For all the talk over a showdown with North Korea, few are asking: Do the less than 1% of Americans in the armed forces have the most lethal weapons and best training to defend the country? There is reason to wonder, and Congress has an opportunity to shore up the military as the world grows more dangerous.
Congress is trying to reach a budget deal to extend government funding that expires this month. One issue are the caps on defense spending under the 2011 Budget Control Act, which tried to force Congress to do something about the deficit by threatening automatic cuts. This has imposed useful discipline on non-entitlement spending, but the military has been hit harder than domestic accounts.
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The military is operating at a high tempo in multiple theaters, even as funding has dropped and become more erratic. The Congressional Research Service says the Defense Department has operated under continuing resolutions, which are stopgap measures that limit spending flexibility, for more than 36 months since 2010. Compare that with fewer than nine months in the preceding eight years.
This means fewer resources for equipment maintenance and soldier training. Some of this could have contributed to the Navy’s collisions in the Pacific last year that killed 17 sailors. The Navy’s investigation revealed that training practices failed—for instance, crew members “were not familiar with basic radar fundamentals.” Ships are deployed at sea more often and for longer. A prescient 2015 Government Accountability Office report found that ships based in Japan had “no dedicated training periods” as a result of the deployment pace.
