That's how Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt describe the result of decisions by the Obama administration to terminate the F-22, reduce the size of the Navy's surface fleet, "restructure" the Army's Future Combat Systems, and gut missile defense. The announcement that the Air Force's procurement of F-22s will be capped at just 187, down from the original requirement for more than 700 airframes, is perhaps the most troubling element of the new budget. The F-22 is the key to America's ability to dominate the skies in any conflict with a conventional foe. Despite its enormous development costs, the marginal cost of additional aircraft is now roughly $100 million per copy, not an outrageous sum considering the trajectory of the Joint Strike Fighter program, which like all aircraft programs will see costs rise and production numbers fall in a "death spiral." JSF is also an international program, which will only amplify the delays that already plague Air Force procurement.
Donnelly and Schmitt also worry about the decline in the size of the fleet:
The number of aircraft carriers will drop eventually to 10. The next generation of cruisers will be delayed, and support-ship projects stretched out. Older Arleigh Burke destroyers will be upgraded and modernized, but at less-than-needed rates.
The new Ford-class of carriers will also be delayed, despite the fact that construction has already begun on the first ship in Newport News, Virginia. The Airborne Laser, the cheapest element of military's layered missile defense system, has essentially been terminated, ending "the military's first operational foray into directed energy, which will be as revolutionary in the future as "stealth" technology has been in recent decades."
The authors argue that "what is true for the wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we simply wish to deter." But numbers don't only matter in war, they matter in economics. Not long ago the New Republic's Jonathan Chait extolled the value of "wasteful spending" as a means of jump-starting the economy -- a rebuke to Republicans obsessing over the more absurd projects buried in the stimulus. Chait said that "if President Obama's economic stimulus fails to prevent a depression -- and I'm not saying it will -- it will be because he didn't waste enough money." How can the left, which just weeks ago was in favor of flushing money down the toilet merely for the sake of pumping money into the system, now stand against projects already under way, production lines already in operation, and union workers making good wages turning out materiel for the United States military?
