US Cliff: Defense cuts to ease fiscal bind

The strategy, by a group of 15 defense experts assembled by the Stimson Center think tank, proposes reducing costs by improving manpower usage, cutting back on foreign bases, curbing nuclear modernization efforts, reforming compensation and taking other steps to improve efficiency within the Defense Department.

Stimson Center co-founder Barry Blechman, who led a group that included retired Marine Corps General James Cartwright, retired Admiral Bill Owens and scholars Gordon Adams and Anne-Marie Slaughter, said the strategy, dubbed Strategic Agility, expanded on the one unveiled by the Pentagon in January.

It's more an evolution than any kind of radical change, Blechman said in an interview. It's a shift, a greater shift, toward an expeditionary model of U.S. military power that moves away from the kind of static big bases that characterized our Cold War posture to rotational deployments of forces in and out of regions to exercise.

The new strategy adopted by the Defense Department in January called for a shift in strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region, with the removal of some military units from Europe and more rotational deployments by U.S.-based troops to both Europe and Asia.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been working to implement the strategy over the past year, traveling to Asia four times and bolstering military ties with

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