Cuts not as deep as Pentagon says

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.

Arguing that the United States needs to be prepared for many potential threats despite ending the war in Iraq — and with congressional opposition to military spending cuts likely to be as stiff as ever despite the uncertain federal fiscal picture — the Pentagon's request calls for an increase in its base budget by $36 billion over the next five years. And its planned reduction in ground forces by 2017 would still leave the military larger than it was before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon's proposal over five years is 8 percent less than what the Obama administration proposed last year, a total cut of $259 billion over five years. But the figures also represent an average of 2 percent annual growth over five years, employing a definition of the term "reduction" that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else.

"That's a real cut," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. The budget is Panetta's first since he assumed leadership of the Pentagon last summer.

As the Obama administration winds down more than a decade of war, the budget request — only fragments of which were released Thursday — is supposed to account for cuts of $487 billion in projected spending over the next 10 years.

Pentagon officials said their proposal represented tough choices, but the biggest cuts appeared to be in the Defense Department's plan to reduce the number of U.S. ground forces to slightly more than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, before the wars began.

At the same time, the department proposed increasing spending on technology and major weapons systems, after announcing this month that it must be ready for all kinds of warfare, and proposing more use of unmanned aircraft and a more agile ground force.

It wants to raise spending on drones by 30 percent, delay spending on the costly and controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and fund a new bomber and a sea-based vessel that would allow drones and helicopters to take off from international waters. It wants to maintain current spending on missile defense and nuclear weapons, and spend more on cybersecurity.

The department asserted that it was simultaneously taking risks and not losing any conventional capability. It said it was responding to growing financial pressure because this proposal represented the biggest cut in a decade.

Their proposal, officials have said, carries risks because the U.S. military no longer would be able to fight two wars simultaneously and might be required to make difficult decisions about military priorities.

"The primary risk lies not in what we can do but in how much we can do and how fast we can do it," said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For the 2013 fiscal year, the department requests a $525 billion base budget — a $6 billion decrease from the current budget — and an additional $88.4 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan, down from $115 billion this year.

For 2014, the request for the base budget — which excludes war spending — would increase to to $534 billion; by fiscal year 2017 it would reach $567 billion.

The department, which expanded its ground forces quickly over the past decade to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plans to cut the Army by 2017 to 490,000 soldiers, from 562,000. Over the same period, the Marines would shrink by 20,000, to 182,000.

That would still leave a larger military than before the wars started. In 2001, there were 480,000 soldiers and 180,000 Marines.

In line with the smaller forces, the Pentagon calls for retiring planes that transport troops, including 27 C-5As and 65 C-130s. The budget also proposes modest limits on pay raises that would take effect in 2015 — after the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan is expected to be over — and increases in health-care premiums.

Panetta said the administration would ask Congress to authorize another round of cuts at U.S. military bases through the base realignment and closure process, which was last employed in 2005. He didn't offer specifics.