Army mulls axing units as budget cuts, drawdown loom

WASHINGTON — The Army’s requirement for 45 active-duty combat brigades — which helped boost the past decade’s growth at Fort Drum — will likely be reduced as the service eyes budget cuts and trims personnel, officials said Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Robert P. Lennox, deputy Army chief of staff, told a House Armed Services subcommittee that the brigade requirement and the Army’s equipment needs are a “moving target” because of the likelihood of significant budget cuts on top of the endstrength reduction announced earlier this year.

The potential shift in Army structure is one of several issues that illustrate how deficit reduction and the already-planned drawdown after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are combining to change the service. In addition to personnel reductions, the Army is scaling back some modernization programs and considering revamping current equipment rather than seeking more expensive new designs.

The Army plans to gradually cut 27,000 soldiers from the active force beginning in 2014, and the Pentagon is searching for hundreds of billions of dollars in military-wide cuts, possibly more if a congressional panel on deficit reduction fails to reach an agreement next month.

“You ask if we’re worried about funding. The answer is yes,” Gen. Lennox said. “There are a lot of unknowns ahead for all of us.”

Gen. Lennox said Army officials are discussing the impact on the brigade requirement, but there have been no clear indications of the Army’s thinking or how those decisions might affect Fort Drum. One brigade combat team has around 4,000 soldiers.

“The numbers don’t add up” for keeping the brigade mandate, said Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, in an interview Wednesday. “You can’t get there mathematically.”

Hopefully, Mr. Owens said, cuts will avert a direct impact on active soldiers. But if officials target vendors instead, that translates into lost business and layoffs, he said.

The Armed Services Committee has shown little taste for heavy cuts to the military. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said she wished the reduction in endstrength were not so, and Mr. Owens said officials need to be careful not to repeat errors of overly aggressive cuts after previous wars; rebuilding the Army cost more than maintaining it would have, he said.

Mindful of looming reductions, Mr. Owens and others have been touting a more diverse mission for Drum, including the use of drones, which he said is a good fit for a military more focused on intelligence gathering, for instance.

The full committee heard from economists Wednesday who predicted as many as a million jobs lost if the deficit “supercommittee” fails to reach a deal and across-the-board cuts are ordered as required by a debt limit deal Congress reached in the summer. But Mr. Owens said he suspects that outcome will be averted even if the panel doesn’t reach a decision.

In that event, he said, President Barack Obama; House Speaker Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio; and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., will probably work out a solution privately that reaches a lower deficit reduction in exchange for not raising taxes on the wealthy.

“I would be very surprised,” Mr. Owens said, if the three agreed on any sort of tax increase.

Defense-related cuts are hard to predict, Mr. Owens said, because lawmakers have not outlined where they should or should not occur. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has spoken of avoiding cuts that hurt quality of life for soldiers on active duty.

In the Army, officials recently decided to let a contract for ground mobile radios expire and will seek a less expensive alternative. And the need to trim costs is also shaping the Army’s discussions on a new armored ground combat vehicle.

The service is still seeking a new design for the vehicle, but also it is weighing whether current equipment could be modified for “off-shelf” use.

“We need a vehicle that can withstand the vigor of combat,” said Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, military assistant to the deputy secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.

Officials should know in the next 18 months to two years how much a newly designed vehicle will cost, Gen. Phillips said.