Cuts to the defense budget

Republicans seem to be dead set against ANY cuts in military spending, even as they loudly (and correctly) demand cuts in the rest of the government. The military services and their big defense contractors are filling the airwaves with dire predictions of what might happen if the defense budget is cut by the estimated trillion dollars over the next decade (roughly $100 billion per year) envisioned in current legislation. But how serious would such cuts really be?

To put things in perspective, look at the graph below of current annual spending on defense (from the SIPRI Yearbook 2012):

The US defense budget, at over $700 billion per year, is so much greater than our next competitors that is is laughable. We spend more than the next 14 nations combined.  So look at the graph above, take $100 billion off of the US portion, taking it down to just over $600 billion per year, and ask yourself if you really think this will seriously cripple our defense posture.

Of course, a $100 billion cut will certainly require cutting some things -- like hugely profitable contracts to defense contractors for overly-elaborate weapons systems, perhaps reducing the bloated office corps and Pentagon staff, perhaps closing some of the redundant bases that are still open simply because their Congressman has some influence. Having seen the inside of the Pentagon's wildly inefficient and poorly monitored procurement system, I expect, if it were done wisely, one could cut the military budget in half and not compromise our military effectiveness a bit -- in fact a smaller military might well be better and more effective.