PrintDecember 27, 2010
Downgrading Defense Capabilities
Our foreign policy establishment believes that America's allotment of conventional weapons is useless. The DOD's current leaders (Robert Gates, William Lynn, et al.) would love to significantly reduce our numbers in this respect, and they've already made extensive "progress." The first President Bush cancelled over a hundred weapon programs and reduced many others, including the order for B-2 bombers. The Clinton administration also canceled or cut a number of programs (e.g., the Seawolf class), as did the second Bush administration (vide the XM2001 artillery program, the Comanche helicopter, the E-10MC2A AWACS, etc.). All three administrations also radically reduced the inventories of existing conventional weapons. During the late 1980s, the USAF had over 3,200 fighterplanes; now it has about 2,300. The USAF's bomber fleet has shrunk to just 162 aircraft, while the Navy, with just 286 vessels, has the smallest warship fleet since 1916.The Obama...(Read Full Article)
