Lost in the apocalyptic talk about automatic $50 billion cuts to the military is the simple fact that there is plenty of fat to cut.
Starting with some of the more bombastic weapons programs: it cost the Pentagon $400 billion just to research and develop the F-35, a plane that currently can't even fly.
Surely, with a nip here and a tuck there, the Pentagon can find its way without starving to death.
Good lord, stop paying for F-35s — savings over ten years *chah-ching* $472 billion.
The U.S. needs to cut 500 of those from the defense budget over ten years. The Pentagon plans to buy roughly 2,400 F-35s. At a cost of 200 million per (without including research and development costs which would push it to 300), the total program comes to almost all of what the the government needs to trim.
The stricken bird, however, has few friends, all of them powerful. The plans to buy the plane won't likely be cut for a few reasons, all of them having to do with money (national defense is of little concern).
Like most defense projects, the F-35 has 1,300 suppliers in 45 states, and accounts for 133,000 jobs — which also makes it politically expedient for dovish Democrats in F-35-supplier districts to vote "no" on cutting the program.
Cut the hideous Littoral Combat Ship.
Aside from being ugly, it should be cut because its terrible. The military doesn't even expect it to survive in combat.
The ship's price tag is an incredible 460 million per (on the low end). Multiply that by 20, the amount of orders, and we have about 9 billion in savings.
Cut the M1 Abrams Tank ... completely.
No one's fought a serious tank battle in decades, and it's likely that no one ever will again.
Sure the Abrams tanks helped Marines take Fallujah, but basically because they ran over houses in which insurgents had hunkered down. If it's just about running into buildings, we have other vehicles that can do that.
The numbers here are a bit hard to figure out (how many tanks, times how many people operate those tanks, times their salaries and fees, etc.), but there's certainly savings somewhere in there.
Ostensibly, the U.S. could totally shelve the tank, keeping about 100 active for contingency operations.
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