Army Wants $1.3 Trillion for Upgrades

Posted on March 28, 2005

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated how badly our armed forces are in need of a major upgrade. The problem is that it's going to cost so much to whip the Army into a high-tech fighting force that even hawkish Republicans in Congress are blanching at the price tag. The first phase of the complex restructuring will be called Future Combat Systems (sounds like a new Xbox title, doesn't it?) will cost $145 billion. The New York Times reports:

That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not include a projected $25 billion for the communications network needed to connect the future forces. Nor does it fully account for Army plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades.
The Army is asking Congress to approve Future Combat while it is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan whose costs, according to the Congressional Research Service, now exceed $275 billion. Future Combat is one of the biggest items in the Pentagon's plans to build more than 70 major weapons systems at a cost of more than $1.3 trillion.

That giant sucking sound you hear is fiscal conservatives trying to speak in outrage and failing miserably. Say it with me now, "$1.3 trillion dollars." But, as always, we can rely on Donald Rumsfeld to put things in perspective for us. Last month, he testified at the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee about the joys of fighting two wars and trying to completely restructure the Army at the same time.

"Abraham Lincoln once compared reorganizing the Union Army during the Civil War to bailing out the Potomac River with a teaspoon," he said. "I hope and trust that what we are proposing to accomplish will not be that difficult."