The military’s budget

Saturday, May 28, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is using his last weeks in office to press a discussion about the future of the military. In a speech Tuesday at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Gates called for a national debate, saying the military will need to be reshaped.

“The tough choices ahead are really about the kind of role the American people — accustomed to unquestioned military dominance for the past two decades — want their country to play in the world,” said Gates, who will retire next month.

He pointed to the nation’s budget situation, which is driving many of the changes. President Barack Obama has proposed cutting $400 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next 12 years.

Gates said that would constitute a cut “of about 5 percent in constant dollars,” and that proposal has raised howls from many conservatives. There are Republicans in Congress who have been content to slash Medicare while leaving the Defense Department’s budget untouched. During the Cold War, politicians argued for protecting the defense budget at all costs. But the nation is no longer in the Cold War, and Gates, a self-described “old Cold Warrior,” said the Pentagon will have to be part of the solution to the nation’s budget problems.

The debate can’t center on the size of the military’s budget. It has to focus on how to best prepare and equip the military for its mission.

Currently, the Pentagon’s $530 billion base budget, when adjusted for inflation, is the highest since World War II, Gates said. And that doesn’t include the money budgeted for the war effort. But the defense secretary said there has been a lack of discipline in spending because the Pentagon has become “accustomed to the post 9/11 decade’s worth of ‘no questions asked’ funding requests.”

The increased spending hasn’t necessarily meant big returns. For example, Gates said in the past decade the Pentagon has spent $700 billion on modernizing the military, yet that has “resulted in relatively modest gains in actual military capability.”

Over the past two years, Gates and his staff ended or curtailed more than 30 programs the military was pursuing that didn’t pass the “common-sense test,” including an Army weapons system based on a vehicle that apparently wasn’t designed to protect against deadly explosives. That system, he said, would have cost $200 billion to complete.

By canceling and trimming unneeded weapons systems, finding efficiencies in operations and controlling overhead costs, the Pentagon will avoid $450 billion in costs over the coming years.

However, the military needs to modernize and prepare for the future. Equipment purchased in the Reagan-era buildup is aging and wearing out, so now is a perfect time for the Pentagon and Congress to reconsider the way the military operates and how to best shape it for the future.

Doing that won’t be easy, particularly because Congress has been part of the problem. Billions of dollars over the years have been spent on things the military doesn’t need or want because members of Congress want to bring home the bacon by protecting bases and defense contracts in their states.

That kind of thinking can’t continue any longer. The nation needs to maintain a strong military, and that can happen if the Pentagon and Congress exercise some discipline.