Although I generally favor large cuts in Defense spending, I will play devil’s advocate here for a bit and argue a little for the other side.
I don’t know how many jellies were “awake and aware” during the 1980s and earlier when the US and the USSR faced each other in the Cold War. But for all of the 1980s and going back to the 1950s (my entire lifetime up to that point), the USSR was a military superpower on near-par with US forces (or so we thought) until the day came when their ships could no longer put to sea for lack of fuel, their ships in port were cut off from shore power because they no longer paid their electric bills and their army and air force was more or less grounded and unfunded. In fact, at the time that their military stopped functioning they coincidentally became for a time a “Confederation of Independent States” (dominated by Russia, which as an Independent State is still the largest geographical nation on Earth). They still had their nukes, of course, but they didn’t have effective defenses to prevent anyone else from invading the country and taking them over – or launching them at us.
In other words, they “defense spent” themselves into political near-oblivion as a nation. Had we been as warlike as many assume that we are, we would have chosen that time to launch the missiles and various invasion forces to assure the complete annihilation of Soviet / Russian forces and make sure that they were not only “too broke to fight”, but physically broken and burning, too. Although a land invasion and takeover of the USSR would never have been likely or possible, “strategic invasion and capture” was always a possibility. (For all I know, it may still be on someone’s radar in terms of planning, possibility and conjecture.)
When that happens to us, the fear is that our enemies may not look upon us with the same forbearance. We may not get the pass that we gave to the Soviets.
If we’re going to have a large military, and as a continental power with three ocean coasts and the largest undefended borders in the world (notwithstanding a stupid fence), it is necessary to have “significant” defense, then that has to be paid for, maintained and improved over time, or it will degrade into uselessness. We can and will spend ourselves into the same bankruptcy that the Soviets did, but we’ll do it in a different way, via Medicare, Social Security and Defense.
But as I said, I do favor judicious cuts in our military. I don’t believe that we need eleven aircraft carrier task force groups, for example. (A carrier task force includes a lot more than an aircraft carrier, since it includes the escort and defense screening surface ships for the carrier, attack submarines patrolling the perimeter and support ships for everyone.) Aside from the horrific expense involved in putting this massive force to sea for training and readiness, with the rapid improvements in submarine and land-to-sea and air-to-sea missile technology (as demonstrated in 1982 in the Falklands War), surface ships are becoming more and more “targets-rich environments” to unfriendly nations.
For an example of that, see what a small group of dedicated terrorists did with a small surface launch to the destroyer USS Cole about fifteen years ago. It’s true that our defense procedures and policies change over time as these things happen, but that’s a prime example of the kind of asymmetric warfare that “aircraft carriers” and other capital ships have a harder and harder time defending themselves against.
To conclude, although I think we spend too much for the wrong kinds of defense, we do need to continue to spend a lot. The problem is that “the military” is very conservative when it comes to “spending on what has worked in the past” and not so eager to adapt to new technology until the tactics of their opponents have proven to them – in battle – that their technology is outdated and ineffective.
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