Gates to slash Pentagon bureaucracy costs

Robert Gates said the cuts would include the number of top officers

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a far-reaching review of administration costs at the Pentagon.

Mr Gates said 40% of his department's budget went on bureaucracy, and that he wanted to save more than $10bn that would be spent on combat operations.

He compared US defence spending to an oil gusher that had to be turned off.

Mr Gates described one example of waste, where requests for dog-handlers in Afghanistan had to be approved by no fewer than five Pentagon departments.

The current defence budget, not counting the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is $535bn. Mr Gates wants $549bn for 2011.

'Root-and-branch changes'

In a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, Mr Gates said the Department of Defense had to "take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organised, staffed and operated - indeed, every aspect of how it does business".

Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do US Defence Secretary Robert Gates

He said he had recently come to the conclusion that in the wake of "difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition" of the US, the Pentagon would be required to make major savings.

"The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time," he added.

Noting that long-term savings of $330bn had already been made last year by cutting several dozen weapons programmes, Mr Gates said his new goal was to cut "overhead" in the Pentagon's budget by between two and three percent, or $10bn to $15bn per year.

The savings would allow the Pentagon to sustain current force levels and free up funds for modernisation programmes, he added.

"Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do," he said. "These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time."

Mr Gates said the cuts would include the number of top officers.

"During the 1990s, the military saw deep cuts in overall force structure - the Army by nearly 40%. But the reduction in flag officers - generals and admirals - was about half that."

"The department's management layers - civilian and military - and numbers of senior executives outside the services grew during that same period," he added.

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