From: The Economist
To keep its fighting edge, America needs to spend more on technology
ALL good things come to an end, and that may one day include America’s military pre-eminence. Although the United States is still by far the world’s strongest martial power, others are catching up. America’s ability to project overwhelming force around the world, which it has taken for granted since the end of the cold war, is now threatened.
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The technical obstacles are formidable—but so are the political and bureaucratic ones. Congress and the White House used to co-operate over military budgets and plan for the long term. No longer. The Budget Control Act of 2011 not only cut military spending, but through the mechanism of the sequester also distorted it by locking in spending on old programmes and blocking new ones that the Pentagon actually wants.
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