Increasing U.S. Defense Spending: When Addition is Subtraction

The National Interest
by Daniel L. Davis

 

excerpt: In an attempt to bolster their military cred among conservative voters, many of the Republican candidates at last Tuesday’s debate in Milwaukee tried to outdo one another in supporting the Defense Department. None of the candidates gave much more than superficial examples of how they’d strengthen the military, but there was one specific concept about which most were energetic: the need for an increase in spending. It would seem obvious that the nation’s military apparatus would be stronger if Congress increased the Department of Defense (DoD)’s budget. Counterintuitively, however, unless significant reforms are implemented, increasing the budget might actually degrade our ability to secure American interests...

There are two major ways this mismanagement has manifested itself in recent years. First is the sometimes spectacular failure of DoD’s acquisition systems... However, as bad as the financial mismanagement has been, there is a second major failure that continues to hamper America’s national defense capabilities: bloated military overhead and archaic organizational structures.

full article:  http://nationalinterest.org/feature/increasing-us-defense-spending-when-addition-subtraction-14349