Recapitalizing the force

A good article in the National Journal by Sidney Freedberg, Jr. this week:

Since 1991, the United States has been the world's sole superpower. Now, 17 years later, the armed forces that underwrite that status have begun to fray. Nowhere are the limits of the U.S. military more evident than on the ground in Iraq, and so Congress and the media have focused their attention on the stretched ground forces of the Army and Marine Corps. U.S. control of the seas and skies is something that the public and policy makers tend to assume, as they have since the fall of the Soviet Union. But on the sea and in the air, America has coasted for two decades on investments made in the 1980s. Now, after a generation of heavy use around the globe, from Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s to Afghanistan and Iraq today, hardware bought during the Reagan buildup is simply wearing out.

Air Force and Navy gear is aging, while the ground forces expenditure of assets in combat conditions drives its own recapitalization requirements - requirements that are unlikely to be resourced in the next administration no matter who wins the White House, or what majorities prevail in Congress. Which leads me to this conclusion:

Here are two statements which are simultaneously true: 1) We are not spending nearly enough money on defense accounts, 2) We are spending an awful lot of money on defense, nearly half of the world’s total. The real question we should be asking ourselves (as always) is not so much, “how much do we spend?” but, “what is it we expect to accomplish?” Answer the second question and you have answered the first, less whatever “risk” you decide to take on.

Because if our answer is that we cannot afford the force we have, then what we are really saying is that we cannot afford the mission set we have signed up for and it’s time to either 1) swallow our pride (and decimate our industrial base) by buying cheaper kit abroad, or 2) pull back from the away game and see what rushes in to fill the space we leave behind.

The alternative of course is a "hollow force," and those of us that have been around for a while have so seen that show before.