By Sen. Elizabeth Dole
Fayetteville Observer
Friday, February 01, 2008

The brave men and women of our armed forces make enormous sacrifices to defend our freedoms, and we have a profound responsibility to invest the resources necessary for them to fulfill their current missions, prepare for future conflicts, and receive the healthcare and housing benefits they have earned. Projected defense spending will fall considerably short of meeting many of our military needs, and we must remedy this situation now or there will be serious consequences for our national security. As a senator representing more than 100,000 North Carolina-based service members, I am fully committed to providing our military with the vital resources it needs.

I recently introduced a joint resolution recommending that our nation commit no less than 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product to the annual defense budget. This would provide an additional $99 billion in fiscal year 2008 to fund critical defense priorities. We currently spend just 3.3 percent of our nation's GDP each year on defense - the lowest point since before World War II.

After reviewing the Department of Defense's budget situation for the next several years, Adm. Mullen said in October that we must increase our annual defense budget to at least 4 percent of GDP, and that it may need to be higher. The bottom line is that if we do not substantially increase the annual defense budget - and spend it wisely in the process - our military will lose good people, be left with rapidly aging equipment and see its combat preparedness decline.

Consider the "procurement holiday" in the 1990s, when our armed forces failed to procure adequate numbers of tanks, planes and ships. We purchased only one-tenth to one-half the number of weapon systems as we did on average from 1975 to 1991. The failure to modernize the forces then, along with the cost of the war in Iraq, has hindered our ability to develop and procure advanced ground combat vehicles, planes and ships to replace today's aging equipment.

The Army, for example, is developing its Future Combat Systems, a networked family of manned and unmanned ground vehicles to replace many tanks and armored personnel carriers. With current funding levels, we are at risk of developing these vehicles and platforms only to find that we have the funds to equip only a small portion of the force.

In addition, the Air Force needs to replace aging fighters and tankers and add more strategic airlift. The branch needs 381 F-22 stealth fighters to replace F-15As and C-model Eagles built in the 1970s. The need for these new fighters became all the more evident several weeks ago when the fuselage of an aging F-15 broke apart during a routine training flight. Unfortunately, less than one-half of the funding needed to purchase the stealth fighters is budgeted.

The Air Force must also replace more than 500 KC-135 tankers, many of which were built in the late 1950s. If we procure the new KC-X tanker at the planned rate of 12 to 15 planes per year, the great-grandchildren of the aircrews that first flew these planes will be flying them in the late 2030s. The same story holds true for our B-52 bombers, which were built in the early 1960s. This is clearly unacceptable.

No less telling, today's Navy includes 280 vessels, the smallest fleet since before World War II. If we continue to build ships at the current rate, Ronald Reagan's Navy of 568 ships could dwindle to as few as 240 in about a decade. Our submarine fleet, which studies assert should be between 55 and 76 vessels, could drop to below 48 by the early 2020s if we continue to build just one Virginia-class attack submarine per year. China, on the other hand, is building four to five advanced submarines per year, and within only a few years, their submarine fleet will match our own.

Furthermore, an inadequate defense budget will lead to a gradual erosion of military pay, healthcare and housing benefits. Personnel costs have doubled over the past seven years and are expected to double yet again by 2015. Meeting these demands with current funding levels will inevitably strip funding from training, military expansion and construction. Military research, which develops next-generation weapons, force protection capabilities and medical technologies that save lives on the battlefield, will also be scaled back.

The budgetary decisions we make now will have a significant impact on the course of the next few decades. We must be cognizant of the world we live in today and the challenges and threats we face from around the globe. The reality is that we can't afford not to invest in the future of our nation's defense.

Elizabeth Dole is a Republican senator for North Carolina.