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Pentagon budget: top 3 winners and losers

In Pentagon parlance, the word “cut” is a relative term. The Defense Department’s base budget decreases from $553 billion this year to $525 billion in 2013, but it rebounds steadily to $567 billion in 2017. With this in mind, here are the top three winners and losers:

Winner No. 3: unmanned aerial vehicles

US Air Force/REUTERS/File
A US Air Force photo of a Predator unmanned aircraft.

  • By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

Pentagon officials who worry about the impact of cuts on the military are openly celebrating the proliferation of Predator and Reaper drones in US battlefields throughout the world.

Indeed, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – or “remotely piloted aircraft,” as the Air Force prefers to call them – will see perhaps one of the largest proportional leaps in funding. The Pentagon will call for a nearly one-third increase in its UAV fleet in the years ahead.

The US military sees opportunities for UAVs not only in its current wars, but also in patrolling the seas, through what defense officials call a “sea-based unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems,” such as the Navy Fire Scout, an unmanned helicopter that can be outfitted with laser-guided rockets.

The Pentagon also declared its intent to “acquire advanced new ISR capabilities.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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