American Enterprise Institute:
The US defense budget is at its largest in decades, yet the Air Force’s combat-coded aircraft inventory, the Navy’s battle-force ship fleet, and the Army’s number of active-duty soldiers have all shrunk. Is this trend reversible?
The Pentagon’s creeping bureaucracy is plagued by slow-moving acquisition processes, the rise of numerous powerful defense agencies, and climbing overhead costs. Feasible improvements exist, but as Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro (ret.) warns in his latest book, “The Ever-Shrinking Fighting Force” (Punaro Press, 2021), “Bad processes beat good people all the time.”
