Preparing for a Fight

It’s time to return to disciplined budget preparation and careful strategic investment.

It is a law of survival, if not physics: In war, any advantage wielded by one side will be countered with an opposite, if not equal force, in a continuous back-and-forth until one or the other capitulates. The resultant innovation can be fleeting or enduring, limited to the conflict’s particular attributes or universal in their application. As a result, wars rarely go exactly as expected. 

Russia promised to crush Ukraine in days or weeks; three years later, Ukraine continues to flummox their larger rival with innovative drones and audacious tactics and planning. The United States must not mimic Russia’s complacency and must adopt Ukraine’s creative spirit. Discipline is required for both.

Germany and Japan went into World War II with superior forces, training, and technology. Yet Britain fended off the Luftwaffe with radar and a small number of air defenders. American resistance bought time, and the world’s first nuclear bombs could induce surrender. 

Our present age can be defined both by rapid technological change and rising tension, a combination that poses substantial risk to our long-term national security. How America responds will determine the future world order: whether it is the United States whose economic, political, and military might deters others from unwarranted aggression or, alternatively, if an unprepared United States must instead be deterred from defending our interests and allies. 

Today there are many challenges to U.S. national security and they are growing in number and complexity. China is a peer threat, possessing a larger navy, comparable air forces, and growing nuclear and space capabilities. Russia is a disruptive force capable of expanding its war into other countries and always rattling its nuclear sword. North Korea and Iran are each technologically adept and dangerous. Proxy forces add additional threat complexity.

America owned unparalleled technological advantage for most of the past half-century: Space-based navigation and intelligence, precision munitions, radar-evading stealth. But superior technology alone will not deter every adversary, nor can it assure victory in war. Preparedness is crucial but victory demands more: national will, persistence, and clear objectives.   

Arrogance is the Achilles’ heel of every great power. It helped bring down Germany and Japan and was among the causes that led to America’s misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is also on display in Congress, where leaders willfully ignore the waste and damage caused by chronic reliance on continuing resolutions.

In Vietnam, the United States had superior technology but neither the will, persistence, nor objectives to win. The Army embraced agility with then-newfangled helicopters, but bet wrongly that it could win a war of attrition. The Air Force, shaped by nearly two decades of Cold War competition, was built for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, not a civil war in Southeast Asia. America’s fighters were faster and its bombers superior, but U.S. tactics proved predictable and training inadequate. Politicians imposed illogical limits on targeting, and Russian-built MiGs and surface-to-air missiles proved more formidable than anticipated. Only gradually, and late, did a relative few innovative Airmen regain the upper hand against an inferior foe. 

American forces today may not be as ready as necessary to deter or prevail over these threats. Our Air Force pilots fly too infrequently. Its combat aircraft are mission-ready only half the time. Weapons stockpiles are inadequate for a prolonged fight. While the U.S. has key advantages in stealth, electronic warfare, space capabilities, and experience, those assets are all in short supply; rivals are catching up.

There are no simple solutions. The public debt is ballooning. Defense spending, approaching $1 trillion annually, is substantial. Critics rightfully question whether we aren’t getting enough for our money and whether the nation can afford its growing bills.

Our government processes and discipline, meanwhile, are broken. It’s no longer just that Congress can’t pass a budget on time—it can’t pass a budget at all. The nation is operating on a modified full-year continuing resolution. Clarity and transparency are disappearing. Lawmakers argue and vote but don’t pass legislation by traditional means, instead relying on a budget reconciliation process that limits debate and forces votes on legislation no one can read in its entirety. 

Congress’ central effort right now is a measure that is, no kidding, officially named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” containing more than 1,000 pages. The House passed the bill on partisan lines; not surprisingly, some Republicans who supported it expressed regrets over language they had not read. Now in the Senate, the measure includes some $150 to $155 billion for defense, including $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense project. 

About half the additional defense spending in the House version of the bill would go to the Navy and defense agencies; the Air Force portion, $18.9 billion, is less than half of what the House wants to spend on the Navy. The Space Force portion, though substantial—more than $20 billion mostly for classified programs, equal to nearly 70 percent of the overall Space Force budget. The Senate version has less for shipbuilding investments, more for airpower, nuclear modernization, technological innovation, and industrial base investment. Combined with the 2025 CR, it would push this year’s total defense spending over $1 trillion for the first time ever. 

If you’re confused, that’s no surprise. This Big Beautiful Bill has so completely overshadowed and obscured the annual budget process that even lawmakers are concerned they’re being bamboozled. By law, the President’s budget plan should reach Congress in February. Delays to April or May are now common. This year, however, the next budget won’t materialize until the end of June. 

What we do know is concerning. The 2026 budget plan appears to be roughly flat compared to 2024 and 2025, and while the Air Force would eek out a 1 percent increase, that amounts to less spending power in an era of 3 percent inflation. Worse, the Space Force would face it’s second cut in a row, suggesting a surprising lack of commitment to a new military branch that was created to ensure space got  the focus and funding necessary to ensure American space superiority. 

Golden Dome will, of course, also include substantial investment in space-based systems. The concept is worthy because, though much of the project will require substantial development, it may be the best, if not only, recourse in a world with three nuclear peer powers, especially because the other two powers—China and Russia—are aligned together. Note that it is Russia and China that see Golden Dome as destabilizing, precisely because it has the potential to radically decrease the deterrent power of their nuclear arsenals. 

The United States needs to return to disciplined budget preparation and careful strategic investment. We need legislators to step up to the job, which requires debate, teamwork, and compromise. It is right to invest more now for a national defense that can stand up to the tests of the future. But without some thoughtful spending and process control in the face of an uncertain future, the only certainty we can be sure of is that a fiscal reckoning is inevitable. It’s just a matter of when.