Bush to propose fighter jets cuts
President George Bush will use his new budget to propose cutting the size of the US Army Reserve to its lowest level in three decades and stripping up to €3.3bn next year from two fighter aircraft programmes, one involving British engine-maker Rolls-Royce.
The plans, likely to face opposition on Capitol Hill, come as the US Defence Department struggles to trim personnel costs and other programmes to pay for an expensive war in Iraq and a host of other pricey aircraft and hi-tech programmes. Bush will send his 2007 budget to Congress on February 6.
The proposed Army Reserve cut is part of a broader plan to achieve a new balance of troop strength and combat power among the active Army, the National Guard and reserves to fight the global war on terrorism and to defend the homeland.
The Army sent a letter to members of Congress on Thursday outlining the plan.
Proposals to cut funding in two key jet fighter programmes were described by defence analysts and congressional aides, some of whom spoke anonymously because the reductions had not been announced.
One plan would eliminate funding for an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, the military’s next generation jet fighter.
The second would cut money for F-22 fighters during 2007. But it is actually a contract restructuring that would add that money back – and more – over the long run by stretching out the programme for two additional years and buying up to four more aircraft. The new plan calls for buying 60 aircraft through 2010, rather than 56 over the next two years.
The Joint Strike Fighter engine is being built by General Electric and British firm Rolls-Royce, and the plan to dump it has already triggered lobbying from as far away as 10 Downing Street, including a handwritten note from Prime Minister Tony Blair to Bush.
On the home front, the nearly €1.7bn cut would affect General Electric engine plants, and possibly jobs, in Ohio and Massachusetts, and a Rolls-Royce plant in Indiana.
Under the Bush plan, the authorised troop strength of the Army Reserve would drop from 205,000 – the current number of slots it is allowed – to 188,000, the number of soldiers it had at the end of 2005.
Because of recruiting and other problems, the Army Reserve has been unable to fill its ranks to its authorised level.
Army leaders have already said they are taking a similar approach to shrinking the National Guard, which the Army is proposing to cut from its authorised level of 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, the number now on National Guard rolls.
Some in Congress have vowed to fight the proposed cuts in the National Guard. Its soldiers and resources are controlled by state governors unless Guard units are mobilised by the president for federal duty, as Bush did after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.
“I remain convinced that we do not have a large enough force,” Republican Congressman Ike Skelton said in a letter to US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Skelton is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
