Advice to the Pentagon: stop fiddling.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Insider - US Department of Defense funds - Brief article

* The Pentagon has about a six-month window to come up with a game plan to tackle the coming budget crunch, insiders say. That will require defense leaders to articulate a clear rationale for why the federal government should continue to spend 50 percent of its discretionary funds on the military.

A strategic "roles and missions" review is under way at the Defense Department, prompted by President Obama's goal to cut $400 billion from national security spending by 2023. That review is intended to identify programs and functions that the Pentagon would have to give up in order to reduce expenses.

But as the federal debt crisis mounts, the Pentagon may come under increasing pressure to make even deeper cuts, beyond the relatively modest $400 billion over 12 years. A number of deficit-reduction blue-ribbon panels have called for at least a trillion dollars in defense cuts...