WASHINGTON, 09 April 2022, (TON): At $773 billion, the fiscal 2023 Defense Budget Request is huge, but that doesn’t mean that painful choices are not necessary, defense leaders told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A case in point is divestiture of capabilities no longer needed as the National Defense Strategy changes.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told “with the change to strategic competition with China and Russia, that some of the capabilities resident in the Defense Department are no longer needed.”

The Navy seeks to decommission some cruisers, littoral combat ships and dock landing ships. The Navy also looks to retire the RQ-21 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

The Air Force looks to divest some A-10s, the E-3 Sentry aircraft, the E-8 JSTARS aircraft, some KC-135 refuelers and some C-130H aircraft.

The secretary said “the savings from cancelling, retiring or divesting these capabilities would allow the department to redirect resources to higher defense necessities.”

Austin said “in fact, if this budget is approved, DOD would receive $2.7 billion that it could reinvest in other, more pressing, systems.”

He said, confronting powers like China and Russia means that the US military must maximize “capability and capacity resident in every warfighting domain, air, land, space, sea and cyber, and that we’re able to network those capabilities in new and different ways.”