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The defense budget is coming down. There's no question about that.
And if you look at the history of defense budgets since World War II,
they go up and they come down. And we're on the downside of a peak.
We've been working very hard as an Army to prepare for this.
I started sending generals to business school in 2008
to help me get a core group of folks that understand how we can operate more efficiently
and more effectively. And so far, we've been able to meet reductions
that we've had in our budget without having to reduce our force structure,
because we need to get this force back, we need to rest it,
we need to reset it and reconstitute it and prepare it for the future.
How will the cutback on budget impact things like systems
and new equipment that we're buying? Will there be realignments?
As you look at this, you have to go back and ask yourself questions
about whether the assumptions you made in 2005, say, are still valid in 2010.
Things change, we react to things that the enemy does,
we need to do things differently and so it's a constant process.
So we're constantly going back and reevaluating where we were,
looking at the assumptions we made that underpin some of the key programs
and we'll just have to continue to adjust and adapt.
The idea that you can establish a program and then seven years later produce something
without any changes is just crazy, especially in this day and age.
And so everything will constantly evolve, and I think as the budgets come down,
we have to work very hard to put our money in the systems and programs
that give us the most value. [♪upbeat music♪] That's the Army Today
from Soldiers Radio and Television, Atlanta.