THE cost of the Iraq war has forced Donald Rumsfeld to slash plans for a high-tech military of the future in order to focus on the more mundane and urgent task of providing his present-day US Army with tanks and body armour.

The rising cost of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with a record US budget deficit, has forced the US Defence Secretary to make nearly $60 billion (£31.8 billion) in cuts to advanced weapons programmes for the US Air Force and US Navy, and even to President Bush’s cherished missile defence programme, while increasing US Army spending.

An internal defence budget proposal for 2006 recommends that the cuts take place over six years. The programmes most affected are for fighter aircraft and new warships, once seen by Mr Rumsfeld as the future of the American military. They include the next generation of nuclear submarines, a stealth navy destroyer and an advanced air force fighter jet.

In contrast, increases for ground forces, which he had hoped would become less relevant for the 21st-century US military, are to soak up $25 billion more Pentagon spending than had been anticipated. Pentagon officials said that the shift had been forced on them by the military costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are running at $5 billion a month.

Mr Bush will shortly ask Congress for another emergency budget supplemental for Iraq of around $80 billion. That will take the total spending so far on the war and fighting the insurgency to well over $200 billion.

That was a figure that Larry Lindsey, Mr Bush’s former economic aide, predicted that the war would cost, although he was forced to backtrack and was fired shortly afterwards.

The Administration, though, is now apparently recognising that the $450 billion budget deficit and the unknown costs of what lies ahead in Iraq mean that it has to make tough decisions even with the defence budget.

Until now, Mr Bush has granted the Pentagon giant budget increases akin to the arms build-up under President Reagan in the early 1980s. Pentagon spending has risen 41 per cent in the past four years to $425 billion this year.

Military analysts said that this year’s 26-page proposed budget, approved by Paul Wolfowitz, Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy, on December 23, could mark the end of Mr Bush’s military build-up. The scale of the proposed cuts, which require congressional approval, was ordered by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which last month ordered the Pentagon to cut its 2006 defence request.

The cuts will see one of the navy’s 12 aircraft carriers retired. Amphibious landing ships — once regarded by Mr Rumsfeld as one of the key components of the leaner, faster, more agile military that he was advocating even before the September 11 attacks — will be heavily scaled back, saving $950 million.

The cuts will mean a sharp reduction in the air force’s FA22 fighter programme, shrinking it from 277 aircraft to 180, a saving of $10.5 billion.

Some $6 billion of the cuts will come in the first year.

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