Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday called on Congress to consider closing some military bases as part of efforts to cut $487 billion in military spending over the next 10 years.

Panetta gave no immediate details of any base closure goals. Congress will be asked to authorize a base realignment and closure process in 2013 and again in 2015, the Air Force Times reported.

Panetta outlined the upcoming budget proposal for fiscal 2013, to be released on Feb. 13. The plan appears to have relatively little immediate impact on the base as a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a whole.

But, Panetta said the administration plans changes in pay and health care benefits to try to “constrain” personnel costs that he said have increased 90 percent since 2001. Pay and benefits are sensitive subjects for military personnel and their families, as well as their supporters in Congress.

The administration plans to reduce the size of the Army and Marine Corps within five years, cutting the Army from the current 562,000 to 490,000 and the Marines from the present 202,000 to 182,000.

The Pentagon intends to focus on the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions and retiring some older ships and aircraft. The changes are driven by Washington’s efforts to reduce overall federal spending, but the administration used this as an opportunity to retool for a modern military while avoiding “hollowing out” the force, Panetta said.

Republicans raised concerns that President Obama may be cutting too much.

“While I recognize that the Defense Department must play a responsible role in overcoming the debt and spending crisis we face, I am deeply concerned that the size and scope of these cuts would repeat the mistakes of history and leave our forces too small to respond effectively to events that may unfold over the next few years,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Congress tends to use presidential budget proposals as starting points, and this year’s battles could be more vigorous because it is a presidential election year.

The Pentagon will cancel part of the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft program — the Block 30, its most common version — to rely on upgraded U-2 spy planes that have been in use since the 1950s, Panetta told a Pentagon news conference. Canceling that program will save other unmanned surveillance programs considered vital to Washington’s plans for a smaller, more mobile and technologically superior fighting force, including the Global Hawk’s Block 40 version, Panetta said. The Global Hawk program is managed from the Aeronautical Systems Center atWright-Patterson.

The administration’s plans also include:

• Stretching out over additional years its purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, to reduce upfront spending and permit more testing before buying;

• Funding the Air Force’s new long-range bomber, maintain the current bomber fleet and fund the new refueling tanker;

• Eliminating six of the Air Force’s current 60 tactical air squadrons and eliminate a training squadron.

• Retiring older aircraft, including 27 C-5A and 65 of the oldest C-130s, still leaving a fleet of 318 C-130s.

Regarding military compensation, Panetta said the administration will sustain full pay raises for 2013 and 2014 to keep pace with increases in the private sector, but will limit pay increases beginning in 2015, to give military personnel and their families advance notice.

“Nobody’s pay will be cut,” Panetta said.

The administration proposes changes in health care benefits that will mostly affect working-age retirees under 65, who may still be employed in the private sector, Panetta said. Exempted from any of these changes will be medically retired personnel and survivors of those who died on active duty, Panetta said.

“Most of the changes made in this budget will not affect active-duty personnel or their families,” he said.

Proposed benefits changes include:

• Further increasing and adding new enrollment fees for retirees under 65 in the military’s TRICARE program, with the resulting fees expected to remain below the comparable civilian equivalents;

• Establishing a new enrollment fee for TRICARE-covered retirees 65 and older.

• Additional increases in pharmacy co-pays to increase incentives for use of generic drugs and mail order.

Panetta said two Army brigades are to be withdrawn from Europe, starting in October, leaving two other brigades there.

The Obama administration said earlier this month that the military of the future will be smaller and more mobile, with an emphasis on long-range air power, sea power, cyber and space capabilities, special-operations forces, and surveillance that the United States could use in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, where China is a rising military power. The government will rely on partnerships with allies in other regions of the world, Panetta said.

Republicans said they expected the request to authorize base closings. But it is an open question whether Congress would consider in a presidential election year whether to close any base. In any case, base closure discussions would almost certainly be complicated and lengthened by political disagreements over which facilities would be closed and where government-supported jobs would be lost.

Wright-Patterson, which just completed a five-year process to absorb new missions and a net gain of 1,200 jobs from bases that were closed or shrunk, should be relatively safe in the new era of defense budget cutting, said Loren Thompson, a defense industry analyst in the Washington, D.C., area.

Wright-Patterson is a key center for Air Force research and development, acquisition, intelligence analysis and military post-graduate training. The base closure and realignment (BRAC) changes ordered in 2005, and just completed in September 2011, relocated the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine from Texas to Wright-Patterson and added to the sensors research program at the base.

Wright-Patterson’s approximately 27,000 employees and $5 billion annual local impact are critical to the Dayton region’s economy, supporting thousands of defense contracting and related jobs.

“People in the Air Force will tell you it’s a very important base,” Thompson said. “It is a very important base, whose facilities would be very hard to move.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.