The Pentagon faces significant cuts in its budget — no matter whether the congressional supercommittee succeeded or failed at finding more ways to reduce the federal deficit. The military plans to cut nearly $500 billion from its budget. One place to look for cuts: in the Army and also the Air Force's stealthy and pricey F-35.

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$400 billion
Larry Korb
Reagan
The Air Force
General Ray Ordinario
Nora Bensahel
Center for a New American Security
So what level are we talking about? The Pentagon's annual budget ten years ago was just under $400 billion. Now, it's about 550 billion. I think it's a gross overreaction when you hear these stories of doom and gloom and all these things. Larry Korb is a defense analyst who served in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. At the turn of this century, we accounted for 1/3 of the world's military expenditures. Now, it's almost half. So what we're talking about is the Pentagon isn't getting as much money as it expected. Now the question is where does the Pentagon scale back? It comes down to two big areas: people and military hardware, like weapons. The Army and the Marines want to preserve as many ground troops as they can. The Air Force and the Navy are looking to build more aircraft and ships. In the end, everyone will probably have to lose something. General Ray Ordinario, the Army's top officer, has already said the Army could be cut by at least 20,000 soldiers and end up below 520,000 troops. Some want to cut the Army even more. We bring that down even further to 482,000 troops. Nora Bensahel is an analyst with the Center for a New American Security. She helped write a report on military strategy. That was the size of the United States Army before September 11th, 2001. Cutting troops would free up money for ships and aircraft. She thinks that's a better fit for U.S. defense strategy, which is shifting toward Asia and the Pacific.