Invest more wisely in defense spending

ALTHOUGH Congress has been urgently wrapped up in debating President Obama's economic-stimulus plan, another important spending debate lies close at hand. That's the debate on how to spend our defense dollars. The urgent always threatens to crowd out the important, but the Obama administration must avoid perpetuating the bad fiscal habits of the Bush administration and make tough strategic choices about defense spending.

Despite the Republican Party's attempts to brand itself as the party of strong national defense, the past eight years of conservative leadership has left the U.S. military at its weakest in a generation. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a serious toll on military personnel and equipment. A recent survey of U.S. military officers found that 88 percent believe that the demands of the Iraq war have "stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin" and nearly half believe that the war has "broken" the military. Most military experts agree that the U.S. military could not successfully wage another war in its current state.

The irony is that the U.S. has spent a fortune to have its military weakened. Defense spending increased by nearly 40 percent since 2000. Add on top of that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on emergency supplementals to fight the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the yearly defense budget has almost doubled in the last decade.

There is no question that an increase in defense spending has been necessary to combat terrorism. However, by funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency supplementals, the Bush administration chose to spend indiscriminately, eschewing budget discipline and fiscal oversight. Having worked in an office in Baghdad funded by these supplementals, I have seen firsthand the excess and lack of accountability they produce. Now, in troubled economic times, the Obama administration is faced with the unenviable task of repairing the military in the midst of a budgetary crisis.

So what to do? First, we need to look at the threats facing us and then decide what to spend our defense dollars on, instead of simply throwing money around and hoping it will make things better. Second, we need to prioritize defense programs that can help us win the wars we are fighting today over programs whose fruits we shall not taste for years to come.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a prime example of a program that is of little use for the threats we face today. After more than 10 years of increasing costs, a recent report estimates that the final price tag will clock in at about $1 trillion. This is by far the most expensive aircraft program in the history of the Department of Defense. Lacking a long-flight radius and the ability to hover over potential targets — such as terrorist enclaves in the mountains of Afghanistan — it's also ill-equipped for the kinds of missions our military is likely to carry out in the years to come.

The F-35 will be of great use in the future in terms of maintaining America's conventional military edge and deterring potential foes. Important NATO allies have also invested in the program, so cutting it altogether would be unwise. Nevertheless, cutting back on the F-35 would allow us to spend more money on other programs that will be useful for both today's wars and tomorrow's threats.

For example, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are in high demand today. By one estimate, the Army is meeting only 5 percent of its need for UAVs. The military's desire for more UAVs is easy to understand. They are relatively inexpensive and they are well-suited for a wide array of missions. Whether it's hunting down insurgents in Iraq or carrying out reconnaissance missions against potential adversaries, UAVs gets us more for less than programs such as the F-35.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to spend money on weapons, and could instead put it toward important social programs. But there are real threats that we face and those we seek to deter, so we must continue to invest in defense. We just need to do it smarter. The one-two punch of struggling through weak economic times and fighting two wars at once means we have to make tough choices regarding how we spend our way to victory.

The Bush administration demonstrated that even a seemingly limitless defense budget does not ensure a strong military or make America more secure. More important is making smart strategic choices about when to go to war and how to balance current and future conflicts. President Obama would do well to remember this as he submits a budget to Congress that provides for the common defense.

Evan Maher is a Truman National Security Fellow and a student at the Kennedy School of Government. He worked on the Saddam Hussein trials in Baghdad from 2005-2006. He is a native of Spokane.