On February 4, President Bush sent to Congress his proposed defense budget for 2009. Adjusted for inflation, the $515.4 billion dollar budget is the largest since World War II. This figure does not include the President's request for an additional $70 billion "emergency allowance" to continue operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the beginning of Fiscal Year 2009.

According to a Pentagon press release,

"The Fiscal Year 2009 budget reflects the President's priorities and sustains his commitment to prevail in the Global War on Terror; increase ground combat capabilities; improve force readiness; develop the combat capabilities needed to meet future threats; and improve the quality of life for Service members and their families."

Since 1946, the United States defense budget has waxed and waned through two major conflicts and a prolonged arms race with the Soviet Union. But not since the end of the biggest war in history has the US military been so costly to maintain. In light of a looming recession, inflation, health care crisis, and declining popular support for the War on Terror, the next wave of defense spending is sure to be controversial.

The State of the Numbers

The United States Department of Defense's budget reached an all-time high in 1946 at $850 billion dollars in inflation adjusted terms. It would fluctuate in the coming decades, reaching peaks during the Korean and Vietnam wars and the military buildup of the Reagan Administration.

With the onset of the "Global War on Terror," or GWOT as it is known in official Pentagon publications, President Bush increased defense spending rapidly, and it has continued to rise ever since. Funding for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, were drawn from special emergency supplements that are not included in regular Pentagon budget figures; likewise, FY2009's $515.4 billion total does not include the $70 billion so far that President Bush will be requesting to finance America's continuing involvement in the Middle East. Since 2001, Congress has appropriated some $600 billion in special spending provisions like this. Analysts do not believe that $70 billion will be sufficient to meet the military's needs for more than a few months of the fiscal year, however. If this is the case, total military spending for 2009 alone will exceed $600 billion.

Despite this overwhelming growth, the US economy has generally outpaced military spending during the last half century. As a result, the current military budget is a mere 4% of the US GDP. This is considerably less than the 37.8% spent in 1944 at the height of World War II and the 9.4% spent during the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based watchdog, estimates that military-related appropriations will account for 21% of the total federal budget in 2009--the highest in decades.

World War II and the War on Terror: Then and Now

What is perhaps most alarming about current budgetary trends is the seemingly steady decline in spending efficiency through the Cold War and into modern day. At the end of 1945, the United States had just defeated two major industrialized powers, Germany and Japan, in the largest war in human history. The warfare was highly symmetric, with both sides fielding cutting-edge technology, devastating firepower, and highly-trained personnel against one another for years of sustained fighting. The war had seen a military buildup the likes of which will hopefully never be seen again: by the end of the war the US military had assembled a force of 16 million personnel, 300,000 aircraft, 100,000 tanks, over a million supply and support vehicles, 6,000 supply ships, and over 1,000 warships, including 27 aircraft carriers. In 1945 the military spend $850 billion putting this war machine to use; in 1946 it carried out the costly process of administering and disassembling it.

Despite ever-trumpeted comparisons, the Global War on Terror is a radically different conflict. Since Vietnam the United States has engaged almost exclusively in asymmetric warfare, and present conflicts in the Middle East are no exception. American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan now face a poorly-equipped, poorly-organized force a fraction of its size, with no supportive industrial infrastructure or centralized command. Likewise, the total troop strength of the military today numbers just 2.2 million, including reservists. The military also operates just 15,000 aircraft, 8,000 main battle tanks, 24,000 other armored vehicles, 186 support ships, and 190 warships, including 12 carriers.

Despite requiring a comparable sum of money each year for basic operations, the US military now spends several times as much per soldier, per aircraft, per fighting vehicle, and per warship as it did at the end of the Second World War. It is also well-known that the United States has long maintained the largest defense budget in the world; its military spending exceeds that of the next several dozen nations combined.

Where It's Going

A portion of this increase can certainly be accounted for in the astounding technological superiority of America's modern strategic forces. From its sprawling satellite network down to the level of the individual soldier, the United States employs state-of-the-art tools to guarantee total supremacy over other conventional militaries. The army that rolled into Germany in 1945 would appear painfully crude by today's standards.

Of the new $515 billion budget, a sizeable amount has been earmarked for developing and sustaining the latest and greatest toys for the American arsenal. The Pentagon's official press release includes a whopping "$183.8 billion in modernization to meet future threats...includ[ing] procurement, as well as research and development," without elaborating further.

Another $16.9 billion will go towards developing "joint maritime capabilities," which include the CVN-21 Gerald R. Ford-class carrier, a next-generation behemoth with a displacement of 100,000 tons, which will shatter previous records to become the largest warship ever constructed; the littoral combat ship, CG(X) cruiser, and the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer, a set of space-age warships with stealth capabilities and super-advanced targeting and navigation systems, which may one day carry "future energy-type weapons," according the US Navy's website.

$45.6 billion will be allocated to expanding "joint air capabilities," via the production of additional F/A-18 hornet interceptors, F-35 joint strike fighters, V-22 Osprey transport aircraft, "additional unmanned aerial vehicles, and the recapitalization of various missiles and other weapons."

$10.7 billion will go towards space-based capabilities, "including Space-Based Infared Systems...Global Positioning System Satellites...[and] Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites," among others.
$79.5 billion has been set aside for "an array of modern command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence...advanced munitions and missiles...and mission support." $11.5 billion will "sustain ongoing science and technology efforts," and another $10.5 billion will fund the "continued development of a multi-layered system to protect the US and its allies from tactical and strategic ballistic missile attack."
On the more mundane side of things, the budget "provides $20.5 billion....to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to meet operational demands and to increase the average time that soldiers and marines are home between deployments." $107.8 billion will be provided as "pay and benefits for 2.2 million active and reserve members," while $41.6 will go towards the military health system, not including those $70 billion in services provided separately by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
To put things in perspective, entire 2008-2009 budget for the Ministry of Defense of France, the second largest military spender, will be approximately $70 billion.

Is It Necessary?

A quick look at the numbers reveals that the greater part of the proposed FY2009 defense budget will be allocated to research, development, and production related to new technologies and upgrades. To be sure, the modern military upholds its ability to annihilate its opposition in open combat by maintaining a two-step technological lead ahead of its adversaries. But the Enemy today isn't terribly sophisticated. As helpful as new battlefield developments may be, the ground war with Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban will not be won by the latest in guidance computers or infrared tracking satellites or stealth destroyers. Unfortunately, these insurgencies are among the rare problems that will not simply go away when sufficient money has been thrown at them.

There is also a problem of how this money is spent. In recent years the federal government has notoriously authorized funds for military R&D initiatives that have turned out to be colossal disappointments. A good recent example was the RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter, a joint Boeing-Sikorsky project begun in 1996 only to be cancelled in 8 years--and $8 billion--later, due to "budgetary concerns." A similar debacle occurred in 1991 when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney cancelled the Defense Department's order of the first A-12 Avenger II aircraft when it was discovered that the unit cost had ballooned to $165 million, even though the government had already spent $2 billion on development.

And since the beginning of the War on Terror, the Defense Department has awarded increasingly sizeable contracts to private defense firms for everything from R&D to laundry service. The immense political and economic power of these conglomerates may help to explain why our sluggish showdown with a ragtag band of mujahedeen has created a financial drain on our military not seen since we took on Hitler and Hirohito's sprawling empires in the '40s. The long-term, no-bid status of several of these arrangements (notably Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's alma mater) contributes all the more to the needless waste of taxpayer dollars that continues with the privatization of America's wartime capacities.

But most of all, we should address why the money is being spent. American participation in Iraq is quickly becoming a one-man show. If progress continues to stall in Afghanistan, we may find ourselves fighting unilaterally on two fronts. Our reckless foreign policy combined with an arrogant disregard for our allies in NATO and the UN has already cost the United States billions through six years of "going it alone." For all that can be said about our recent mistakes in the Middle East, the greater travesty is our failure to enlist the support of our friends and neighbors in battling our common enemies abroad. With the national debt swiftly approaching $8 trillion and our economy teetering on the brink of recession, the United States military cannot afford to prop up a monopoly on global security. A surefire way to reduce military spending in the future will be to secure allied support for major combat operations and to better utilize combined diplomatic pressure to avoid military engagement altogether.

As the country hurdles towards a maelstrom of domestic crises, the federal government will inevitably have to restrict the flow of funding to the Pentagon. Never in history have we been able to sustain military spending of this magnitude for more than a few years at a time. That said, there is no reason why American military supremacy can't continue well into the future. Our closest competitors, namely Russia, the PRC, and the EU, would remain light-years behind the United States even if we were to cut our defense budget by 33%, back to 2000 levels. For those nervous about losing our strategic vise-grip on much of the world, remember: American dominance is, above all, a product of our fighting spirit. And no "future energy-type" death ray can replace that.