Hagel demande moins d’argent pour l’armée, plus pour les forces spéciales

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  • Deux types d’information :

    – Très gravement amputée, qui peut laisser croire que le régime étasunien s’apprête à se calmer,

    Aux Etats-Unis, l’armée de terre va être sévèrement réduite
    http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2014/02/24/l-armee-de-terre-americaine-ramenee-a-son-plus-bas-niveau-depuis-1940_437269

    USA : le Pentagone veut sabrer les effectifs de l’armée de Terre
    http://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_usa-le-pentagone-veut-sabrer-les-effectifs-de-l-armee-de-terre?id=820934

    La plus petite armée de Terre américaine depuis 1940
    http://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/201402/24/01-4741991-la-plus-petite-armee-de-terre-americaine-depuis-1940.php

    – non amputée,

    Hagel Urges Less Money for U.S. Army, More for Special Forces
    http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/02/hagel-urges-less-funding-u-s-army-special-forces

    (...)

    At the same time, however, he urged an increase in the size of the Special Operations Forces (SOF), the elite military personnel charged with training foreign counterparts and carrying out often-secret missions, including assassinations and raids such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

    (...)

    “The real question is whether we can roll back the ‘go anywhere, fight any battle’ mentality of the Pentagon,” Hartung [said] in an email exchange. “Whether it’s drones, Special Forces, or precision bombs, war is war, and it’s time to take the United States off of a perpetual war footing and craft a truly defensive military force.”

    Indeed, in his remarks, Hagel stressed that Washington’s SOF will continue to grow – from roughly 66,000 today to just shy of 70,000 in 2015 – an increase of almost 300 percent compared to just a decade ago.

    Each of the military services and each of the regional commands (SouthCom for Latin America, Africom for Africa, CentCom for the Near East and parts of South and Central Asia, and PaCom for the Asia-Pacific) – have their own elite SOF units.

    In addition, a North Carolina-based Special Operations Command (SOCOM), presided over by Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, can dispatch troops to virtually anywhere in the world. He also commands the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in carrying out highly classified operations against specific targets.

    McRaven, whose efforts at easing human-rights restrictions on training foreign militaries and circumventing State Department oversight of some aid programmes have proved controversial, has nonetheless been effective in building his “empire” in major part because of its compatibility with Obama’s desire to lighten the U.S. military’s “footprint” in conflicted regions without reducing its effectiveness and lethality.

    “In his State of the Union address, the President declared that our nation must move off a permanent war footing, and Secretary Hagel’s speech today took one major step in that direction.” noted Miriam Pemberton, another defence analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies here. “But, while long-term occupations are off the table now, the expansion of Special Forces means that under-the-radar invasion are not .”

    Ironically, Hagel’s budget proposal reflects in many ways the strategic vision of former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld , who strongly favoured the development of high-tech combat systems, heavy reliance on air power, and small, nimble ground forces who could strike from so-called “lily pads” (or temporary bases) anywhere on the globe within a short period of time. His so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs,” or RMA, however, was side-tracked enormous costs of the Iraq occupation.

    The Obama administration has revived that vision, without explicitly admitting it, with the priority it has accorded to cyber-warfare capabilities, SOF, ever-more sophisticated drone technology, its intended retention of all 13 aircraft carriers, and its ongoing efforts to negotiate access agreements to foreign military facilities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, East African, and Sahelian regions

    • Secretary Hagel’s Cuts Don’t Translate into Less Spending
      http://nationalpriorities.org/blog/2014/02/25/secretary-hagels-cuts-dont-translate-less-spending

      .... new five-year spending projections at the Pentagon show that it plans to exceed the spending caps of sequestration by $115 billion over the next five years. What’s more, the #Pentagon receives many tens of billions in additional funding to operate wars overseas, and that money isn’t subject to caps. In fiscal 2014 that war budget, known officially as “Overseas Contingency Operations,” totaled $85 billion – and was widely criticized for containing funding that wasn’t actually meant for war operations but instead would function as a slush fund for the Pentagon.

    • Special Ops Moves from ‘Perpetual War to Perpetual Engagement’ - Defense One
      http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2014/03/special-ops-moves-perpetual-war-perpetual-engagement/80341/?oref=d-mostread

      Alongside McRaven, Michael Lumpkin, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said, “We are moving from a state of perpetual war to perpetual engagement — engaging with partners to build their capacity, engaging problems before they become too big to fix and engaging in direct and indirect action to disrupt and destroy our enemies.”

      Special operations forces are currently working in more than 70 countries. But as Syria and other hotspots continue to attract a growing number of foreign fighters, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., ranking minority member of the subcommittee, said, “demand for these elite troops continues to far exceed supply, placing enormous strain on the readiness of the force.”

      While the Defense Department seeks to cut costs in the coming years, including by reducting active duty troop totals for the Army and Marine Corps, special operations commanders plan to continue adding to their numbers. “We’ve been fortunate that we’ve doubled the size of the force from 33,000 [in 2001] now to coming up on 69,000. So there is available capacity out there,” McRaven said. That’s less than the previously planned 72,000 troops, but more elite forces still are on the way at a price of more than $10 billion annually, compared to just $2.3 billion allocated for special operations in 2001, before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. At the tail end of that war era, conventional forces are shrinking while special operations units are growing, to meet the global demand. McRaven warned Congress about what he called the “irreconcilable” extremists growing out of Somalia, Yemen, Syria and North Africa. “No amount of negotiations,” he said, “no amount of placation is going to put them in a position where they’re prepared to support universal values as we know them.”