You Decide

… that to combat the varied and ever-changing threats we face today and in the future takes a modern, flexible, well-equipped military?

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the world has become more fractured, complicated and dangerous, not less. In today’s world we face myriad threats from every corner of the globe, which means we have to be prepared to fight in every geographical terrain imaginable. Before 2001, few people imagined that our troops would be sent to fight in the remote, arid mountains of Afghanistan. But after 9/11, the U.S. military had to quickly adapt to this new theater of conflict.

It also means facing a huge range of potential enemies, from large, well-armed states to small-scale insurgencies. At the top end of the scale, Russia cannot be discounted as a threat, and China is also rapidly becoming a more serious military power. This year, both have announced huge increases in their annual military spending (of 16.3 and 17.8 percent respectively), significantly higher than the U.S. increase of around 11 percent despite the fact that neither of them are currently involved in any major conflict.

Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there are the dangers that small but armed and determined groups of extremists and insurgents pose to U.S. interests: Roadside bombs and guerrilla fighters are a very different kind of problem facing our military. Such militants are not necessarily restricted to Iraq and Afghanistan either; in the past 10 years U.S. targets have been attacked in countries including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uganda, Palestine, Pakistan, the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, as well as within the United States itself.

Between these two extremes are many more variations, each of which calls for a different solution. And that is before we consider the problems of tomorrow, such as attacks on our communications satellites in space or on our computer networks via the Internet. Plus, a 2004 Pentagon report on the effects of climate change warned that the threat of catastrophic drought, flooding, energy shortages and famine around the world are going to cause this country serious national security problems.

The United States needs and deserves the best possible defense, but that doesn’t come cheap. And the price isn’t even as much as you might think, and certainly not as much as it used to be. Despite the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense spending now represents just 4 percent of our GDP, compared with 9 percent during the Vietnam conflict, 14 percent during Korea and 35 percent during World War II.

The world is changing, and we need to make sure our means of defense evolve to meet new threats.

… that we are wasting billions of dollars by spending money on the wrong kinds of defense?

It’s little wonder that our military costs so much when defense spending is so relentlessly inefficient. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Defense Department’s 2007 acquisitions programs (large equipment purchases) had increased in cost by an average of 26 percent from their initial estimates. This adds up to an incredible additional cost to the taxpayer of $295 billion, or the equivalent of almost a thousand dollars for every person in America.

The report also found an average delay in each of the 95 projects of nearly two years. But many military purchases take much longer; so much longer, in fact, that by the time equipment has gone through the entire process of design and manufacture and has actually entered operational service, the enemy it was designed to combat has often disappeared altogether.

Consider, for example, missile defense. An anti-ballistic missile defense was first proposed back in early days of the Cold War, when we first faced the Soviet nuclear threat. Missile defense supporters claim there is now a new nuclear threat from “rogue states,” but this ignores the basic truth that there are many simpler, cheaper ways for terrorists to deliver a nuclear bomb than by intercontinental ballistic missile. Despite this, the latest incarnation of the missile defense system was deployed in 2004 — and still doesn’t actually work. The Union of Concerned Scientists says that not only does it have “no demonstrated operational capability,” but also that any working system that may arrive at some point in the future will be vulnerable to simple countermeasures by any potential aggressor. And all this for a continuing annual cost of between $7 billion and $10 billion.

Elsewhere, billions of dollars have been spent developing the F22 Raptor, the world’s most expensive fighter jet, regardless of whether you believe the optimistic official U.S. Air Force cost per plane of $142 million or a congressional review’s more realistic estimate of $361 million per plane. Despite its huge price tag, critics say it doesn’t perform to its promised capabilities and question whether it is even as effective as the far cheaper $30 million F15s and $15 million F16s it is designed to replace.

Then there’s Lockheed Martin’s prototype for a new class of Navy ship, which The New York Times reports was “heralded as the dawning of an innovative, low-cost era in Navy shipbuilding [but] has turned into a case study of how not to build a combat ship." Originally budgeted at around $220 million, the ship’s cost has jumped to $531 million, a figure that could yet rise by an additional $100 million by the time it actually enters service.

Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that spending should be concentrated less on expensive projects, such as building jet fighters and battleships, and more on providing better basic equipment, such as armored vehicles to protect the troops on the ground who are currently doing most of the fighting.

Meanwhile, billions of dollars intended to get Iraq to the point where U.S. troops can withdraw are being lost in a cloud of confusion, fraud and incompetence. For example, the BBC reports on $4 million intended to help rebuild the Iraqi police force that was spent instead on “20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size swimming pool.” The confusion over where money intended for reconstruction is ending up only seems to become worse over time. Even Stuart Bowen, the federal official in charge of investigating corruption in Iraq, has himself come under investigation for alleged overspending and mismanagement.

We need a more effective military, but we don’t necessarily need to spend any more dollars to achieve it. In fact, if we just spent the money in the right places, it could end up costing us much, much less.