Reaction to Thompson Call for More Defense Spending
15 November 2007Investor’s business Daily has given us a right on editorial building on Thompson’s policy idea of building, instead of downgrading, our military and growing defense spending.
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Defense: Fred Thompson wants a million-man ground force and more modern equipment on the ground, in the air and on the water. The arsenal of democracy needs some retooling.
After the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. military was depleted and exhausted. Then came Jimmy Carter and by the time Ronald Reagan came along we had planes that couldn’t fly and ships that couldn’t sail for lack of maintenance.
The Gipper rolled up his sleeves and built his 600-ship navy, gave the Air Force the latest fighters and bombers and an Army capable of deploying half a million troops for Desert Storm without breaking a sweat.
Once again the U.S. military is depleted and exhausted. We no longer have the force that Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf had. During Operation Desert Storm, the active duty Army had 18 combat divisions. Clinton cut them down to 10, about their size today. As of March, the active Army consisted of about 508,000 troops, far below the 780,000 we had while Reagan was winning the Cold War.
A year ago, President Bush recognized the need for a bigger stick not only in Iraq but around the world. “We need to increase the permanent size of both the United States Army and the United States Marines,” he said. “I’ve asked Secretary Gates to determine how such an increase could take place and report back to me as quickly as possible.”
Speaking at The Citadel Tuesday, presidential candidate Thompson proposed a military ground force of 775,000 in the Army, near Reagan-era levels, and 225,000 Marines, 23,000 more than the Pentagon currently is seeking.
He also would modernize and expand the Navy and Air Force. The Navy, which reached 568 ships in the late 1980s, struggles today to sustain a fleet of just 276. The number of tactical air wings in the Air Force fell from 37 at the time of Desert Storm to 20 under Clinton.
In May, Gen. Ronald Keys, head of the Air Combat Command, said the Air Force was simply wearing out because of its commitments and the lack of new aircraft. He noted the average Air Force warplane was 23.5 years old, older than some pilots, compared with 8.5 years in 1967. Keys expressed concern that lawmakers would pay attention only when a plane crashed “because a wing fell off.”
He was prophetic. This month our entire fleet of F-15 Eagles was grounded for “airworthiness concerns” after a plane flown by the Missouri National Guard crashed during a training exercise. Early findings suggest a structural failure. The F-15 that crashed was built in 1980.
Today’s Navy, despite the capabilities of individual ships, is about the size it was on the eve of World War I. A Congressional Quarterly article recently warned that China by itself will possess nearly twice as many submarines as the U.S. by 2010, and is likely to have a larger fleet by 2015.
It may be time for another buildup like Reagan’s that brought down the evil empire and gave us the means for victory in Desert Storm. As he liked to say, “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because America was too strong.”
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on November 15th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
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