Joint Chiefs chairman says Defense budget strikes right balance

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the fiscal 2010 defense budget request on Monday as striking the right balance between conventional and unconventional war-fighting.

The detailed budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill this week with the rest of the Obama administration's fiscal 2010 spending plan, has "a level of quality, comprehensiveness and [is] strategically driven, unlike any of the ones I have worked on before," Mullen told a luncheon audience at the Navy League's annual symposium at the National Harbor convention center.

The nation's top military officer noted Defense Secretary Robert Gates' description of the fiscal 2010 budget as containing 50 percent funding for conventional war capabilities, 10 percent for irregular conflict and 40 percent for capabilities that go both ways. "What I see, as a senior military officer, is balance," Mullen said.

The first priority is to "take care of our people" and their families, added Mullen, who said the top operational priority is to "fund the wars we're in." The nation cannot send its young men and women into combat "without giving them the best equipment we can," he said.