What We Need

I have finished reading an excellent book while on a long flight back from my business trip to Japan.
"What We Need (Extravagances and Shortages on America's Military)" by Barrett Tillman.
While I do not agree with everything that is says, I think that it has a good handle on the overall division within the U. S. Department of Defense concerning Big Ticket Items vs. Common Items. I will explain why the Big Ticket Items and Congress are hurting the U.S. Military by putting pet projects before basic necessities.
The budget of the DoD Is approximately 440 Billion Dollars a year. Yet, every year, the U.S. Congress receives a 'wish list' of items from each branch of service that could not be bought that year do to 'budget limitations.' 'How can this be?' you ask. With just under 4% of of the GDP going toward military hardware it would seem that the US Military would want for nothing. This, however, is not the case.
The problem lies in the BIG ticket (we are talking hundreds of millions if not billions for individual projects) vs. the little ticket (guns, ammo, armor) disparity in the Congressional Budget Game.

The budget game is actually rather simple. If you can get enough states economies involved in a projects, the more likely you will be able to keep the project running no matter what the price. The dark side of that same equation is that is becomes near impossible to get rid of a project that the military no longer wants. (see the Crusader platform)
The flip side of playing the budget game is that smaller items that do not live in multiple states do not get the same protection from cancellation or budget cuts.
With these bigger projects taking up a significant portion of the budget (and the money going to the projects MUST go toward these projects) leaving the rest of the budget to support everything else.
This means that buying tanks, guns, ammo, armor, trucks, and medicine comes from the rest of the budget. Take away from the money needed to pay for the troops, maintain their homes, pay for fuel, food, and uniforms.
Now you have even less.
These issues are rarely resolved until after this lack of budgeting becomes public news. When Humvees and Troops lacked the needed armor for the situation in Iraq, it was not until the media began to report about it that the necessary budget was appropriated to the situation. When the Veterans Administration began to show deficiencies in care due to budgeting it was not until the media made it an issue that Congress fixed the budget shortfalls.
Currently the military is experiencing shortfalls in training, people, and equipment. But as of right now the trend of the U.S. Military an Congress is to push a small lighter faster force made of few troops. While this makes for a more efficient force, it puts a greater strain on those individuals and creates a lack of 'boots on the ground' for the final phase of war, reconstitution of the taken objective.
The U.S. Military will continue to get the job done with less people, with less equipment and new technology, but the strain and sacrifice of the select few who choose to serve will grow ever greater and the public will understand their hardships less and less.
Congress must look at the whole picture, nit just budget dollars, when doing their jobs. While the budget is important, it is the people behind the DoD that make those dollars work. Congress needs to drop the pet projects.
We need to keep our current force levels, possibly expand the Army a little bit to help relieve some pressure on everyone that serves overseas, and skip a generation of equipment while we reconstitute our forces. Congress, please stop playing politics long enough to do your job!