The Pentagon's commitment to retaining the capability to fight in two simultaneous conflicts in the growing era of irregular warfare will likely have a major effect in upcoming budget requests -- especially for pet programs like F-22s, the Future Combat System (FCS) and the Navy's DDG-1000 program, according to analyst James McAleese of McAleese & Associates.

"While the DOD is still committed to two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts, [the] evolving force structure construct anticipates that only one of those conflicts will be a platform-intensive major combat operation while the other conflict will be a long-duration-irregular-warfare-campaign," McAleese said.

Trying to retain the major-combat fighting capability while keeping up the capacity to provide a rotational forward presence needed to battle insurgents is going to put the services at odds with their own internal needs, McAleese said.

Read the rest of this story: Shifts Expected In Upcoming Pentagon Budget

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