US defence cuts mean 'hard decisions': Gates

Washington: Fiscal pressures on the US military's budget will require sacrificing some missions abroad and cutting back pay and benefits, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said.Gates, who is due to step down at the end of June, urged military and civilian leaders to face up to harsh realities about the future size and role of the armed forces amid a push to contain the country's huge deficit.[caption id="attachment_15266" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="US Defence Secretary said that Obama's objective of cutting security budget would not be possible without reducing the size of US military . Yuri Gripas/Reuters"][/caption]"To shirk this discussion of risks and consequences—and the hard decisions that must follow — I would regard as managerial cowardice," Gates said yesterday.Speaking to an audience of defence hawks at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, Gates argued that reducing Pentagon waste and overhead costs would not be enough to reach President Barack Obama's goal of $400 billion in security budget cuts over the next 12 years.Instead, meeting Obama's objective likely will require reducing the size of the military, eliminating some "lower priority missions" overseas and reforming military pay, pensions and health care, he said.The Pentagon needed to be 'honest' about the consequences of downsizing the force of 1.4 million: "That a smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go fewer places and be able to do fewer things," Gates said.With troop pay and benefits eating up an ever larger share of the defence budget, Gates also said the Pentagon needed to find savings in an area that has remained politically off-limits.AFP