From New Wars:With a new, more liberal President in office, along with a dominant Democrat Party which has made no secret their intent to cut defense spending in the US, its obvious the military is headed for crisis. Long-overdue modernization plans for aging Cold War weaponry were hardly underway when 9/11 further delayed purchases of new airplanes, vehicles, and warships. While the Navy is somewhat better off in the age of their equipment (managed by drastically reducing fleet size from 600 in the last decade to less than half today), the Air Force has planes literally falling from the skies, while the army continues to patch up 1980’s era M-1 tanks.
With the Iraq War winding down, and a financial crisis unmatched since the Depression era upon us, there is little hope the US Military will be able to replace in adequate numbers the traditional arms which it has depended on for decades and given us such dominance in international affairs. Listen to this from Military.com:
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My Comment: In the past .... when economic chaos was the norm for a period of time .... military budgets and procurements were slashed to the bone, resulting in long term military force degradation. I am not optimistic that today's economic chaos will be any different.