Military communities are absorbing the news about another wave of troop reductions. The Army says it will shrink its active duty force by 40,000 - to bring it down to 450,000 nationwide over the next two years.

More than a tenth of those cuts are happening in Georgia, including about 950 at Fort Stewart just outside Hinesville.

Private First Class Cristian Montoya just got back from a deployment to Germany, but by all appearances, he’s not tired of the food. Montoya was eating lunch this week with another soldier at Zum Rosenhof , a German restaurant in downtown Hinesville.

He’s says he’s not worried about the news that the Army post is taking a 5 percent cut.

“I like my job and everything, but if it happens,” he says, “it happens.”

Montoya, 20, is from Texas and joined the Army about a year ago. He says he’d like to stay in for awhile.

The bigger worry, he says, could be for Hinesville if Fort Stewart gets smaller.

“That’s where pretty much all of the economy comes from. If you take the base away, Hinesville would just be another town in Georgia,” he says.

Life in the city of 34,000 people is oriented around Fort Stewart. Military surplus stores dot strip malls, with names like “Patriot Center,” and businesses advertise discounts to troops. Like many base towns, soldiers in fatigues are a common sight - and a key source of revenue.

“For the construction business, Fort Stewart is the business. There’s very little business without that,” says Claude Dryden.

He’s has been building homes in the Hinesville area since the early 1980s. He also owns nearly 300 rental units. Since the first Gulf War, Dryden says business has ebbed and flowed as troops have deployed and returned.

“The good thing about Fort Stewart is we have this turnover of business, and it’s fairly steady even though we have fluctuations up and down. Once we have major cutbacks then it’s very concerning to us,” Dryden says.

More than 4,000 of the cuts are happening in Georgia - most at Fort Benning near Columbus. Nationwide, more than two-dozen communities will see their bases shrink.

And it’s not just about the soldiers. Fort Stewart officials estimate the 950 troops will take about 2,500 family members with them.

On Main Street, Linda Barnes runs a consignment shop. She says young military families are an important source of business, coming in to purchase children’s clothing and household items.

“We hope they’re not gonna shut it down now. It’s one of the biggest ones this side of the Mississippi River, so it will probably be here,” Barnes says.

Paul Andreshak, Executive Director of Southeast Georgia Friends of Fort Stewart and Hunter, says he doesn’t think there’s much danger of Fort Stewart closing altogether. But Andreshak says even short of that, he thinks it’s a bad time to cut defense spending.

“Death by a thousand cuts is still death,” he says. “And if we’re concerned about our military strategy and our national situation with conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Ukraine, then reducing the Army any at this point doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

Hinesville's Mayor, Jim Thomas, agrees with Andreshak, but says he thinks the city will be able to bounce back from the cuts.

"I'm not pleased with the reduction in force simply because I don't think that our country can afford to cut the military very much farther," Thomas says. "But I'm pleased that it wasn't any greater in our community."

The military says it needs to make the cuts to save money. And the Army says there will be more to come, if Congress and the President can’t agree on a way to roll back another round of federal cuts scheduled to take effect this fall.

Listen to this story:

Tags: Fort Stewart, Fort Benning, Hinesville