Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is taking his first trip to Asia since assuming his new role in February, and more than a year after President Barack Obama announced a shift to focus military efforts to the region.
Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, will be meeting with officials in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Vietnam.
This coming amid growing concern over North Korean nuclear weapons practices.
"We are going to be limited in our budgets," he told reporters. "That said, we're on track."
Military spending has seen some decreases since the sequester took effect earlier this year, and has forced the Pentagon to draw back its spending by as much as $41 billion this fiscal year.
The budget has not been set for next fiscal year.
Last year former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta attended the Singapore conference where he announced that the U.S. was shifting its focus to Asia, and even noted the placement of Marine forces in Australia and a combat ship in Singapore.
According to reports, though, Hagel's team has been using budget cuts to downplay the severity of the situation in the Asia-Pacific.
And as the pangs of military cuts take precedence, Americans have begun to question why - by 2020 - U.S. officials have committed to placing 60 percent of its naval force in the Asia-Pacific, up from the current 50 percent.
"The shift to Asia was designed in part as a check on the growing power of China, although U.S. officials don't say so publicly," reports the Los Angeles Times. "China was named in secret portions of a Pentagon report disclosed Monday by the Washington Post as having cyber breaches to steal data on two dozen U.S. weapon systems, including the littoral combat ship, one of which Hagel plans to tour on Sunday. Cyber espionage and cyber war will be a major topic at the Shangrai La conference, Hagel said, thought he declined to offer a damage assessment in regard to weapons system breaches."
In a speech meant to kick off the conference on Saturday, Hagel and his team prepared to stick to the argument that budget cuts will "make things harder" but they are "confident that they will be able to "deliver on what we need to do, and that we'll be able to do that no matter what the buffeting of politics."
