Gates predicts no sharp cuts in defense budgets

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted on Monday that growth in U.S. military spending would level off in the coming years but not face severe cutbacks, despite the current economic crisis.

"While there's a lot of debate over Iraq, there really is very broad bipartisan support for a strong defense and support for our men and women in uniform in the Congress," Gates said at the National Defense University in Washington.

"I certainly would expect growth to level off and my guess would be we'll be fortunate in the years immediately ahead ... if we were able to stay flat with inflation," he said.

"But in terms of the kind of deep cuts that followed the end of the Cold War, I would hope that we've gotten smarter than that," he said in a question-and-answer session after giving a lecture at the university.

"Despite the current economic problems that we're facing ... there have been some important lessons learned subsequent to the end of the Cold War," he said.

"I think the fact that the world does remain a complicated and dangerous place is further incentive not to cut capabilities," Gates said.

President George W. Bush submitted a base defense budget of more than $500 billion for the fiscal year that begins next month. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing some $160 billion a year on top of that.

Under Bush, basic defense spending has risen by more than 40 percent. Including war costs, defense spending will have grown more than 60 percent under Bush, according to the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

Gates' remarks were in line with comments by advisers to both U.S. presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain, who have said they do not foresee cuts in defense spending, at least in the short term.

Army Secretary Pete Geren, a former member of the House of Representatives, struck a different note, suggesting pressure would build for a reduction in defense spending.

"We always go up and then go down," he said at a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He cited a poll that showed 50 percent of Americans believed too much money was being spent on defense.

"That is going to translate into policy at some point," he said.

(Reporting by Andrew Gray and David Morgan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)