A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

My thoughts on defense spending cuts July 29, 2011

Before I being, I’m a hawk, but a Reagan type hawk. I believe in peach through strength – sufficient strength that no one will think about attacking this country.  I don’t like to see the military used, and overused, as it has been for the past 15-16 years.  But I favor a strong defense. 

The USCCB has stated that, in order to deal with the deficit crisis without touching the ‘sacred’ entitlement (wealth transfer) programs, we should gut defense spending.  Catholic Vote posted on that story here.  What is below is the comment I left at Catholic Vote.  I cannot accept blanket defense spending cuts without a concommitant definition of our vital interests, our desires in terms of being able to project military power, and a strategy to support both.  And, defense, even though spending has been modestly high, has actually been horribly underfunded for 20 years:

Without looking going and looking it up, does anyone here know how many carrier battle groups the USN has in service at present, vice how many it had in 1990?  How about Air Force fighter wings, or number of bombers?  Or Army divisions?  How many fighter aircraft has the United States Air Force purchased in the last 15 years?  How many ships does the USN have in service compared to 20 years ago? 

In point of fact, the Navy is smaller than it has been since before WWII. The USAF has bought fewer than 300 fighters in the last 15 years.  The Army is pretty well funded, but much of its heavy equipment (like tanks) is very old and nearly worn out after 10 years of constant war.  Our military is actually chronically UNDER-funded, at least in terms of procurement of weapon systems.  We are nowhere near the ‘military industrial complex’ nightmare that Eisenhower warned about (which was actually little more than a shot at the incoming Kennedy Administration, which had run on a platform claiming Eisenhower had underfunded defense). [This blurb about Eisenhower is in response to another commenter] It would take me pages and pages to even give a primer on the dread problems our military faces, but because we have been in these rather useless, endless wars, we have not replaced very aged equipment.  The average age of the US Air Force flying fleet is over 30 years old, at present.  We are flying 50+ year old bombers and tankers on a constant, daily basis.  We are spending huge amounts on defense, but much of it goes to operational and personnel costs – in fact, the vast majority of it does.   This nation has spent relatively little on defense procurement for 20 years, and that has been part of a deliberate strategy on the part of some who want to force the military to downsize dramatically by starving it of new equipment.

To answer the questions above – the Navy is about to dip to 9 carrier battle groups, meaning we have effectively 3 that can be deployed at any time (one on deployment, one in maintenance, one training for deployment.  Even that doesn’t begin to cover the problem, because carriers designed to carry 90+ aircraft now routinely sail with less than 50.  Why?  Because the Navy hasn’t had the money to buy enough fighters to fill the decks!  Not only that, but we’ve lost many specialized types of aircraft, because older types have been retired and not replaced.  In 1990, we had 15 carriers and each would sail with 80-90 aircraft.  The Air Force is dropping down to 17 or 18 fighter wings, vice the 38 it had in 1990. Again, many specialized types of aircraft, like electronic warfare, have been retired and not replaced, and the number of aircraft assigned to each wing has also been cut.  There have been many plans to replace the specialist types and number of aircraft, but no money.  USAF had 300+ bombers in 1990 but now has about 60.  We haven’t built a B-2 or any other bomber in 15 years.  We’ve closed down the F-22 line after a run of all of 187 aircraft.  They are wonderful planes, but there aren’t near enough of them.  The Navy had nearly 600 combat ships in service in 1990, but is down to a little over 200 now. 

What I am saying is, aside from these hugely expensive and foolishly prosecuted wars, the military HAS been cut.  It was cut in the 1990s and never recovered.  It’s been cut as we’ve been fighting wars, as in the case of the F-22 and myriad other programs (S-3 retired and not replaced, F-14 retired and not replaced, EF-111A retired and not replaced……etc.)  Bush did not adequately fund procurement during his term, and Obama is doing the same.  Many of our pilots are flying aircraft many, many years older than they.

The question is not – should we cut defense spending?  The question is – what capabilities do we want our military to have?  Do we want the ability to project power globally?  If so, I don’t think you can cut spending much at all.  If we want to lose our global influence and be bullied in the East Pacific, then, go ahead, cut away.  But I will say this – capabilities given up now will be much, MUCH more expensive to reacquire later. And, it will take much time to reacquire them.  We are actually rapidly following the path of the social welfare states of Europe – spending so much on entitlements that we cannot afford to spend anything on defense.  The European NATO nations had only a few hundred bombs in stock!  They had to beg the USA for more bombs for this idiotic campaign in Libya!  Is that what we want?  To be a paper tiger, barely (if even) able to defend its own borders?

Even if all discretionary spending is zeroed out, including all of defense, we still run a large (multi-hundred billion dollar) deficit. Our deficit crisis is not one of discretionary spending, it is entirely due to enormous wealth transfers (entitlements) that are underfunded by taxation and simply cannot be sustained along with a vibrant economy. 

I would add one more bit.  We are facing an adversary in China that will soon possess capabilities equal to, or in excess of, those of the US military.  This is not scare-mongering, it is a sober analysis of the facts.  China spends far more percentage of GDP on defense than the US, so even though China’s economy is smaller (for now), they are spending huge amounts on defense and rapidly catching up (don’t believe the official figures, they are spending 10x their official figures). In some areas, like cyber attack, China’s capabilities may exceed those of the US.  In fact, China has repeatedly committed acts of war by attacking sensitive US defense and computer networks, probing them for weaknesses and stealing data.  The point is, I don’t think we can assume the US will have a military advantage over China for much longer. 

Now…..tell me of US vital interests we will protect, the capabilities we want to have, and a strategy to go with all that, and we can look at how to ‘cut’ defense.