Unless we spike military spending and FAST the next major war could be catastrophic

President Donald Trump likes big round numbers and he’s endorsed one — $1 trillion — for the US defense budget.This is the right idea, and we’ll need even more soon enough. It is the president’s wont to declare national emergencies, whether a given situation warrants it or not, but the state of our defenses is a true crisis.While the Pentagon hasn’t recovered from the post-Cold War drawdown and Obama-era strictures on its spending, foreign threats have been rising.This disconnect could, in the worst case, result in the United States losing a major war and its great power status.We have been neglecting a key theme of American strategic thought from the beginning of the republic, which is that only strength can deter conflict.As the eminent statesmen John Quincy Adams put it, “The surest pledge that we can have of peace will be to be prepared for war.”The Pentagon has been facing what MacKenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute calls a “doom loop.” If pay raises are off limits and the number of civilian employees never goes down, then it is, perversely, investments in munitions that take the hit. “Deferring modernization results in a shrinking, less capable, and mostly more expensive force,” she writes.“The more equipment ages, the more expensive it becomes, as assembly lines close, parts break, and replacements are needed.”As we’ve been running in place, our enemies have been building capacity. Ukraine hawks make much of how the war has degraded the Russian military.

In recent congressional testimony, though, Gen.Christopher Cavoli said that the Russian army is bigger than it was at the start of the war, and the 600,000 Russian troops on the front line are roughly double the initial invasion force.Russia is on pace to replace all the weapons systems it has lost in the war so far, and is churning out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles a year. We make 135 tanks a year.  ...