As part of the US government's overall budget-trimming efforts, the Pentagon plans to cut military spending by 32.1 billion US dollars over the next five years, The Washington Post reported Friday.

The plan, which was outlined in an Oct. 19 memo from Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, to the leadership of the Army, Navy and Air Force, was made at a time when the Bush administration is tightening its spending due to rising war costs, a growing deficit and hurricane-relief spending, said the report.

The spending cuts had been expected and are in addition to reductions the Pentagon proposed last year.

However, the Pentagon's budget to support troops, which includes increasing fuel and health care costs, is expected to be immune from the cuts as the US military will also continue to need millions of dollars to repair and replace equipment being used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus, the cuts are expected to come at the expense of expensive weapon programs such as Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the DD(X) destroyer being developed by Northrop Grumman Corp.

The US military's procurement and research and development programs, from which US defense companies get most of their profits, are considered vulnerable to the cuts.

"The budget pressures are making it very difficult (for the US military) to afford new military hardware," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute.

Source: Xinhua