Pentagon's budget nightmare: How each branch would handle sequester cuts

With the threat of a mandatory, across-the-board series of cuts known as sequestration looming over the Pentagon, each of the services has begun its worst-case-scenario planning. Here is where the cuts stand now:

3. Air Force

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP/File
Jets make military flyover before an NFL football game in 2012. The sequester might threaten a Super Bowl flyover.

The Air Force has put a hiring freeze in place and continues to search for ways to find budget savings that will not affect wartime operations.

Flying hours for pilots are expensive, so unless they are related to the war, senior Air Force officials are directing them to be curtailed.

This includes ceremonial outings including air shows and flyovers. It remains to be seen how this will impact Super Bowl festivities, since US military flyovers have been a staple at National Football League games.

The Air Force is putting an end to all rehabilitation projects, including painting, carpeting, and remodeling.

Those programs that will not be touched include funding for wounded warrior programs and many expenditures related to the Pentagon’s new strategic shift to the Pacific. Air Force leadership has also directed commanders: “To the extent feasible, protect family programs.”

Since civilian pay makes up a large share of the force’s operating budget, the Air Force has also been directed to consider the possibility of civilian furloughs of up to 30 calendar days or 22 discontinuous workdays.

“Please do not take any actions regarding furloughs,” commanders were told in a memo from the Air Force vice chief of staff and the acting undersecretary, “For now.”

3 of 4

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.