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Postwar Defense Budget Downturn Unlike Predecessors

The lessons of history cannot be applied broadly to these spending cuts.

The postwar defense funding reductions the U.S. military now is facing are taking place under entirely different conditions than their predecessors, noted the commander of the U.S. Northern Command. Adm. William E. Gortney, USN, who also is the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, warned of applying parallels to previous cutbacks in his address to the Tuesday luncheon audience at West 2015, being held in San Diego, February 10-12.

Adm. Gortney pointed out that previous postwar defense cuts came when the United States found itself in a better security environment than it does now. Saying the historical reduction of a postwar Defense Department budget is a fact of life, the admiral admitted that leadership did not foresee the current global environment three years ago.

“The force does not get hollow by the flip of a switch, but by inadequate resourcing combined by two wars and today’s security environment,” he declared.

This downward trend puts the U.S. military in a perilous position, and it must be prepared to respond to any of a number of major crises that could emerge in these dangerous times. “While the Defense Department budget is reducing, one thing is certain—it will go back up again. We just don’t know when,” Adm. Gortney allowed. A trigger event probably will launch the new upturn in spending.

And the United States must look “horizontally” across the budget if it is to face a war, the admiral continued. “We must have the industrial base and the intellectual base to build the capacity needed to fight that war,” he stated. The challenge facing the military in the next five years is to maintain current and future readiness while recapitalizing—“how we take a breath before we go to the next war,” he offered.