Joint Forces Command to be cut?
If the Associated Press is to be believed here:
Quote:
Officials briefed on the decision say Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to eliminate a major military command in Norfolk, Va., and try to cut the Pentagon's use of outside contractors by 10 percent next year.
The plan was to be announced at a Pentagon press conference on Monday. It is part of a broader effort to trim $100 billion from the military's mammoth budget in the next five years, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begin to wind down and Congress turns its attention more to domestic priorities.
The Associated Press has learned that Joint Forces Command will be eliminated and its role absorbed elsewhere within the Defense Department. Gates has long said the Pentagon needs to reduce waste and duplication.
More details here in Stars and Stripes.
A little known fact about DoD organizations is that
each has not only a ceiling but also a floor on civilian end-strength. IOW, DoD cannot just eliminate positions, they require Congressional consent to go below the floor. What that means is that IF this happens, the civilian spaces must generally be absorbed elsewhere in DoD and preferably in the Hampton Roads area. The Military people will be reassigned so the major loss is really in JFCom's functional areas -- and there are certainly dozens of organizations that would be eager to garner potential spaces by absorbing those functions.
Congress may allow a Reduction in Force but the rules are mind boggling. Given the state of the economy and the jobless rate, I sense another Inside the Beltway budget game as opposed to a genuine desire to just chop one of the newer headquarters. Not that we don't have too many of those...:wry: