ABOUT FACE

The White House Office of Management and Budget is telling the Pentagon to slash its 2006 budget plan by $10 billion and prepare for another $10-billion cut each year for the duration of the future years' defense plan, sending military officials scrambling to comply with the last-minute financial demand.

The net $60-billion reduction is a reversal of preelection Bush administration plans that would have added $10 billion per year. In response, the services appear to be offering up some of their most transformational programs for major reduction, possibly with the idea that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will reject their offers or at least reduce the pain of the cuts.

AN EARLY ASSESSMENT from military officials is that a number of major programs will be smashed, potentially beyond repair. Procurement and research and development accounts are the primary targets. "It's a triage approach to budgeting," bemoans one Defense Dept. official.

For the military and the defense industry it is a clear sign that growing fears regarding the end of the defense buildup are now being realized.

Vice Adm. (ret.) Arthur Cebrowski, head of the Pentagon's Office of Transformation, has already suggested to Rumsfeld that he reject OMB's call for reduction on the grounds that it will cripple the military's plan to become smaller, but harder hitting, through the introduction of new technology, according to military and aerospace industry officials.

Roughly, the Navy and Air Force each have to take $4 billion in cuts with the Army bearing the remainder. In 2004, the Army gave up its RAH-66 scout/attack helicopter and prior to that sacrificed the Crusader artillery system.

Items facing the chopping block include up to 175 of USAF's F/A-22s, the Navy's Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) replacement for the P-3 and DD-X (which would have begun introducing directed energy weapons), as well as a cut of as much as $1 billion from the Marine Corps' V-22 program.

"There's nothing else out there," observes a senior Air Force official. "[Nevertheless,] these are scare tactics. It's the first stage of a multistage process to meet federal budget objectives. The services say they can't take the money out of operations in Iraq so it has to come out of modernization. I don't think it's going to end up being $10 billion."

A representative for one affected program says they are receiving similarly bleak assessments. "There are no other bill payers" is the message budget officials are sending to project managers, he says.