A bipartisan group of budget experts called Wednesday for steep cuts in future military spending, just as leaders of a presidential debt-reduction commission proposed last week.
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Taken together, the reports are likely to intensify pressure to reduce Pentagon spending and cancel troubled weapons programs as part of a broad effort to reduce federal budget deficits.
But the proposals, which would cut back on expensive planes like the F-35 fighter and the V-22 Osprey, represent only the start of what could be a long debate. And it is already clear that many of the suggestions will be hotly disputed in Congress.
The plan released Wednesday included a five-year freeze on Pentagon spending, along with sweeping changes in taxes and other federal programs, to reduce projected deficits by $5.9 trillion through 2020. It was prepared by a group led by former Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, who was the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee for more than a quarter-century, and Alice M. Rivlin, who served both Congress and then-President Bill Clinton as a budget director.
Their proposal would freeze the Pentagon’s spending, which tops $700 billion a year, at this year’s levels from fiscal 2012 through 2016.
That would mean the Pentagon budget would not even be adjusted for inflation, and the military would lose $431 billion in additional spending that the Congressional Budget Office had projected it would receive during that period.
And even if annual inflation adjustments were restored in 2017, the Pentagon would still lose $1.1 trillion in cumulative spending by 2020.
“Would this be easy? No,” said Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who led a team that prepared the group’s recommendations on military spending.
But given that the Pentagon accounts for more than half of the government’s discretionary spending, “We think it’s a reasonable plan,” he said.
Last week, the leaders of a commission created by President Obama proposed cuts in weapons systems and other expenditures that could add up to $100 billion by 2015.
Those cuts were part of a larger package of spending reductions and tax increases proposed by the panel’s chairmen, Erskine B. Bowles, who was White House chief of staff under President Clinton, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican Senate leader.
The recommendations from both groups have come after nearly a decade of rapid increases in military spending, and they are setting up the first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 about the size and cost of the armed services.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sought to get ahead of the budget-cutting demands by showing that he can squeeze more efficiency from the Pentagon’s bureaucracy.
He has called for the Pentagon’s budget to keep growing at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the costs of the war in Afghanistan.
He is also pushing for 2 or 3 percent in annual savings in the department’s contracting practices. He wants to use the money for other military needs. But both of the debt-reduction reports said any such savings should be used to lower the federal deficits.
Speaking at a conference sponsored by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Mr. Gates said that the presidential commission’s proposal to slash the military budget was “math, not strategy.”
“If you cut the defense budget by 10 percent, which would be catastrophic in terms of force structure, that’s $55 billion out of a $1.4 trillion deficit,” Mr. Gates said. “We are not the problem.”
Mr. Adams said his group believed that the Pentagon could reduce the number of uniformed personnel by 275,000 as the Afghanistan war wound down.
The group also recommended canceling all three versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
At a projected cost of $382 billion for 2,457 planes, the F-35, made by Lockheed Martin, is the Pentagon’s most expensive program.
Last week, the president’s commission suggested canceling the most complex version of the plane, which can take off almost vertically, while reducing purchases of the conventional and aircraft-carrier variants.
Both panels also recommended canceling the V-22, a combination of a winged plane and a helicopter, and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious assault craft.
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