“Senate Armed Services Committee members will likely use Thursday’s hearing with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey to flesh out more detail on the fiscal sacrifices the military will make if budget caps remain in place into fiscal 2014,” Roll Call reports.

“Dempsey will appear before the panel one week after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel provided the committee with a broad outline of the Pentagon’s contingency plans should Congress and the White House fail to reach a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement before Oct. 1.”

“The secretary warned that hundreds of individual programs, both large and small, would be cut significantly, leading the Pentagon to buy fewer ships, planes and ground vehicles. However, the memo to committee leaders did not name specific military programs or other accounts that could get axed in an austere budget environment.”