Harlan Ullman
Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Make no mistake. Despite allocating nearly $1 trillion for the Pentagon next year and the presence of a motivated military and civilian workforce, the department is in free fall. How can this be? After all, the United States is supposed to have the most powerful military in the world armed with the best weapons.
Suspend disbelief and consider the reasons for this assessment. First, for 20 years, the Pentagon was engaged in waging endless wars that could not be won by military force alone.
Nation building in Afghanistan and imposing a democracy in Iraq after invading to destroy non-existent weapons of mass destruction squandered trillions of dollars and countless amounts of blood, not only American.
Worse, these diversions allowed adversaries and enemies to evolve. Today, the combination of China, Russia, Iraq and North Korea, plus non-government actors, poses challenges and dangers that the United States and its allies have not been able to confront or contain effectively.
Second, for a decade or more, the Defense Department has operated under a continuing resolution because Congress has been incapable of passing a budget on time. In business terms, that cuts buying power by 10% to 15% a year. And it makes long-range planning impossible, further deteriorating the effectiveness and efficiency in operating the Pentagon.
Third, the Pentagon is infected with a costs cancer. Uncontrolled annual real cost growth, above inflation, is 5-7% a year for every item -- from people to pencils to precision weapons.
About half that goes to covering people in general. Even though recruitment is strong, services are offering early retirement and early buyouts to reduce personnel costs for senior people. The reality is that on the current course, at the end of the Trump administration in 2029, the forces will be quantitatively smaller in number.
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