Later this week the Army will announce specific bases around the country that will be part of the next round of reductions in the force, with 40,000 troops to be cut by 2017, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday, according to CNN.
General Martin Dempsey announced at a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Tuesday that dwindling resources were a major factor in the decision to cut the number of active troops from 490,000 to 450,000.
An additional 17,000 Army civilian employees would be laid off as part of a plan publicly discussed since 2014, according to FOX News.
The troop cut comes as the Obama administration continues to examine its potential moves against ISIS. President Obama said on Monday that he and military leaders had not discussed sending additional troops to Iraq to fight ISIS, There are about 3,500 troops in Iraq, according to USA Today.
When these cuts come to pass, the Army would have numbers comparable to pre-9/11 levels and pre-WWII levels.
Nixing an army base is frequently controversial as community leaders and politicians look to defend their local bases and the jobs they support. Politicians and army officials in particular are worried by these cuts - in 2013, the Army maintained in budget documents that dipping below 450,000 soldiers could prevent it from prevailing in a war, according to the Army Times.
