This essay is adapted from Defense Budgeting for a Safer World: The Experts Speak, a new publication by the Hoover Institution Press.
Not since the Reagan era has our country committed itself to a sustained, multiyear rebuilding of our military. At that time, the impact was transformative: it proved pivotal in winning the Cold War and continued to deliver capabilities decades after President Ronald Reagan left office. Today, we are at another pivotal moment: unless we go big on defense, any effort to sustain US military pre-eminence and realize the lofty goals of our National Defense Strategy (NDS) will be futile regardless of how much reform we try to squeeze out of the Pentagon.
Some may ask why arguing in favor of a peacetime buildup is relevant to a discussion centered around defense reform. It is true, all too often, in my view, that when experts discuss reform, they tend to refer to measures that might result in “efficiencies” or “more bang for the buck.” No doubt, those seeking improvements will devote energy toward highlighting fiscal inefficiencies, bureaucratic acquisition processes, antiquated accounting practices, and bloated management structures as areas ripe for reform. This well-trodden path, though laudable and essential, amounts to “small ball” when our country needs to make some big moves.
Traditional defense reform will not deliver a force that can execute the NDS or alter spending so drastically that the Pentagon could miraculously afford what it needs without additional funding. The reform I advance here begins with making a strategic choice our country has not made in over four decades: committing to a peacetime buildup of our national defense guided by the twin strategic objectives of building a military force that can win today and tomorrow. Delivering such a go-big force, however, will require a significant boost in defense spending to around Reagan-era levels.
The dangers of doing less
Reformers regularly critique the Pentagon for failing to make tough choices. Strategy, the argument goes, requires some form of sacrifice or the discipline to make do with less and ensure resources are spent judiciously on core areas of national interest. A true strategist, therefore, lives in a world of trade-offs, choosing between sustaining conventional platforms or modernization, prioritizing unmanned systems over manned platforms, or focusing on the Indo-Pacific instead of Europe, to name a few of the most commonly referenced choices. Those advocating the necessity of choice either believe the military should do less and therefore needs less, or assume the military will lack the resources to complete all its missions and must do less by necessity. Though not necessarily ideologically opposed to robust American power, the latter camp adopts a pessimistic view of American economic strength or political will—twin essential ingredients for sustaining a robust military. Though for different reasons, both camps arrive at the same conclusion: that we ought to reduce our ambitions for the military.
While choosing to do less is a reasonable choice, it is by no means the only choice available to the defense strategist. Choosing to go big and grow the military is legitimate, and I think the superior choice for the strategist and the nation, given the state of the military and the global security environment. Foremost, we should choose to go big because that is precisely what the strategic moment requires. Our force must be capable of deterring adventurism in the present competition with China and others while also ensuring that we can prevail in any future twenty-first-century conflict. Robust investments in revolutionary technologies like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and autonomy are critical. However, China’s military expansion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demonstrated that conventional forces still matter: ships, submarines, tanks, fighters, bombers, munitions, and end strength cannot be sacrificed in favor of a future capability that merely exists in a PowerPoint slide. We need to sustain our conventional capability to prevail in the current competition.
To an outsider, it may seem curious to argue in favor of sustaining and growing today’s force, given the US military’s pre-eminence over the past four decades. But today’s force, in many respects, is yesterday’s force with platforms that are often older than the troops who operate them. Of the five administrations that followed that of President Reagan, all deployed the force in armed conflict or sought a peace dividend by reducing the size of an investment in the military. In other words, it has been over four decades since the military has seen sustained investment and growth outside the context of armed conflict.
Moreover, we should choose to go big because that is what our defense strategy has called for since 2017. In an era with few points of agreement between our political parties, there is remarkable continuity across the Trump and Biden administrations’ defense strategies. Each would have the United States lead in three primary regions: the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. Each would seek to win—not simply manage—the competition with China and Russia. Each would also seek to deter Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups. Climate change, of course, is the singular outlier reinforcing the overall continuity thrust across the two administrations. Delving into the details of each defense strategy, such as the force-planning construct and global-posture priorities, reveals that both the Trump and Biden administrations would have a US military postured globally and capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating China while also deterring other adversaries. In other words, the defense strategy presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden advanced is a go-big strategy.
Yet, each administration has failed to resource its strategy. The Trump administration’s so-called “military rebuild” turned out to be a one-year defense bump that rightfully prioritized improving the readiness of the force after years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but never made the sustained investments in growth and modernization. By the end of the Trump administration, the defense budget barely kept pace with inflation, and the gap between the strategy and reality widened. It was a similar story during the first two years of the Biden administration: an ambitious strategy accompanied by an insufficient defense budget request. Making matters worse, spiraling inflation effectively eliminated any real growth in the budget request. This has placed Biden’s defense officials in the impossible position of trying to build an under-resourced force in service to a broad and expansive strategy. The results are Swiss-cheese concepts like “integrated deterrence” and “divest to invest,” which justify retiring so-called legacy platforms, many of which are strategically relevant and operationally viable.
This glaring gap between strategy and resources was so apparent that Congress—notably a Congress with Democratic majorities in both chambers—felt it necessary to increase the defense budget over and above Biden’s requests. Congress did not allow the force to hollow out and instead authorized and appropriated increases that gave the Department of Defense (DoD) 3 percent real growth in fiscal year 2022 and 5 percent real growth in 2023, a total additional investment of around $70 billion.
How much funding does the go-big NDS require? President Reagan’s peacetime military buildup averaged 6 percent of GDP. This is the correct historical analogy and slightly higher than the 4.5–5 percent required for today’s force. Here’s why: the fulcrum of the go-big strategy is sustaining, and in some cases building up, today’s force and making the investments required to modernize the force for tomorrow. The current defense program falls short on both fronts.
Planes, ships, bases, troops: where the problems lie
While a full inventory of capability shortfalls is beyond the scope of this essay, here is a high-level summary of six deficiencies in today’s force critical to executing the NDS. Each presents a significant strategic vulnerability requiring urgent attention and resources.
• Size of the Navy: With under 300 ships in its current battle force, the Navy is significantly below its stated goal of 355 ships, with no plan to fill the void for decades. The Biden administration’s April 2022 thirty-year shipbuilding plan would not reach the 355-ship threshold until after 2040. Meanwhile, the Navy’s so-called 2045 plan would not deliver 375 ships until 2045. At the same time, the Chinese navy already has 340 ships and is expected to grow to 400 by 2025 and 440 by 2030.
• Fighters and bombers: A similar tension of balancing near- and long-term needs applies to fighter aircraft. The total combat aircraft inventory was scheduled to decline from 1,970 to 1,800, beginning in FY2023. Amidst this reduction in airpower, Congress has prohibited retirements of capable aircraft, like the F-22 Raptor and the F-18, on the grounds that the platforms remain relevant to today’s fight and that new capabilities—be they manned or unmanned—are not yet ripe for production. The B-21 Raider’s extended range and large payload, coupled with next-generation stealth technology, is a game changer in the expansive Indo-Pacific theater, yet we are years away from the bomber coming online and unlikely to have enough capacity to defeat our adversaries’ increasingly sophisticated defenses. As in shipbuilding, the math continues to work against the size and capability of the force: we are retiring more capability than we are bringing online.
• Weapons and air defense shortfalls: Though the war in Ukraine has put US weapon shortfalls into the public discourse, shortfalls were a central focus of defense strategists going back to at least the 2017 NDS. As the NDS Commission noted, “Nearly any conflict between the United States and its most capable competitors would entail significant demand for long-range, high-precision munitions so that US forces can remain outside the range of advanced air defense systems and other anti-access/area denial capabilities.” The war in Ukraine has only reinforced the urgency and scale of the problem.
• Overseas basing: Basing is an area that receives little attention but is no less critical to posturing the military in accordance with the NDS. It is perhaps the most significant component of what the 2022 NDS refers to as “campaigning.” This focuses “on the access and warfighting requirements that enable our efforts to deter potential [Chinese] and Russian aggression against vital US national interests, and to prevail in conflict if deterrence fails.” Specifically, distributing forces and hardening bases are critical steps toward implementing “campaigning” in the Indo-Pacific. To meet this goal, Congress authorized over $6 billion of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) to improve posture and presence, accounting for over half of PDI’s total authorization. Yet, PDI has received only tepid support from the Pentagon.
• Nuclear weapons: Though Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling in Ukraine and China’s rapid nuclear modernization have elevated public awareness of nuclear weapons, the necessity of a credible nuclear deterrent has long been the cornerstone of the NDS. Absent modernized strategic forces, the United States will not be able to deter a second adversary in the event we find ourselves in a conflict with a major power. Fortunately, nuclear modernization is one area where the words of the NDS have consistently been backed up by action. To date, efforts to recapitalize all three legs of the nuclear triad have received sufficient funding, yet our current nuclear deterrence delivery systems are reaching the end-of-service life in the 2025–35 time frame. The replacement programs can, therefore, ill afford funding interruptions or programmatic setbacks to ensure there are no gaps in capability when the legacy systems age out.
• Size of the force: While the Navy and Air Force—the two services at the heart of the NDS—will see modest growth, the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act lowered Army end-strength to 452,000—the smallest active-duty force since the start of the all-volunteer force in 1973. While recruiting woes explain the dramatic drop, some argue that our shift to the Indo-Pacific justifies an Army end-strength below 485,000 (the previous year’s authorized Army end-strength). This would be ill-advised: the Army’s chief of staff has said that a force of 485,000 soldiers was too small and that an ideal size would be closer to 540,000. In other words, the Army—even without its recruiting challenges—will be significantly below the end-strength levels required to meet the demands of the NDS, either for peacetime missions or preparing for contingency operations.
Taken together, these items, in addition to other areas of the defense budget that require real growth annually, such as the personnel, readiness, and operation and maintenance accounts, lead one to begin to appreciate the true cost of winning today.
America supports going big
Contrary to the pronouncements from neo-isolationists and restrainers, the majority of Americans support the go-big strategy and efforts to fund it. Public opinion data demonstrates this. A recent Reagan National Defense Survey, conducted in November 2022 after the midterm elections, found that about three-quarters (76 percent) favor increasing government spending on the military, including supermajorities across party lines, with 68 percent favorability among Democrats, 72 percent among independents, and 87 percent among Republicans. This support has been remarkably consistent across previous surveys, hovering at around three-quarters since surveyors began asking the question in 2018. Not only do Americans support increasing defense spending, but 63 percent in the 2022 survey, including bipartisan majorities, also expressed concern that high inflation means the military cannot purchase as much equipment as it might need.
Americans also support US global engagement. According to the 2022 survey, a plurality (40 percent) said they believed it is better for the United States to be more engaged and take the lead regarding international events, while 32 percent believed we should be less engaged and react to events; 24 percent said it depends. Notably, support increases when the question becomes less abstract and more tangible.
Alongside the go-big strategy’s popularity, Americans recognize that our military is currently not prepared and requires further investment. Considerably fewer than half (40 percent) think the US military is the best in the world in terms of overall capabilities when compared to other countries’ militaries.
At the height of the 1980s military buildup, President Reagan argued, “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.” The peace he spoke of was not simply a campaign slogan. It was a policy mandate backed by an integrated budget and strategy leading to an end state where American interests, economic prosperity, and freedom were secured by the strength of a well-funded military capable of outcompeting those who might do us harm. It’s time we go big again.
