The Pentagon offered up a $526.6 billion budget on Wednesday that calls for closing bases, slashing the civilian work force and scrapping weapons programs, holding out hope the Congress might still opt for an alternative to even more draconian cuts already on their way.

President Barack Obama's proposed Pentagon budget for the 2014 fiscal year asks Congress to take a series of politically difficult steps, including starting a new round of U.S. base closure proceedings, increasing healthcare fees for military retirees and slowing military pay increases.

Defense officials said the department also planned to reduce its civilian workforce by 40,000 to 50,000 over five years and take new steps to reduce the cost of healthcare, including overhauling military treatment facilities. 

"The costs of infrastructure, overhead, acquisitions and personnel compensation must be addressed in order to put the Department of Defense's budget on a sustainable path - particularly given the pressures on our top-line budget," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a budget briefing. 

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The budget is part of Obama's spending plan sent to Congress. It stands little chance of being enacted into law and is meant to serve largely as a negotiating tool with Republicans, who have outlined budget proposals of their own. 

The budget proposal included $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations, the same amount as requested last year. Comptroller Robert Hale said the figure was a placeholder and would ultimately be somewhat lower, but still high because of the cost of removing equipment from Afghanistan. 

The Defense Department is in the midst of a long-term budget drawdown after a decade of increases. It began implementing $487 billion in cuts to proposed spending in 2012 and was hit by an additional $500 billion over a decade starting on March 1. 

Obama's proposed Pentagon budget is still $52 billion higher than spending caps set by law, which is likely to mean another year of financial uncertainty for the department. 

While looking for ways to cut back in the current tight fiscal environment, the 2014 Pentagon budget would continue to fund high-priority programs and initiatives, including the strategic "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific announced last year. 

$8.4 billion for Joint Strike Fighter
The budget includes $8.4 billion for continued development of the three variants of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's most expensive procurement program.

It also includes $10.9 billion for new ship construction, $9.2 billion for missile defenses, $379 million for development of a new long-range bomber, $4.7 billion for cyberspace operations and $10.1 billion for space technologies. It aims to save $9.9 billion by restructuring and canceling arms programs. 

"This budget made important investments in the president's new strategic guidance - including rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region and increasing funding for critical capabilities such as cyber, special operations and global mobility," Hagel said in a statement. 

Obama's overall federal budget plan seeks new taxes and spending cuts that aim to replace the automatic, across-the-board reductions known as sequestration that went into effect on March 1. The Pentagon's share of the March 1 cuts is about $500 billion over 10 years, or about $50 billion a year. 

The president's budget proposal unveiled on Wednesday would replace the $500 billion sequestration cut with a $150 billion reduction, most of it spread over a five-year period beginning several years from now. Some $34 billion in cuts would be implemented over the next five years. 

The proposal depends on Congress agreeing to eliminate the sequestration budget cuts. The White House and Republicans have been trying for two years to reach a deal to eliminate sequestration, without success. 

The Pentagon budget asks Congress to begin a new round of U.S. Base Realignment and Closure proceedings, a politically unpopular request that was rejected by lawmakers last year and has already produced hearings this year, even before the decision was announced. 

The budget request includes $2.4 billion over the next five years to pay for the process. Base closures disrupt local economies and cost a huge amount upfront, saving money only over the long run. 

Based on estimates from the last round of base closures that started in 2005, the Pentagon is believed to have more than 20 percent surplus of infrastructure. 

The 2014 budget renews a request to Congress for increased fees for pharmacy co-pays and healthcare enrollment for retired military personnel. The Pentagon also proposed a 1 percent pay increase for military employees, lower than the 1.8 percent increase in the Employment Cost Index ordinarily used to determine pay increases. 

Congress has been resistant in the past to increasing healthcare fees for military retirees and has often approved pay increases above those recommended by the department, a factor analysts say has led to military pay rising at an unsustainable pace over the past decade. 

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Amid the ongoing exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, more service members are mulling a shift to the civilian work force and asking the key financial question: What will I miss if I walk away from my military pension?

The short answer: A lot.

Unlike private-sector jobs where employees become partially vested in their company’s pension no matter how long they’ve held their positions, service members pocket no pension payments if they exit the military before logging 20 years. (If they remain in the armed forces for 20 years or more, service members receive up to 50 percent of their base salary upon retirement).

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“I think that question is being asked more often now because of unknowns on both sides – people wondering how the drawdown will affect them and, on the other side, those who are seeing a lot of instability in civilian job market,” said Kim Lankford, a writer for Kiplinger, the personal finance magazine, and author of "Kiplinger's Financial Field Manual," sent to military bases around the world. She also is married to a 17-year Army doctor.

According to U.S. military organizations that Lankford covers, 83 percent of service members “don’t make it to 20 years — which means that only 17 percent qualify for the pension,” she said. “There’s a lot to consider when deciding whether or not to stay.”

A corporation may be able to outbid the military when it comes to an ex-soldier’s new salary. But to truly calculate that wage rate, service members need to know what their sacrificing in taking that civilian paycheck, Lankford said.

For example, during their careers, thousands of military folks are temporarily stationed in locales without a state income tax, like Florida and Texas. Even when they later are transferred to bases where state taxes are levied, service members are allowed to retain their residency in the non-tax states. That perk ends with a military retirement.

When it comes to health care, military retirees (people who stay more than 20 years but not yet age 65) pay a small premium for Tricare Prime - currently $230 per year for individual coverage and $460 per year for families (and increasing to $269.28 per year for individuals and $538.56 per year for families after Oct. 1, 2012), according to Lankford. (Disabled service members get health care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.) 

Compare that to the average civilian family pays about $15,073 a year for health coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average individual pays about $5,429 annually. While employers generally foot 60 to 80 percent of that bill, workers pay for the rest.

“All those deductions add up,” Lankford said. Veterans who bid farewell to the military “are often very surprised to learn that civilian jobs in higher dollar amounts than military jobs can actually leave them less take-home pay.”

One other major decision for troops considering short military careers surrounds the G.I. Bill, which now pays for a veteran’s college costs at up to $17,500 per year. That benefit can be transferred to a service member’s children if he or she spends six years in the armed forces — and is willing to commit to another four-year stint, Lankford says.

Then there are the housing-cost breaks military members enjoy. (For those who live on base, housing is free). Service members who rent or own their own homes receive a tax-free housing allowance than can exceed $2,000 per month depending on their pay grade, their number of dependents and the city in which they live.

“If a service member is thinking about leaving,” Lankford said, “they should be sure to include the loss of that tax-free allowance when calculating their new civilian salary.”

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Lawyers for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians, will likely mount a two-pronged defense, military law experts say, attacking the evidence against him while also arguing that his reported combat injuries and mental trauma created diminished mental capacity.

Bales’ civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, has suggested such an approach in his public comments on the case, in which the Army has identified the soldier as the lone suspect in the March 11 attack but not yet charged him.

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“There’s no forensic evidence, there’s no medical examiner’s evidence, there’s no evidence about how many alleged victims or where those remains are,” he told NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, adding that he intends to travel to Afghanistan to oversee his own investigation.

But he also stated that his client had “no memory” of the attack and suggested that could be from a concussive head injury. In comments to CBS News on Monday, he indicated he would make a "diminished capacity" argument rather than pursue an insanity defense.

Defense official: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to face 16 counts in Afghanistan massacre

Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect a legal pincer attack, in which the defense may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.

Military officials have said that after drinking at an Army outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11, Bales, 38, crept away in the night to two nearby villages, where he shot his victims and set many of them on fire. At least nine of the 16 victims were children, they said.

Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said the fact that the crime occurred in a combat zone in a distant country complicates the task for prosecutors, who are expected to charge Bales with premeditated murder and other crimes.

Army Sgt. Robert Bales' lawyer questions evidence in Afghanistan killings

To convict Bales of that charge, prosecutors would have to prove that people died, the means by which they died, that the accused is the person who used those means and had premeditated the offense, Solis said.

That would be no easy feat, given the possibility of numerous crime scene complications, he said.

“The prosecution is under additional burden in that they’re trying a crime that happened … 9,000 miles away,” he said. “They have no bodies, they have no autopsies, they have no forensics, they have no photographs, they have no witnesses. There is no Afghan who is going to come here to testify against this guy, so how do they prove premeditation? It’s going to be a problem for them.”

Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, said prosecuting Bales will be “exceptionally difficult.” Even establishing him as the gunman could be problematic, he said.

“It still remains to be seen whether any of these Afghan local nationals can actually identify Bales as the shooter,” he said. “Now there’s going to be some real linguistic divides here in terms of people’s … ability to communicate what they saw but you may very well have the potential down the road for a defense that he didn’t do it.”

The physical evidence from combat zone crimes is similarly suspect, Conway said.

“In these combat zone cases, you have crime scenes that are contaminated almost instantly … bodies are moved, forensic evidence is either contaminated or cleaned, there (are) typically no photographs that are taken of forensic value so you can’t necessarily go back and do a very thorough wound analysis,” he said, noting that it would be difficult to exhume the bodies if they have already been buried due to Islamic tradition.

“It’s not easy to separate the fact from the fiction in this kind of case,” he added.

If Bales’ case goes to trial, the defense will have an opportunity to react to the government’s case, because the Army presents first. That will enable his lawyers to decide whether to focus on attacking the evidence or arguing that Bales’ reported combat injuries and mental trauma from the battlefield created diminished mental capacity. Or, they may do both, Solis said.

“The government has to go first and it has to prove its case,” he said. “He’s going to be ready to take advantage of any chink in the government’s arguments that he perceives in addition to whatever argument he may have.”

Bales was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had spent three years in Iraq on his previous tours, during which time he lost part of a foot and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to a vehicle rollover, media reports say. Two days before he allegedly attacked the Afghan villagers, he saw the aftermath of a bombing in which a fellow soldier had his leg blown off, The Associated Press reported.

While an insanity defense remains possible, experts who spoke to msnbc.com note that winning such a case is extremely difficult in a military trial.

Unlike an insanity defense, where Bales would have to be shown not to have known right from wrong to be acquitted, diminished capacity is simply an argument that the crime was not premeditated and that mitigating factors should lessen his punishment.

“That’s very hard, so … he might have to go with this diminished capacity,” Greg Rinckey, a former attorney with the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps who is now managing partner of military law firm Tully Rinckey PLLC, said of an insanity defense. “Most of the cases that I’ve tried, that’s what we’ve went with is because we couldn’t get to … the complete no mental responsibility or the capability to stand trial.”

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said testimony indicating that Bales’ was afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, could be introduced at this juncture, but would be unlikely to result in acquittal.

“Maybe some psychiatrist will say he suffers from PTSD,” he said. “That’s not a defense – probably. There’s no case in which PTSD has given rise to a successful insanity defense in the military.”

Solis said Bales’ lawyers would likely put the brain injury, the wounding of his comrade, the multiple deployments and his foot injury into the “diminished capacity argument box,” with the traumatic brain injury (TBI) possibly being a strong element in support of that claim.

Afghan massacre by US soldier puts focus back on brain testing

“You can get a doctor who will come in there with a chart and … show here’s a normal brain and here’s his brain getting TBI,” he said. “So the jury’s got something concrete … that they can wrap their not guilty finding around,” if that’s how they’re leaning.

Conway said doctors compare traumatic brain injury to a “hardware” problem, whereas PTSD is more like a “software” issue.

Solis, the former head of the Marines law branch, said the horrific nature of the crime could ironically benefit Bales’ defense.

“They’re going to say, ‘Would somebody in control of their facilities, somebody who didn’t have diminished capacity have done something this wacky?’” he said. “The act itself is inherently supportive of a diminished capacity” argument.

As a result, he said, Bales’ case might not even make it to a military courtroom. Perhaps a deal will be struck, or maybe mental health exams -– which could takes months -- will show that Bales is not competent to stand trial.

But Conway, the former Marine who has been involved in high-profile military crime cases, including the 2005 killing by U.S. Marines of 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq, said the defense also runs a risk by telegraphing that it intends to argue diminished capacity.

“It’s a two-edged sword. On the one hand, if they can prevent this from turning into a capital (death penalty) case, that’s a huge victory,” he said. “On the other hand, they’re giving away the playbook and they don’t have any access to the witnesses. So the government is going to be out talking to everybody trying to rebut the diminished capacity defense.”

At the same time, a defense built on PTSD and brain injury is generally a tough sell in a military courtroom, Conway said.

“We have used it many times” to get charges reduced, he said. “I can tell you that it’s hard to get a military jury to be sympathetic to these kinds of defenses because the way they look at it is, ‘I’ve had multiple deployments, I’ve had multiple concussive events … I’ve got family problems, and I didn’t go out and do this.’”

“So you’re going to have to be able to explain to the jury why this case is different from their own experiences in combat and that’s going to be tough to do.”  

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The American soldier who is accused in a massacre of 16 villagers near Kandahar could face the death penalty, a military defense attorney said Monday, in one of the worst cases of alleged mass murder by a U.S. service member since the Vietnam War.

U.S. officials have said the soldier acted alone, leaving his base in southern Afghanistan and opening fire on sleeping families. After the massacre, he went back to his base and turned himself in, officials said.

The military will not identify the soldier until charges are filed, Pentagon spokesman William Speaks told msnbc.com Monday. The suspect remains in Afghanistan while the attack is being investigated.

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According to military officials, the soldier will be tried within the military justice system, not turned over to Afghan authorities for trial, rebuffing a call from Afghan lawmakers to use their courts.

 

Report: US soldier who massacred 16 Afghans was from Stryker brigade

The suspect is based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He has been identified as a staff sergeant in the Stryker brigade who was taking part in a village stability operation in Afghanistan. He is a 38-year-old married father of two on his first deployment to Afghanistan after three previous deployments in Iraq.

"Based on what we’re hearing I suspect this will be prosecuted as a death penalty case," Philip Cave, a Washington-based military defense attorney told msnbc.com. "You’ve got felony murder, and certainly the number of victims and the circumstances -– very young children as victims –- I think there will be sufficient grounds to move forward as a death penalty case."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty is a consideration as the military moves to investigate and possibly put the soldier suspected in the mass killings on trial.

Before charges are filed, the soldier will likely undergo heavy psychological testing as part of the investigation, Cave said. Then an Article 32 investigation -- a thorough examination of the case with testimony from witnesses -- will be conducted before any court-martial proceedings. If there is a conviction at court-martial with the death penalty imposed and all appeals exhausted, the president of the United States himself would have to sign the death warrant for the soldier's execution. 

Retired Army platoon Sgt. Jonn Lilyea, a Desert Storm veteran who writes the blog "This Ain’t Hell," told msnbc.com he expects the military to make an example out of the shooter as the case moves through the justice system.

Mourning, anger sweep Afghanistan after massacre

Still, Lilyea cautioned that people should not rush to blame the killings on the soldier’s deployments during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I’d wait to see if he really was in a position that would have affected him in this way," Lilyea said. "But I’m more concerned people will try to use this like they did after Vietnam with the My Lai massacre and taint all combat veterans of this generation as if they were like this one guy." Millions of Americans have served in combat, seen and done "terrible things," but have gone on to normal productive lives after their service, Lilyea pointed out.

Lt. William Calley was convicted of killing 22 villagers in My Lai village in 1968 in an incident that heightened U.S. opposition to the Vietnam War.

If the number of people slain in the attack is confirmed at 16, and the soldier is convicted, the mass killings would be the most of any convicted killer on the military’s death row, which currently has six inmates.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. He also faces a possible death penalty. His trial was scheduled to begin this month but was delayed until June to allow his defense more time to prepare.

John Bennett was the last U.S. soldier to be executed by the military. He was hanged in 1961 after being convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl.

Lethal injection is the current method of execution under military justice, according to military defense lawyer Cave.

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