WASHINGTON — House Republicans’ “fiscal cliff” counteroffer to President Barack Obama hints at billions of dollars in military cuts on top of the nearly $500 billion that the White House and Congress backed last year, and even the fiercest defense hawks acknowledge that the Pentagon faces another financial hit.

In Vicksburg, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has three installations and employs nearly 3,000 people, including contract workers, officials say the effects are unknown and they’re slow to speculate on what could happen in the New Year.

The proposal that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Republican leaders sent to the White House this week calls for cuts of $300 billion in discretionary spending to achieve savings of $2.2 trillion over 10 years. The blueprint offers no specifics on the cuts, although the Pentagon and defense-related departments such as Homeland Security and State make up roughly half of the federal government’s discretionary spending.

By any calculation, the military, which is still coming to grips with the half-trillion-dollar cut in last year’s deficit-cutting law, is looking at an additional $10 billion to $15 billion cut in projected defense spending each year for the next decade. It’s a prospect that Republicans recognize is the new reality, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ending and deficits demanding deep cuts.

“Not too devastating,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That’s especially true compared with the alternative that McCain dreads — the double hit of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts dubbed the fiscal cliff.

If Obama and Congress are unable to reach a deal this month, the Pentagon would face across-the-board cuts of some $55 billion after the first of the year and nearly $500 billion over a decade. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and military leaders have warned that such a meat-ax approach to the budget would do considerable harm.

At the Vicksburg District offices of the Corps of Engineers, spokesman Kavanaugh Brezeale said there is no way to know what the effects would be locally.

“The Corps of Engineers is at the mercy of the funding that Congress gives us,” he said. “We are a part of the Department of Defense and are subject to cuts to the Department of Defense budget. However, the Vicksburg District is funded a little differently because we do mostly civil works projects and not military construction.”

Mississippi River Commission spokesman Bob Anderson said the MRC is in a wait-and-see mode.

“Until we see how Congress appropriates money for the Corps, there’s not any way to know,” Anderson said. “It depends on what they give us or how they cut appropriations for our resources, but we don’t have any way of knowing. I think there are preliminary estimates, but I don’t think they have anything published or official yet.”

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center is the largest federal employer in Vicksburg, but spokesman Wayne Stroupe said officials could not be reached for comment this morning.

ERDC is the premier research and development facility for the Corps, conducting research in military and civil works for the Department of Defense. More than 1,600 people are employed at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, with about 1,200 federal workers and about 400 contractors as well as students and temporary staff.

Pentagon spending still has its congressional protectors, especially with job-producing weapons, aircraft and ships built in nearly every corner of the country. In the past decade, the base defense budget has nearly doubled, from $297 billion in 2001 to more than $520 billion. The amount does not include the billions spent on the wars.

The cuts Obama and Congress are talking about would be to projected spending that envisioned Pentagon budgets rising to levels of more than $700 billion a year in a decade. Tea Party members and fiscal conservatives recently elected to Congress have shown a willingness to cut defense, traditionally considered almost untouchable.

“We understand that in getting to an agreement that drives down the debt … that there are going to be cuts,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., president of the 2010 freshman class in the House. “Making cuts strategically makes sense. Doing it through sequestration does not make sense.

“I would argue that intelligA coalition of prominent Republicans and Democrats, including former defense, state and treasury secretaries as well as military and congressional leaders, made an urgent plea Tuesday to Obama and Congress to reach a deal on the nation’s finances.

Any deal between Obama and Boehner that avoids the fiscal cliff and reduces the deficit will still face some resistance among rank-and-file lawmakers over defense cuts, especially in the House. The reductions will be particularly hard for GOP lawmakers who were counting on Mitt Romney to win the White House and try to reverse the cuts in defense.

Some lawmakers said the nearly $500 billion in cuts in the budget deal last year were hard enough.

Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., a retired Army officer, said the budget law cuts are “quite sufficient” and any more reductions would have a serious impact on the military.

“How many more combat tours of duty do you want these young men and women to be doing, five or six tours of duty?” West said. “We’re starting to break our military’s back. The world is a more dangerous place. After every major combat engagement, we decimate our military and then we try to ramp up to play catch up in the next war.”

The next solution, West said, would be for some members of Congress “to put on a helmet and fix a bayonet and they could go fight.”