Defense budget cuts create difficult dilemma

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The Defense Ministry wants the government to decide what to cut and by how much.

At the Kirya in Tel Aviv, Ministry of Defense officials are no longer willing to take sole responsibility for the planned cut in the defense budget, and are telling the government that if it wants to billions from the defense budget then it should decide what to cut and by how much. The ministry's officials, faced with regional upheaval, growing threats, complex challenges, and the needs of the IDF and intelligence services, refuse to decide alone whether to stop production of the Merkava tank and the Iron Dome anti-missile system, slow procurement of new Leopard APCs, or postpone deployment of an effective cyber warfare system.

Each of these programs costs billions of shekels, and the Ministry of Defense officials want the entire government to make the decision; for each and every minister to sign on the dotted line for which shekel will be saved and bear the responsibility of the consequences, and even appear before the investigative committee to explain why and on what basis he thought it was possible to forego this program.

This is why the Ministry of Defense and the IDF are adamantly refusing to detail how the multibillion shekel cut in the defense budget will be made. They have already done their work, warned about the next war and the need to procure the means to fight it, stated that the Egypt of today is not the Egypt of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The Ministry of Finance and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee are unimpressed by the outcry, calling it fear-mongering that no longer works on anyone. They say that the solutions are in the fat: stick with the Brodet committee structure for defense spending and reductions personnel, elimination of overseas defense delegations, and cutting current costs. The Ministry of Finance says that these measures, taken together, are enough to supply the government's budget shortfall.

Weeks ago, Minister of Defense Ehud Barak set up a special committee chaired by Ministry of Defense director general Udi Shani to review the defense budget with a fine-toothed comb, in Barak's own words. The team has marked every project, priced each one separately, listed what each component is used for, the characterizations of each missile, radar system, and development, but refuses to doom even one of them. The detailed document will be sent to every cabinet minister for them to decide.

When top defense officials declared in recent weeks that all options were on the table, they did not mean just to elegantly evade possible questions by an investigative about Iran, they were referring to every project already perceived as a national project: shutting down the Merkava Mark IV production line and slowing the transfer of IDF bases to the Negev, which will cost many billions of shekels now and in the future. Meanwhile, Bedouin will continue to take over land designated for the new bases. It has already happened near Omer, where the IDF's new intelligence HQ is slated to be sited.

100 civilian companies from Kiryat Shmona to Beersheva are involved in the Merkava tank program, ranging from large factories to small workshops that manufacture components for the tank, would close down if the Ministry of Defense stops placing orders. In recent weeks, many manufacturers have spoken about the crippling atmosphere of uncertainty. The Ministry of Defense knows this, and behind closed doors, tries to use this as leverage to warn about the loss of hundreds of jobs, main in the periphery.

If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad no longer moves the Israeli government, maybe the prospect of a mass of unemployed men hitting the Employment Service's gates will.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 29, 2011

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011

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