Military Preparedness & Budget

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America’s armed forces protect against foreign threats to our nation both at home and abroad. It promotes our international interests, serves as a bulwark for allies, and is often called upon to assist in the case of natural disasters. They also serve to secure our economic prosperity, ensuring the free trade of goods throughout the world as well as the stability of our allies and trading partners.

To fulfill this vital role, the U.S. military must have training, and equipment.

America’s current global commitments have strained our military, reducing readiness and capacity. Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton cut defense spending dramatically. In recent years the military has found itself too often with aging equipment not always able to meet the demands of modern warfare. Additional funding to fight the war on terror has, necessarily, largely been consumed by those operations, and many major weapon systems are now 25 years old or even older.

What is needed is a significant investment in the weapon systems and military personnel that are vital to protecting our vital national interests. Key priorities should include expanding the U.S. Navy fleet which currently has the fewest number of ships since before World War I, deploying anti-missile technology and continuing to research future systems that will protect the U.S. from rogue and hostile nations with nuclear weapons, maintaining U.S. nuclear deterrent capabilities, and providing modern weapon systems capable of winning on the battlefield in the air, on the ground, at sea, as well as in cyberspace.

U.S. military forces should be sufficient in size to deter and if necessary defeat potential hostile powers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, while also being capable of protecting vital interests in other parts of the world and defending U.S. territory from attack. This means restoration of the ‘Two Wars’ doctrine, which held that the U.S. military should be capable of simultaneously winning two major regional conflicts while preserving sufficient force to protect other interests.