But, the reality is that the funds for DOD operations (war and much else) are very "fungible," as we budget wonks like to put it, meaning the funds can be moved around among programs pretty flexibly -- from training to education to base operations to the costs of operating troops in the field. And OMB and the Pentagon agree that "PPAs," in operations land, means "accounts." And accounts are things like Army Operations and Maintenance, which can cover all of the above activities. So, the service managers would have 9.4 percent fewer funds than the Congress gave them, but significant flexibility to move them around, setting priorities and making choices. Let's say they have a scalpel to work with, not a bludgeon.

So what about research -- the investments in the future of defense technology? Well, here, too, there would be 9.4 percent fewer dollars than appropriated. But R&D is what they call a "level of effort" area of funding -- you buy as much R&D as the money allows, but you don't have to cut items out of a production contract. And the Pentagon would have some flexibility as well, since most R&D "program elements" cover a variety of R&D projects, so fewer resources means setting priorities and making choices.

Beyond these technical flexibilities, DOD, like other departments, would also have recourse to reprogramming funds and using its general transfer authority. The flexibility here is pretty great; over the past decades some reprogram and transfer totals have been in the tens of billions of dollars. What it takes is making the same tough choices, many of them internal. A few, the transfers, would have to be communicated to Congress, where the senior leadership of the key authorizing and appropriating committees (who don't want to devastate defense) would be likely to agree, especially as they were the most anxious to protect defense.

And OMB could alleviate the short-term urgency by agreeing to hold off on taking the cuts until later in the year, by approving overall funding ("apportionment") at a higher level early in the year, and delaying the cuts until later, when planning in DOD was complete.

It is not a pretty picture; no management expert would say this is the way to do defense (or any other) budgeting. But it is not doomsday. In fact, it might be discipline -- exactly the kind of budgetary discipline the Pentagon has not had for the past decade. Good management, priority-setting, and greater efficiency might be the result.

And since the sequester would be a one-off, setting a lower baseline for future defense growth, our national security might just be as safe as it ever was.

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