After sitting down for a pleasant conservation with Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, I got a little more insight into how the murky military picture could shake out here in Hawaii.
I met with Locklear during a media roundtable at Camp H.M. Smith near Honolulu, and of course the questions at the top of my list were about the impact of the looming deep budget cuts in the military and plans to bring Marines here when they are moved out of Okinawa.
Those budget cuts are projected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years after Congress failed to trim $1.2 trillion in spending.
This comes at a time when country is starting to shift its military focus to the Pacific with China’s rising military might and worries about North Korea.
And with that said, Hawaii could be in a good spot, because as the admiral said, “it is very strategically located for the United States.”
The Department of Defense, led by Secretary Leon Panetta, is working to stave off those cuts. Panetta has also spoke about the Pacific’s importance when Locklear took command here four months ago.
“Should that happen, we will have to figure out how to deal with that in the near-term,” Locklear said about the reductions. “We have to get this right. My sense is we will do more in the Asia-Pacific even though we are in a budget reduction cycle.”
Locklear said he believes Pacific Command’s area, which spans from the West Coast to India, will be the “priority theater” for the United States.
As for the talk about more Marines coming to Hawaii, at this point that number appears to be at 2,700, but it could fluctuate.
“The primary alternative [to moving the Marines to Guam] would return a number of Marines back to Hawaii, but that would be a number of years from now,” Locklear said.
Mark Abramson covers transportation, military contracting and sports marketing for Pacific Business News.
( Fwd by Koohan Paik)