WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A long-term drawdown of US military spending due to expanding budgets for social programs will force the Department of Defense to find ways to save money, including a new round of military base closures, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness David Berteau said on Friday.
"You don’t have to look very far down the road, only about to the mid-20s, where the creeping encroachment of entitlements [and] the cost of paying interest on the [US] federal debt will begin to dwarf the amount of money available… for defense spending," Berteau told a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Some of the biggest savings could be found with new rounds of military base closings, which are "desperately needed," Berteau argued.
More than 300 US military bases established during the Cold War have been shuttered since the late 1980s.
However, the US Congress has refused to fund a bipartisan commission that has been able to circumvent lawmakers’ objections to base closures in the past.
Further base closures are considered unlikely in an election year.
