Afghanistan: Pentagon blueprint would cut Army size as military adjusts to leaner budgets --- The Defense Department on Monday proposed cutting the Army to its smallest size in 74 years, slashing a class of attack jets and rolling back personnel costs in an effort to adjust a department buoyed by a decade of war to an era of leaner budgets. -- The five-year budget blueprint outlined by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reflects a willingness by the Pentagon to make deep cuts to personnel strength to invest in technology and equipment as it eases off a war footing. -- “The development and proliferation of more advanced military technologies by other nations mean that we are entering an era where American dominance on the seas, in the skies and in space can no longer be taken for granted,” Hagel told reporters at an afternoon news conference. -- Congress recently passed a bill that authorized the Defense Department to spend nearly $1 trillion over the next two years — $75 billion less than the Obama administration requested but a reprieve from the spending cuts that would have been forced under the deficit-reduction mechanism known as sequestration. -- The Pentagon’s budget-trimming plan represents the department’s opening bid in what is widely expected to be a politically fraught process that lawmakers and influential constituencies will seek to shape. The formal budget will be presented next Tuesday. -- Under the proposal, during the next five years the Pentagon would get $115 billion above the savings it would have had to find under sequestration but $113 billion less than the spending levels contemplated in last year’s budget proposal.