Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ attempt to “gut the military” with his new budget should not go unchallenged, said Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt in The Wall Street Journal. Gates’ proposal to cut the F-22 jet, the Future Combat Systems ground vehicle, and the Airborne Laser anti-missile program would help enable President Obama’s domestic spending binge, but the price would be “a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop.”
Gutting the military? Hardly, said The New York Times in an editorial. Gates wants to raise basic Pentagon spending by $20 billion. If anything, his budget doesn’t “go far enough” toward a much-needed restructuring of our defense spending. For example, Gates actually wants to buy four more F-22s—a plane designed to fight the USSR, and one we’ve never used in a real war.
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