Despite the creation of a roadmap for budget reductions, the US military will have to make arbitrary, automatic cuts for several years, the Pentagon's second-in-command Ash Carter warned Thursday.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Wednesday presented a a list of options, some of them drastic, to save some $500 billion over the next ten years.
Plans included a possible reduction in Army size by tens of thousands of troops.
"It takes time to downsize forces, to cut employees, to close bases, to reap savings from reforms" Carter, the deputy secretary of defense, said Thursday at a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.
"If sequestration-level cuts must be implemented in the meantime, drastic measures that are not strategically or managerially sound are the result," he said.
Across-the-board governmental spending cuts were triggered in March after the US Congress failed to clinch a deal on cutting the deficit.
Automatic cuts have already been implemented by the Pentagon. Employment, flight hours for pilots and equipment maintenance have already taken a hit.
House committee chairman Buck McKeon said that even if all of the report's suggestions were met "it would only address 10 percent of the true budget shortfall in the next year or two."
"There may be some very tough decisions that we face," Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
"That's what we're forced into by the law as it stands now" he said.
