Ayep. DoD civilian employee budget is exploding, ditto contractors. They're compensating by stripping veteran benefits and cutting combat capacity.
Why they don't gut the paperpusher hierarchy with a chainsaw, I have no idea.
In the previous round of cut & reorg, the Army planned for something similar in the combat units, shucking off lots of HHC green-suiters. Preserved combat power and all systems at the pointy end. This round looks to gut quite a bit of capability. It is almost as if their civvie masters were pissed that some smart officers were able to meet the objectives without losing capability.
Heard a rumor that ALL the remaining ABCTs (equipped with Abrams, Bradley, & other mech warfare gear) were to be pushed into NG. Because the assumption is that we will not meet a heavy threat. Think on that. The only active duty heavies would be USMC Abrams. The only heavies ready for deployment RFN are the tank
platoons in the MEUs. That is
four Abrams. And not even our best Abrams (USMC fields M1A1).