Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Barack Obama deliver remarks on the Defense Strategic Review at the Pentagon (Jason Reed/REUTERS)
The full details won't be provided until the coming weeks, but President Obama today announced the outlines of a new,
leaner military.
WASHINGTON — President Obama outlined a broad new military strategy for the United States on Thursday, one that refocuses the armed forces on threats in Asia and the Pacific region, continues a strong presence in the Middle East but makes clear that American ground forces will no longer be large enough to conduct prolonged, large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an unusual appearance in the Pentagon briefing room, Mr. Obama put his mark on a military strategy that moves away from the grinding wars he inherited from the Bush administration and relies more on naval and air power in the Pacific and the Strait of Hormuz as a counterbalance to China and Iran. [...]
Mr. Obama’s strategy embraces hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the military, making it an awkward codicil to the uneasy relationship he has shared with the military since his first days in office.
In a letter accompanying the new strategy, the president wrote, “We must put our fiscal house in order here at home and renew our long-term economic strength.”
But in an election year when he has been under assault from Republican presidential candidates for cutting the military budget and for what they say is his weak response to Iranian threats, Mr. Obama also said that the United States would “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when our military was left ill-prepared for the future.”
To that end, the president wrote, his administration will continue to invest in counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, cyberwarfare and countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons
So weapons systems producers apparently don't have too much to worry about.