From National Journal, The Bills Come Due:
The Air Force and Navy, both more technologically dependent than their Army and Marine counterparts, have been increasingly vocal about their modernization needs. But Congress is reluctant to fund big-ticket weapon systems while soldiers and marines slog it out on the streets of Baghdad and the mountains of Afghanistan, irrespective of the condition of equipment that is–quite simply–falling apart. Also problematic is the perception that our defense spending is higher than it’s ever been. I say perception, because to argue that we’re breaking the bank on defense isn’t exactly accurate. As Goldfarb and I have pointed out ad naseum, we’re only pumping some 3.5% of the GDP into defense. That’s fractional compared to past wars, including the Cold War. So our Air Force and our Navy are falling apart, but neither are doing too much of the fighting. That’s not a lack of will, obviously, this just isn’t a high-tech war. The Army and Marines are neck-deep in combat, but they’ve had to posture themselves against the type of war that they spent decades training to fight. Therein lies the problem, as we’ve appropriately adjusted ourselves to fight low-level conflicts and insurgencies, the pendulum has swung too far into the low-intensity spectrum, costing us our ability to dominate peer actors. So how do we strike a balance between peer/near peer conflict while continuing to prosecute non-state actors on the micro level? The answer is the two-force solution. End the procurement holiday. Give the Air Force the Raptors that they need and the Navy their 330 fighting ships. Let the Navy and Air Force rediscover their Cold War roots as the powerful strategic aegis against the Russian Bear and Chinese Dragon, while the Army and Marines fight the skirmishes across the globe. Winning a war is only half of the Armed Forces’ mission, the other half is preventing one.