WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel proposed a defense budget designed to turn the military's attention away from the long ground war in Afghanistan and toward emerging cyberthreats from China and increasing challenges from al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Africa.
The Pentagon road map, sure to face fierce resistance from lawmakers in both parties, calls for reducing the military's reliance on manpower-heavy troop buildups, investing instead in more agile special forces and cyberwarriors.
In unveiling the first Pentagon budget to bear his imprint, Mr. Hagel took aim at rising personnel costs and revived an earlier plan to shrink the Army to its smallest force levels since World War II. He proposed cuts in major equipment programs including the Navy's littoral combat ship and the Air Force A-10 "Warthog" jet.
Mr. Hagel proposes injecting more money instead into changes that defense officials say would make for a military that is better ready to respond to changing threats.
Mr. Hagel wants to pare back the size of the active-duty military by 13% and the reserves by 5% in coming years. But he would boost the size of Special Operations forces by nearly 6% by adding about 3,000 personnel to the kinds of teams that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Read the article at the Wall Street Journal: http://ow.ly/tZn91
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