Nation's Defense Must Be Second To None

Op-Ed

The first responsibility of our national government is to protect the nation from external threats. That national defense mission is just as important today as at any time in our history, as we face aggressive military buildups from China and Russia, Iran's ominous nuclear program and the continuing threat from militant Islam.

Tragically, we are not preparing as we should. A new analysis from the Heritage Foundation paints a bleak picture of our national defense posture now and in the years to come. Here are some examples of their findings:

Many Air Force planes are older than their pilots. The KC135 tanker is more than 40 years old. The United States has only one company building fighters and one building bombers today; Russia and China have 12 aircraft production lines going at once.

In 2007, the Army was short some 3,000 mid-career officers. The average age of the Army's ground combat vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, will reach 20 years by 2025.

The Navy, which had 592 ships in 1989, now has 283. Our attack submarine fleet, at 52, is half the size it was in 1965. The Navy faces the same shortfall in fighter aircraft that plagues the Air Force. In fact, our Navy has not been this small since 1916, the year before the United States entered World War I.

Who is to blame for this dilemma? Beginning in 1993, under the Clinton administration, some in Washington believed that with the Cold War ended, we no longer needed to invest in national defense as we had in the decades from World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Then, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, much of our military was tied up in responding to that event. Now, under the Obama administration, we seem to have returned to the "don't worry, be happy" approach to military preparedness.

Since he took office a year ago, President Obama has cancelled production of the F-22 Raptor fifth generation Air Force fighter. He cancelled production of a new combat search and rescue helicopter. He cut back on the C-17 airlifter and a next generation bomber.

The Obama administration's long term budget estimates project that defense spending as a share of gross domestic product will continue to decline from 3.9 percent in 2010 to barely three percent in 2019 -- while most other areas of federal spending continue to mushroom.

Of course we have seen this before. After the First World War, pacifists said there would be no more wars, and America's defense capabilities were allowed to wither. By the 1930s our Army was smaller than Poland's.

Pacifists got a rude awakening from a man named Hitler, and once again we had to rebuild our military capabilities virtually from scratch to fight and win World War II. During the Cold War, we maintained strong defenses, despite several years of neglect under the Carter administration. Many Americans are old enough to recall that one of President Ronald Reagan's first actions was to restore past military cutbacks.

Then came the 1990s, and once again some starry-eyed dreamers thought foreign threats were a thing of the past. They spoke of a "peace dividend" and set out to spend money that had previously gone for national defense on social programs. Then came 9-11-01.

America cannot afford to let down our guard once again in a world that contains a militant al Quaeda, a madman in Iran who claims the Holocaust was a myth and who wants nukes and resurgent authoritarian governments in China and Russia, aggressively building giant armies, navies and air forces.

We are proud that Oklahoma is home to outstanding military installations like Tinker, Vance, Altus, McAlester and Fort Sill, as well as to Guard and Reserve units that have played an active and ongoing role in our nation's defense. It would be a betrayal to them to continue down this path of neglect.

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee and as an Oklahoman who knows how vital it is to defend America, I will continue to fight for adequate equipment for our military services and against the foolhardy and dangerous defense spending policies of the current administration.

Source