Army targets redundant systems

WASHINGTON, July 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army is searching for redundant weapons systems in a move to help cut $2 billion in spending by 2012, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said.

Chiarelli, speaking this week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Army spends more than any other service on people, but to alleviate the stress placed on the force through years of war, the service wants to find other ways to reduce costs before it starts cutting end strength, according to a report in DefenseNews.

"We are an organization that requires people and we better make darn sure that everything we're not spending on people, we really, really need if we're going to meet the goals the chief has had for almost four years, and that's getting the Army back in balance," Chiarelli said.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates issued a directive in June ordering the nation's military services to reduce their budgets in the coming four years.

Chiarelli, ahead of the guidance, had already instituted a series of portfolio reviews to discern what the Army owns, what it still needs and whether there were any overlaps. The reviews have already resulted in one major program decision: the cancellation of a multibillion-dollar missile program, called the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, the report said.

Chiarelli said he discovered redundancy in individual precision rocket systems after back-to-back reviews. He decided that looking at weapons programs should be part of a larger portfolio, so that various systems and requirements could be compared.

Showing slides that compared range, cost and accuracy of various Army artillery, mortar and missile systems, he said that "when you look at the costs of some of these precision munitions, it became clear to me that we really needed to have a new way of looking at these to make sure we didn't have duplication in the system and that we're buying exactly what we need."