Adam Kredo reports for the Washington Free Beacon that Obama is planning to cut America’s key reconnaissance fleet by 25 percent:

A key fleet of U.S. reconnaissance planes used to detect enemy aircraft in hostile settings will to be cut by 25 percent under President Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget, according to multiple sources familiar with the budget proposal.

A fleet of 31 AWACs, or Airborne Warning and Control System planes, will be reduced to 24 by 2015 under Obama’s budget proposal.

The situation has prompted concern in defense circles and elsewhere, where sources have pointed out that AWACS are currently deployed in Poland and Romania in order to help monitor the standoff in Ukraine.

AWACS are a highly advanced type of reconnaissance craft able to monitor enemy movements in the sky and ground from great distances. Each AWAC unit costs $270 million, according to the Air Force.

NATO dispatched several of its own AWACs on Monday to monitor Russian movement in Ukraine’s Crimea region, where a tense standoff is still taking place.

“All AWACs reconnaissance flights will take place solely over alliance territory,” a NATO spokesman was quoted as saying by the BBC.

The seven U.S. AWAC planes cut in Obama’s budget would be completely scrapped if the proposal is adopted.

Twenty-seven of these AWAC planes are currently based in Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, while two are deployed in Japan and another two in Alaska.

The planes act as a large radar system, making them ideal for monitoring movements in areas such as Ukraine, where early detection can provide the edge for response units.

The AWACs are capable of identifying enemy movements and aircraft, but also guiding response forces during a response.

Again and again, Obama practices unilateralism. He normally decries American leadership in world affairs but will make an exception by slashing our defense budget while those of our adversaries are soaring and the Russian bear has emerged to run rampant and wild across the world. He did not even try to get a fig leaf for his actions by negotiating a mutual reduction with other nations. He is just increasingly disarming the US - making us weaker and weaker by the day. After all, if we don’t see the danger it doesn’t exist, right? More food stamps and more welfare and more taxpayer money flowing to unions and Democratic donors are good but securing America is bad.

Iran is developing nuclear weapons while regime leaders ridicule America - and Obama averts his eyes. Islamic terrorism is dismissed as “work place violence” (as in Ft. Hood) or man-made disaster. The Russian invasion of Crimea is called an “uncontested arrival." Red lines are ignored. The list goes on and on. The only people Obama sees as enemies seem to be fellow Americans - Republicans. And Israelis.

Now Obama is doing his best to avoid work and responsibility for safeguarding America by unilaterally rendering us increasingly blind to our foes’ actions.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014...leet_by_25.html