comment: With the Republicans poised to take the US Senate in this year's Congressional elections .... the only way that future defense cuts will then happen will be if sequestration occurs, and President Obama vetoes Congress when it passes legislation to bypass this law .... or .... the debt crisis explodes forcing Congress to make some hard decisions on what to cut. My prediction .... politicians love to delay everything until the last possible moment.