On March 21, 2013, Congress sent to the White House H.R. 933, the Consolidated and Continuing Appropriations Act, which the President signed into law (P.L. 113-6) on March 26, 2013. Division C of that legislation was a fully detailed DOD appropriations act for FY2013 that provided $597.1 billion for programs funded by that bill. Including funds provided for military construction in Division E of H.R. 933, the bill provided a total of $607.7 billion in discretionary budget authority for DOD. This is $323.8 million less than the Administration's request, but exceeds the funding cap set by the BCA and thus triggers a sequestration of up to $35.0 billion. The Administration had not allocated that reduction among specific DOD appropriations accounts as of May 15, 2013. The Obama Administration's FY2013 budget request, submitted to Congress on February 13, 2012, included $646.97 billion for the so-called "national defense" function of the federal budget (budget function 050). This included funding for global operations of the Department of Defense (DOD), defense-related nuclear programs conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE), and other defense-related activities. For discretionary DOD budget authority, the request included $613.93 billion, of which $525.45 billion is for "base" defense budget costs—that is, day-to-day operations other than war costs—and the remaining $88.48 billion was for "Overseas Contingency Operations" (OCO)—that is, military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The function 050 total also included discretionary budget authority of $17.98 billion for DOE defense-related programs (dealing with nuclear weapons and warship powerplants), $4.75 billion for FBI national security programs, and $2.42 billion for a number of smaller accounts, including selective service and civil defense ( Table 3 ). The Administration's proposed DOD budget called for the third consecutive annual decrease in total DOD funding (including OCO) since FY2010. Most of that decline reflected the decrease in OCO spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, while the decline in war costs accounted for most of this reduction, the President's FY2013 request also would have reduced the base budget (in current dollars) for the first time since 1996. The base budget request was $5.2 billion less than was appropriated for the base budget in FY2012 and $45.3 billion less than the FY2013 request the Administration had projected in February 2011 ( Figure 1 ). That reduction from the previously planned FY2013 request—and additional planned reductions of more than $50 billion per year compared to DOD's February 2011 budget projections through FY2021—reflected the Administration's plan to reduce federal spending as required by the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, enacted on August 2, 2011 ( P.L. 112-25 ). Compared with the long-range spending plan published by DOD in February 2011, the February 2012 plan reduced DOD base budgets by $259.4 billion from FY2012 through FY2017 ( Figure 2 ). For the 10-year period covered by the BCA (FY2012-FY2021), the Administration's revised spending plan reduced DOD budgets by a total of $486.9 billion. Further reductions in DOD base budgets over the next 10 years may be in store as a result of the BCA. In addition to the $900 billion worth of deficit reduction in FY2012-FY2021 (counting both defense and non-defense spending) that results from the BCA, the act also requires additional deficit reduction measures totaling $1.2 trillion through FY2021 (which would result in a total deficit reduction through FY2021 of $2.1 trillion). In FY2013, the BCA requires an across the board cut in budget authority (or "sequester") that would be levied against almost all discretionary spending. For the National Defense budget function (of which the DOD budget comprises more than 95%), some $59 billion—about 10%—would be cut from the Administration's budget request, with equal percentages cut from each program, project and activity. In subsequent years, the BCA sets lowered spending caps to achieve the required savings. Each year, to the extent that Congress appropriates more than the caps allow, the Administration would sequester funds through across-the-board cuts to ensure that the required savings are achieved. If the sequestration process and the lowered spending caps remain law, the Administration's February 2012 projection for defense budgets over the next 10 years would be cut by an additional $515 billion—about 9%. The Obama Administration presented its FY2013 DOD budget plan both as an effort to address the long-term spending limits set by the BCA and as an opportunity to refocus U.S. defense planning as DOD winds down large-scale deployments of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Administration preceded the announcement of its FY2013 budget request with the publication on January 5, 2012, of new "strategic guidance," which, it said, took account of both the new budgetary and strategic environments. The January 2012 strategic guidance postulates that active-duty ground forces no longer will be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which required an Army and Marine Corps capable of maintaining a constantly rotating overseas deployment of upwards of 100,000 troops. Under this approach, U.S. forces will be shaped and sized to conduct a campaign to defeat a major aggression—a combined arms campaign involving air, sea, and land forces and including a large-scale ground operation—and, simultaneously, another campaign intended to block an attack in some other area by a second adversary. The January 2012 strategic guidance also calls for DOD to put a higher priority on deploying U.S. forces to the Pacific and around Asia while scaling back deployments in Europe. For example, the Administration planned to withdraw and disband two of the four Army brigade combat teams currently stationed in Germany while maintaining a rotating force of up to 2,500 Marines in northern Australia. It also planned to station littoral combat ships in Singapore and smaller patrol craft in Bahrain. Because of the distances from land bases to which U.S. forces have access, operations in the Asia-Pacific region would rely heavily on air and naval forces. Accordingly, many observers expect a shift of DOD resources toward naval and air forces at the expense of ground formations. Some question the Administration's claim of a "pivot" toward Asia, citing its plan to retire some older, long-range cargo planes and to cut a total of $13.1 billion from projected shipbuilding budgets for FY2013-FY2017. But the Administration cites its decisions to retain in service 11 aircraft carriers and to add other ships to its shipbuilding plan as proof of its refocused commitment on the Pacific region, where long operational distances are the rule. Pursuant to the Administration's January 2012 strategic guidance, DOD plans to eliminate or retire several major combat units and weapons systems by FY2017. Among these are At least 8 of the Army's 45 active-duty brigade combat teams; Six of the Marine Corps's 41 battalion landing teams; Seven cruisers from among the Navy's current fleet of 101 surface warships; Two of the Navy's 30 amphibious landing ships; Six of the 61 fighter and ground-attack squadrons in the Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard; 27 early-model C-5A cargo planes out of a total fleet of 302 long-range, wide-body C-5 and C-17 cargo jets; The entire fleet of C-27 mid-sized cargo planes, currently operated by the Air Force but desired by the Army to deliver supplies to troops in forward positions; and The entire fleet of "Block 30" Global Hawk surveillance drones, which DOD officials said had proven to be more expensive than the U-2 aircraft they had been slated to replace. On the other hand, the Administration says its plan would maintain the remaining force at a high level of readiness. Compared with the February 2011 plan, the Operation and Maintenance request for FY2013 was reduced by 3%, one-fifth as large as the 15% reduction imposed on the Procurement accounts ( Table 4 ). The Administration plans to reduce the size of the active-duty force—slated to be 1.42 million at the end of FY2012—by 21,600 personnel in FY2013 and by a total of 102,400 by the end of FY2017. Consistent with the new policy of avoiding prolonged, large-scale peacekeeping operations, most of that multi-year reduction—92,000 out of the 102,400—would come from the Army and Marine Corps. In effect, this plan would remove from the force the 92,000 personnel that were added to the Army and Marine Corps beginning in 2007 to sustain deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. However, in 2017—when the proposed reductions would be complete—each of those two services still would be larger than it had been before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 ( Table 5 ). The FY2013 budget request included a 1.7% increase in service members' "basic pay," an amount based on the Labor Department's Employment Cost Index (ECI), which is a survey-based estimate of the rate at which private-sector pay has increased. After providing an equal increase in basic pay for FY2014, the Administration plan would provide basic pay raises less than the anticipated ECI increase in the following three years: 0.5% below ECI for FY2015, 1.0% below for FY2016, and 1.5% below for FY2017.