The Redhunter

He then criticizes both Obama and Clinton for recommending that we add 80,000 troops to our armed forces

Advocating more troops raises an obvious question. What would the additional troops be for? Since all Democratic candidates claim to favor a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq in relatively short order, the increase could not be meant to reinforce the U.S. presence there, unless they plan to maintain the occupation far longer than advertised.

Do Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama want to ensure that the U.S. military is ready to engage in future Iraq-style occupations? Do they contemplate multiple humanitarian interventions that would involve hundreds of thousands of troops? Or is the call for more troops simply a political insurance to insulate them from Republican claims they are "soft" on terrorism?

None of these rationales is persuasive. In fact, a case can be made that an increase in troop strength is just as likely to detract from U.S. security as improve it.

So then he thinks that we can deter our enemies through high-tech weaponry, right? Not exactly. He wants to cancel most of them too. His prescription?

Increasing Special Forces for use in antiterrorist actions is a reasonable mission but does not require 80,000 more troops. Some of these units can be developed by training personnel already in the armed forces, rather than using new recruits who would take several years to attain adequate readiness. Unless Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama can clearly articulate the mission or missions requiring additional forces, they would be better served sticking to the issue of how to rebuild forces at existing levels after the trauma of Iraq.

This works only in a world whereby all US military actions are limited to Chuck Norris style quick in-and-out hit and run raids. If all threats meet this need, great. Unfortuantely I rather think the world will have other ideas.

Here's his other big idea

One place to start would be canceling programs like the F-22 combat aircraft, the V-22 Osprey, and the Virginia class submarine. These systems were designed when the Soviet military was deemed the primary threat, rather than the current challenge posed by a loose network of terrorist groups waging unconventional warfare.

Here Harting reverts to everything that is wrong with modern liberal thinking on defense; cancel everything and build nothing in it's place. Substitute organizational changes for actual weapons. Sounds like Jimmy Carter and the B-1 all over again. Surely cancelling the Crusader was the correct move. I'm less certain about the Comanche, but I'll buy it. But what about the F-22, V-22, and Virginia class submarines? I think that if you look around the world it would seem reasonable to conclude that we might face any one of a number of enemies, and each would present a completely different challenge

Iraq and Afghanistan: Unlike Hartung, I want to stay in Iraq. Low intensity counterinsurgency. The need is for heavy weapons but small units. Lots of Special Forces are needed.
Iran: Air and Naval campaign: The need is for strategic bombers, aerial refueling, naval air, destroyers and frigates.
China: Any number of scenaries are actually possible. Most involve a shoot-out on the high seas, in which we're going to need every piece of high-tech equipment we can get our hands on.
North Korea: Absolutely unpredictable. It could turn into anything from a nuclear shoot-out, to a limited bombing campaign, to repelling a full-scale assault by the North Korean Army. The DPRK doesn't have much in the way of high-tech, but they do have a lot.
Venezuela or Cuba: Hard to imagine ground forces going to the former, but Cuba after Fidel remains unpredictable, and it's not impossible to imagine a US invasion. Low-tech forces should carry the day in either case, however.

So as we can see each scenario requires a completely different approach. It is my contention that we therefore need a little of everything. A balanced force is better than one in which we put all of our eggs in one basket.

The Israelis put most of their eggs into the airpower basket after their success in the 1967 war. As a result, for example they neglected artillery, thinking that their new F-4 Phantoms could serve as "flying artillery". As a result they nearly lost the 1973 Yom Kippur war, a loss that would have meant the end of Israel itself.

Further, it is not as if we can predict our wars. I laid out some obvious scenarios above, but history shows that we are usually surprised by how things develop. The Korean War took us by surprise. In the 1950s we prepared for nuclear war with the Soviets, only to find us fighing in the jungles of Vietnam the next decade. Weapons like the F-105, which was built as a short-range tactical nuclear bomber, ended up being used as a conventionbl bomber in Vietnam. For that matter, the VSTOL Harrier was built as a survivable tactical bomber for Europe (it could hide in the woods and be wheeled out to take off in a field), yet served in a conventional role in the Falklands War (in fact without it the British could not even have sent the task force forth).

Not Sitting Still

I don't have the time to go through the aircraft, submarines, and ships that our enemies might use against us, but suffice it to say that they aren't standing still. Let's not also be overconfident or arrogant with regard to our own capabilities. This attitude got a lot of US pilots killed during the early days of the Vietnam War, when we discovered that the MiG-21 was the equivalent of our F-4 Phantom, and their pilots nearly as good.

Further, some of our weapons are getting very old. The F-15 first flew in 1972. The F-16 in 1979, and the F-18 1982. The first Los Angeles class sub was launched in 1976. The CH-53 first flew in 1981, and the H47 in 1962. You get the point.

Yes all of the above systems have undergone major upgrades. I know all this. But you can only do so much with an old airframe. Sure, we could build a new helicopter instead of the tilt-rotar V-22 and it would be better than what is in the inventory. But we are really at about the limit of what you can do with helicopter technology, so it would be an exercise in the point of dimishing returns.

Instead of the F-22 Raptor we could rely on the somewhat less expensive F-35 Lightning II. This, however, would have been the equivalent of cancelling the F-15 and relying on the F-16. Ask any pilot about the wisdom of that potential decision.

And In Conclusion

We need to do two things. The first is to ensure that we have a balanced force. We need Special Forces, and we need F-22s. We need Virginia Class submarines and we need the MRAP. We cannot predict with any certainly who we might have to fight in the forseeable future, and different wars will require a different set of weapons.

The second thing we need to do is to simply spend more. Critics have a point when they say that the Army is stretched thin. The solution, however, is not to pull out of Iraq or anywhere else, but to build up the force. As the editors of National Review reminded us a few months ago how much our forces have shrunk recently

From 1974 to 1989, the Army had 770,000 to 780,000 active troops (all of them volunteers). Today, we have around 508,000. The Navy had 568 ships in the late 1980s; today it has 276, and its manpower is so reduced that it often has to helicopter sailors from homebound ships to outbound ones in order to keep them staffed. The Air Force’s number of tactical air wings has shrunk from 37 to 20, and the average age of its aircraft is 24 years (as compared with nine years in 1973).

There is disagreement about whether the armed forces should be restored to their Cold War size, but there is consensus among military analysts across the political spectrum that they are too small. Today’s strategic environment requires them to be able to engage in multiple regional wars and peacekeeping operations simultaneously, and still have enough resources left over to deter threats and respond to unforeseen dangers.

During the last part of the Cold War I think we spend about 8% of GDP on national defense. Today it's at about 3.7% or so. While we don't need to go back to Cold War levels, we do need to do more. The unfortunate fact of history is that there will always be another war.