The Impacts of Sequestration on the Department of Defense Research Paper

The Impacts of Sequestration on the Department of Defense - Research Paper Example Reductions of federal funding across the boards, also known as sequestrations have had a considerable impact on the fiscal years prior to, and during 2014. It not only reduced optional operations, but also cut down on the direct spending of the federal budget (Epstein, 2013). This has led to widespread concerns about the Department of Defense’s personnel, reallocation budget, customer’s service and other such details. The federal budget cuts affected the Department of Defense Human Resources Management in several important ways. The former level of readiness, although sustained, has experienced an irrecoverable deficit due to a decade of counterinsurgency operations (Roulo, 2014). According to the Department of Defense website, the current President Budget promises to restore the equilibrium between readiness and planned force structure. The Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 encumbers this shift to the mission of Department of Defense. This is due to the fact that the reduced funding levels have decreased not only the number of trained personnel, but also hampered the maintenance of ground vehicle and aviation. Furthermore, the flying hours of Navy and Marine Corps are to be decreased, which would also result in decreasing the levels of their readiness (Estimated Impacts of Sequestration-Level Funding, 2014). Such are the impacts of sequestration that there has been a radical expected drawdown to 450,000 active soldiers, 335,000 in the Army National Guard and 202,000 reservists by the end of 2015 fiscal year. (Roulo,2014) These reductions will further lead to the Department of Defense relying more on National Guard. The Army personnel and readiness are perhaps facing the greatest drawback as almost 70 percent of the total cut-downs are facing in its direction. The Army, for instance cancelled seven combat training sessions and skilled personnel was lost due to frozen salaries (Roulo, 2014). This reiterates the Department of Defense concern about