Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Talks Maxwell Air Force Base Security

Authorities are still investigating a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas that’s left three soldiers dead. One of those looking into the deadly shooting is Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox, who was at Maxwell Air Force base today.

Fox came to talk about the proposed budget and the future of the Department of Defense but the shooting at Fort Hood was on a lot of minds.

Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox says details about the shooting are still coming in.

“Secretary Hagel is very focused on it, as is the president,” she says. “They consulted overnight. We’re keeping up with events in Fort Hood. We still don’t have a full account of what has happened.”

As authorities continue to look into what happened, Fox says she’s also focusing her attention on the proposed budget, which she says is one of the most important that the department has submitted in a long time.

“Leaderships stern warning about sequestration, appearing to fall mostly on deaf ears in the congress last year, gave secretary Hagel no choice but to prepare the department for an era when defense budgets could be significantly lower than expected, wanted or needed.”

But Fox says those budget cuts shouldn’t put Maxwell Air Force Base at risk.

“We aren’t going to allow us to have a force that’s sized in a way that we can’t protect our people,” she says.

But with less funding and cancelled or delayed programs, some worry about the future of the base altogether.

“This is a very important installation to our Air Force in our defense department so this is a very important place. I really don’t know, if we were to get the brac that we asked for, which is the base realignment and closure, it’s too early to know what that would come up with.”