2 Things Donald Trump's ‘Big League’ Military Build-Up Must Include

Dan Goure

Secuirty,

Modernization and readiness. 

President Trump has promised to rebuild the military. In his speech last week to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the President promised “one of the greatest military buildups in history.” The outline of his plan is supposed to be in his address to a joint session of Congress today where he promised some $50 billion in additional defense spending. Elsewhere he has spoken of a 350 ship Navy, a larger Army and Marine Corps and the modernization of U.S. nuclear forces.

But years of underfunding, downsizing and overuse have left the U.S. military in a state of profound unreadiness. There are reports that more than half of the Navy’s premier fighter, the F/A-18, are sidelined due to a lack of funds and personnel to properly and quickly maintain them. The Air Force has a severe shortage of both pilots and maintainers. As tensions rose in the Middle East last year, the Navy was forced to operate for months without an aircraft carrier in offshore waters because prior demands for their presence and deferred maintenance meant that none was ready for deployment.

An underfunded, overcommitted military is facing insurmountable readiness problems. They have insufficient resources and time to provide the necessary maintenance and sustainment of existing equipment and platforms. Moreover, with respect to its fleets of aircraft, ships and vehicles, the military is aging rapidly. As a consequence, maintenance costs are rising at an accelerating rate. In a growing number of cases for older platforms, there are no companies that make the necessary spare parts. More and more, contractors and depots are forced to cannibalize one aircraft to keep another flying, raid the boneyards or even fabricate their own spares.

No service is in greater need of additional funding for readiness than the Army. The Army has been required not just to maintain but increase its deployments on three continents and to do so while shrinking in size. It is now struggling to return forces to Europe for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Current demands on the force also mean that units are unable to train adequately for future missions, particularly the high-end fight against nation-state adversaries. According to recent testimony, in 2016 only three of the Army’s combat brigades were fully ready to perform the required range of missions.