Defense cuts could impact Hampton Roads

WASHINGTON (AP/WAVY) - President Obama addressed how the Pentagon will slash more than a billion dollars from its budget, and that could include giving up the capability to fight two major ground wars simultaneously.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta unveiled the strategy Thursday in a news conference with President Barack Obama and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Panetta said future budgets will mean smaller U.S. armed forces and some greater risk. But he said the country does not have to choose between national security and fiscal responsibility.

In Hampton Roads, it is too soon to fully understand how deep the cuts will be to the defense budget and how much it will impact our local economy.

The President is looking to cut more than a billion dollars of the Pentagon's budget, with talk about cutting as much as a trillion dollars.

Virginia's fourth district Congressman Randy Forbes has joined several of his Republican colleagues in opposition to that. Forbes was in Smithfield Thursday morning speaking to the Chamber of Commerce.

His remarks came before the President's speech, but Forbes said that regardless of the final decision on how much to trim the defense budget, it will be bad news for our local economy.

"The economic portion of it to Virginia is going to be like nothing you've ever seen. Already, defense contractors all through northern Virginia are being impacted," said Forbes.

Let me just take the last defense bill, it had some provisions in there, that could impact the carrier going to Florida. Also in that, we've already had three or four of our Aegis cruisers that are going to be going to Spain to do missile defense systems, and then they've got to study this going in now from the folks in Florida to try to get more of our cruisers made - as many as six of them coming out of Norfolk. That impact is going to be huge," said Rep. Randy Forbes.

Panetta said at this point in history, in a changing world, the Pentagon would have been forced to make a strategy shift anyway. He says the money crisis merely forced the government to face the shift that's taking place now.