First, we must spend more on defense, and we must do so carefully and wisely. Spending today as a percent of GDP is estimated at 4.1 percent – and that includes funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Office of Management and Budget, defense spending is expected to decline down to 3.1 percent in 2011. I believe we must be prepared to increase defense spending to at least 4.5 percent of GDP, not including what it takes to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When it comes to matters of budgets with Congress they say all numbers are fungible. But in this area of appropriation, there should be little room for negotiation. Second, we must admit to ourselves, as Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, that our military is simply too small. Too many commitments today leave our Armed Forces capable of meeting too few contingencies tomorrow. I propose today that we build a “Million-Member” ground force. We should increase Army end strength to 775,000 organized into 64 brigade combat teams and increase active duty Marine Corps forces by 50,000 to 225,000. Half-measures and small increases will no longer do. We need the best all-volunteer force that can meet the security needs of this country, and they must be organized, trained and equipped to deal with tomorrow’s threats as well as today’s. Third, we must modernize our Armed Forces. The average age of our military aircraft is 24 years; some are over forty years old…twice the age of most of you. The Army’s main battle tank and fighting vehicles were designed in the 1970s and 80s. And the entire fleet of vehicles is not aging gracefully either, with an average age of 13 years, made worse by years of tough use. We must fully field and fund the next generation of military systems to ensure U.S. forces retain dominance in the full battle space: On the battlefield, in the skies above it, and in the waters surrounding it. The investments we make today provide the means to defend our nation tomorrow. They will make our military personnel more effective and safer. We need sustained technology development, and we need the best and brightest working on our defense programs.
I think I’ve been as frustrated as anybody by Fred’s slow start, but this is the kind of thing I expected from Thompson when he first entered the race, or first started testing the waters anyway. And it’s pretty clear he’s one-upped Romney, who signed on to the Heritage Foundation’s Four Percent for Freedom campaign, those his people insist that four percent is only their baseline for defense spending. Thompson is talking about a real build-up of the kind that this administration should have undertaken from the moment it entered office, but failed to do even after the attacks on 9/11. If Thompson mounts a comeback, I’m inclined to think it will be because of his support for core conservative issues like this. And regardless, this is a position to which all the candidates should soon come around–we are already spending 4.1 percent of GDP on the military, and it clearly isn’t enough.
