The US Congress has agreed to a 500 billion dollars defense budget for this fiscal year. The defense budget will be slashed by 180 billion US dollars compared to about 700 billion for the last fiscal year.

An additional 10-year defense budget cutting plan has been agreed on, which will cut a further 350 billion dollars on large scale and regional wars from the defense budget. The 2012 fiscal year of the US refers to the period from October 1st, 2011 to September 30th, 2012.