A few ideas for Leon Panetta to consider

There are various publications making the rounds of what the next U.S. DOD boss Leon Panetta must do to move the Pentagon in the right direction. Here are a few of my ideas that the Panetta crew have to consider to keep American security interests strong. The major ground rule will be based on the premise that the U.S. DOD budget will suffer greatly.

1.Advise the President and Congress to reduce the forces in Afghanistan by a significant amount. This would be where special forces react to a variety of intel to stamp out threats and not just in Afghanistan.

2.This goes to the next point which is to advise the President and Congress that we cannot afford to use the military for nation building useless dirt locations around the world. This will allow the DOD to shed the billions of wasted dollars spent on Afghanistan contractor support.

3.Advise the President and Congress to significantly reduce the military footprint in Europe. This means closing bases wholesale. The only thing we need there are logistics hub setups. And we will still deploy there as needed for exercises.

4.Advise the President and Congress that the U.S. needs to invest more resources into facing potential threats from the South with the growing instability in Mexico. This may involve more Department of Homeland Security (DHS) resources than DOD but task force plans must be created and exercised to provide mission critical and rapid DOD backup against the increasing threat.

5.Advise the President and Congress to significantly reduce the size of the USMC. We do not need a second land army and a 3rd air arm.

6.Advise the President and Congress to end the USAF manned nuclear bomber mission. It is a waste of money.

7.Advise the President and Congress to reduce the size of the USAF in areas where it is doing jobs better done by the Army such as ground force security in a war theater.

8.End the largess at the DOD top office. No E-4B super corporate jet. Lead austerity by example.

9.Significantly reduce the number of flag rank officers in all services. One may be surprised how capable full-colonels are at doing a variety of tasks.

10.Advise the President and Congress to stop the Libya operation immediately. It is unsupportable because there is no strategy or national interest to back it up.

11.Advise the President and Congress that the U.S. Navy needs to embark on a program to field a nuclear escort (large destroyer) to support carrier battle groups. This will reduce carrier battlegroup dependence on fossil fuels for future wars that will most likely involve interests over natural resources. This can be funded by cancelling the Littoral Combat ship program and ending the Navy involvement in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

12.Advise the President and Congress that the Navy needs to build a cheap, affordable, low technology Frigate for other-than-major war use. This can be funded by stopping all builds of the Burke-class destroyer and will involve a variety of ship-building resources so our ship-building industry stays healthy.

13.Advise the President and Congress that the USAF must have a long-range hyper-sonic air-to-ground missile to be launched from B-52s in order to help work against anti-access threats.

14.Advise the President and Congress that the USAF as an air arm must be significantly reduced to where a majority of flying resources are in Air National Guard units.

15.Advise the President and Congress that the USAF and Navy must start a new X-plane program that continuously and actively tests a variety of manned and unmanned flying technologies.

16.Advise the President and Congress that the USAF must adjust its requirement for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter down to a thin Group structure of 24 aircraft each for a total airframe requirement of 300 aircraft. The number may be allowed to rise from that requirement if the program shows true worth.

17.Advise the President and Congress that the USAF is to be directed to participate in fielding the UCAS-N aircraft in order to support joint strike and ISR operations with the U.S. Navy.