WASHINGTON (AFP) â€" The Pentagon needs to rein in its excessive spending or risk being forced to slash vital programs due to a soaring national debt, Admiral Mike Mullen, the top US military official, said in Wednesday's Financial Times.
The US military may not be far behind countries like Britain and Germany, which have adopted "drastic" defense cuts, if it is unable to bring spending under control, he cautioned.
"If we do not figure out how to manage ourselves inside this growing challenge (of fiscal austerity) then I do worry that it won't be too long before those kinds of cuts will be part of our future as well, and that would be very dangerous," Mullen told the US edition of the Financial Times in a front page interview.
The Pentagon's budget, by far the largest of any military in the world, amounts to some 700 billion dollars per year. Strained by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has doubled since 2001 and accounts for more than 40 percent of total global military spending.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned in August that the US military must tighten its belt to sustain and modernize US forces, and end the "culture of endless money" that has pervaded for years in the Pentagon.
US Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said Monday that the military would continue its program to build a new long-range bomber, but would adopt a "cautious" approach to avoid excessively high costs.
Mullen, who in May urged Congress to scrap funding for a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet, described the sharply rising US debt as the worst threat to American national security.
It was vital that officials in the Pentagon "recognize that we (account for) about 50 percent of the discretionary spending that's available in this government," Mullen said.
"I am trying to send a message of getting this right now."
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