[The_Republican]

C’mon, more spending than next 5 powers combined.....not gonna shed tears over military spending. Same ratio of budget as it was at the height of Cold War. Only difference is that budget is now many times bigger.

[pissant]

Spending and industrial base are two different things.

[pfflier]

The depth of our aircraft industry alone has been decimated. All the companies that I worked for, Martin Marietta, Boeing, General Dynamics have been conglomerated.

That in itself is creating sole source problems that is forcing us to accept foreign competitors. Boeing's woes on the KCX program stem from their own arrogance yet there were no domestic competitors to fall back on.

We looked for a "peace dividend" that wasn't there in the 1980's and returned ourselves to a military manufacturing defecit paralleling post WWI and WWII.

I'm betting the next war won't give us the leisure of tooling up for two years to become the arsenal of democracy. At the same time we are betting that quality will overcome quantity. In a large part that worked against Iraq. But all conflicts will not be against poorly trained and poorly motivated armies. We have always underestimated the Chinese.

[eclecticEel]

C’mon, more spending than next 5 powers combined.....not gonna shed tears over military spending.

So ... I guess it's safe to say you didn't really read the article.

[Pelham]

Apparently you don’t understand the distinction between industrial capacity and money spent.