How A Looming Fiscal Crisis Could Doom America’s Military Edge (From National Interest)

The Congressional Budget Office has issued a bleak assessment of fiscal trends indicating that federal deficits will return to a trillion dollars annually midway through the next decade.  Since ballooning deficits were the reason the Budget Control Act capping defense and other discretionary spending became law, military planners should be thinking about what new constraints might be imposed on spending in the future.  In particular, they should stop delaying modernization of weapons in the false hope that more money will be available once the budget law lapses.  Fiscal conditions could actually be worse ten years hence.  So the Army needs to upgrade its armored vehicles, the Air Force needs to ramp up F-35 buys and the Navy needs to lock in funding for its next-gen ballistic missile subs now Now NOW.  I have written a commentary for the National Interest here.