By 2000, the Defense Department had been short-changed by an estimated $426 billion over actual requirements during the previous decade, mostly in deferred or cancelled procurement. Despite hefty increases in defense spending since then, the Defense Department and White House have grossly underestimated the actual costs for prosecuting the war in Iraq, allowing the dangerous trend to continue despite the apparent infusion of new funding.
It is not difficult to find evidence of the looming crisis in major defense program activities. As I noted in an article about the Navy several months ago (Navy’s Newest Heads for Troubled Waters, DefenseWatch, Aug. 28, 2004), barring a turnabout in new ship construction rates, the sea service is vanishing before our very eyes as the size of the fleet steadily declines from about 300 ships to a projected level of 120 in the next two decades.
My colleague, Senior Editor Paul Connors, revealed this summer a future massive downsizing of Air Force tactical aviation driven by the same budget pressures (Smaller Fighter Force On The Way, DefenseWatch, July 14, 2004). And it’s impossible to write about the Army or its reserve components nowadays without tripping over the multiple problems of deployment “overstretch” and unit manning woes that have occurred by shoving a 10-division ground force into a 20-division wartime operational requirement.
What is distressing to realize is that no one — the DoD civilian leadership, Joint Chiefs of Staff, congressional defense committees or even the White House — is taking this problem seriously. That is because correcting the lag in procurement, closing the end-strength personnel gap, and covering all wartime operating costs will require an order of magnitude increase in defense spending.” — Ed Offley (DefenseWatch)
Of course, while some will see this as an argument for massive increases in defense spending, it is much more an indictment of the Bush cabal’s military adventurism. The emphasis on the ‘deferred or cancelled procurement’ of the previous decade, which is intended to castigate the Clinton administration, made sense in a world where, for a brief period, capping the insanity of continued Pentagon spending became policy.
