[styhorporry]

Here you go...

Joint Forces Command closure is part of bigger plan | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Robert Gates' call for transforming the way the military does business might have seemed directly aimed at Hampton Roads, home to the only command he proposed eliminating Monday.

But the secretary of defense's plan to shutter Joint Forces Command, which employs some 5,000 people in Norfolk and Suffolk, is part of a larger effort he's undertaken to overhaul the way the Pentagon buys weapons, employs contractors and spends billions duplicating its own work.

His announcement may have caught many local officials off guard, but the reasoning behind it shouldn't surprise anyone. Gates has been sounding the alarm about unsustainable defense budgets for years. "The biggest challenge to our national security at the moment is that we might bankrupt the nation through excessive spending," Thompson said. "The bottom line here is if the department can't find efficiencies on its own, it will get plenty of help from Congress." In the meantime, defense contracting companies that specialize in systems engineering and technical assistance can expect to feel the bite from Gates' initiatives.

Gates said funding for support contractors - not those working overseas, making equipment or building tanks and ships - will be reduced by 10 percent a year for the next three years.

Harrison took that to mean that Gates believes that a third of the work those contractors are doing is unnecessary.

"That doesn't bode well for the industry," he said. There you go... 'all that talk about cutting'