The under-funded US military budget,

Should the US DoD budget be cut?
I posit the case for an increase budget:
While yes it is true that the DoD budget trumps more than any other nation, that doesn't mean that will hold true for much longer, indeed one doesn't even need to have a comparable budget to even be a threat. Tensions ever so increasing with Russia, North K and China, all of which are ramping up Military expenditure faster than the US. The BCA (Budget Control Act of 2011) & CRs (Continuing Resolutions) has devastated US readiness, slowed modernisation to a near halt, and end-strength greatly reduced.

The following suggested reading material allows for a more in-depth breakdown for the case of why the DoD shouldn't be cut, indeed, should be further grown. Reading the following to become more versed on the topic of modernisation, budget constraints, acquisition, and other strategic publications:
CSIS, Center for Strategic & International Studies
'Defense Acquisition Trends, 2015
Acquisition in the Era of Budgetary Constraints'
csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3f…
"The enormous decline in system development & demonstration funded contracts (6.5) is telling, and speaks to the larger trend in DoD R&D contracting—over the last several years, as R&D programs related to MDAPs have either been canceled or matured into production, DoD has been largely unable to start and sustain new development programs, either due to budgetary pressures or programmatic difficulties. The overall decline in R&D contract obligations thus represents a five-year trough in the pipeline of new major weapons systems. This decline is especially notable for the Army, which, in the wake of the failure of the Future Combat Systems, has been largely unable to start and sustain new major development programs."

That statement is also mimicked here:
Better Buying Power/DoD:
'Performance of Defense Acquisition System 2015'
bbp.dau.mil/docs/Performance-o…
^A video from the person behind that report, Frank Kendall
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) talks about the above report in this conference at CSIS: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26dWK… <-watch it all, but focus on 30:00, "I didn't bring it with me because it is classified, but I've had the Intelligence community draw up charts for me, that show all of product pipeline for our potential adversaries. They are our near and peer competitors, Russia and China. If you look at both of them, China in particular, they are dense with new products... I had them same charts for the US DOD, and we had a lot of white space."


'Putting Defense spending in context: Simple comparisons are inadequate'
www.heritage.org/defense/repor…
"Purchasing Power Parity. Defense spending comparisons fail to take into account what a dollar (and its equivalent value in other currencies) can buy in the economies of one country to the next. Perhaps the best approximation for a direct dollar-to-dollar comparison is the World Bank’s price-level ratio of purchasing power parity (PPP) to market exchange rate.13

The World Bank, International Comparison Program Database, “Price Level Ratio of PPP Conversion Factor (GDP) to Market Exchange Rate,” data.worldbank.org/indicator/p… (accessed Jun 19, 2017).

 The measure is imperfect for this comparison, as it does not take into account the PPP specific to individual goods and services, and does not factor in the impact of defense imports or long-term costs such as future pensions and disability services. However, it does demonstrate the peril of assessing national defense based on budgets alone. For the equivalent investment in terms of U.S. dollars, China and Russia respectively have 1.7 times and 2.5 times the purchasing power within their domestic markets.14 Ibid. After adjusting for PPP, the U.S. only spends more than the next two powers combined: China and Saudi Arabia.15

Based on World Bank data for the price-level ratio of PPP conversion factor (GDP) to market exchange rate multiplied by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute figures on national defense expenditures in 2015 constant dollars. The World Bank, International Comparison Program Database, “Price Level Ratio of PPP Conversion Factor (GDP) to Market Exchange Rate, 1990 to 2015,” and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Military Expenditure Database: Data for All Countries from 1988–2016 in (2015) Constant Dollars,” 2017, www.sipri.org/databases/milex(accessed June 16, 2017). Due to differences in purchasing power across economies, then, two countries could hypothetically field the same size and quality force at dramatically different spending levels.

 State-Owned Enterprises. Simple cost comparisons also overlook widely differing types of economies and political systems that can significantly influence the costs of defense systems and technologies. China’s 10 largest defense contractors are all state-owned enterprises (SOEs).19Tai Ming Cheung, Eric Anderson, and Fan Yang, “Chinese Defense Industry Reforms and Their Implications for US-China Military Technological Competition,” Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Study of Innovation and Technology in China Research Brief, February 28, 2017, p. 3, escholarship.org/uc/item/84v3d… (accessed June 16, 2017). They receive preferential access to federal grants, subsidies, debt forgiveness, land holdings, and raw materials from other SOEs, “Chinese State-Owned and State-Controlled Enterprises: Policy Options for Addressing Chinese State-Owned Enterprises,” testimony before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, February 15, 2012, www.uscc.gov/sites/default/fil… (accessed June 16, 2017). State ownership also eliminates many of the costs and challenges associated with intellectual property rights and the need for SOEs to recoup R&D costs and turn a profit on government sales. According to a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) report on Chinese military power, “China’s two largest state-owned shipbuilders…collaborate in shared ship designs and construction information to increase shipbuilding efficiency.”21

U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016,” April 26, 2016, p. 80, www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Docu… (accessed June 16, 2017). Although this system does not encourage competition—a driver of innovation in private markets—China makes up for those shortfalls through robust state-sponsored industrial espionage and intellectual property theft programs. Although Russia has moved toward the privatization of many former SOEs, its government still holds a large stake in its domestic energy and defense industries.22

 Such arrangements enable governments to purchase defense systems closer to production costs. DOD procurement costs are much higher, as they account for the full burden of R&D costs that precede private-sector production of defense systems and technologies and supply a profit margin for privately owned companies. Since the DOD is the sole customer of the U.S. defense industry, absent approved foreign military sales, profit margins must be large enough to cover the risks associated with competition for federal contracts. U.S. political indecision and partisan divisions further increase these costs with delayed or partial funding that restrict opportunities for multi-year procurement contracts and large block buys, thus limiting gains from economies of scale and slowing the learning curve for production. Resultant cost discrepancies are compounded for every unit produced. However, the largest portion of the U.S. defense budget is not spent on R&D or procurement, but on rising personnel costs.

Personnel Costs. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, nearly 50 percent of the DOD’s budget went toward military and civilian pay and benefits23

—far more than either Russia or China, both in terms of total dollars or as a percentage of defense spending. Comparing defense budgets where a sizable portion of the costs are from personnel introduces a host of issues since the distribution and accumulation of personnel costs varies significantly depending on the economic conditions of a nation, as well as the size, type, or quality of a force."

FY-2017 analysis:
CSBA, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments:
'Analysis of the FY 2017 Defense Budget and and Trends in Defense Spending'
csbaonline.org/publications/20…
^Conclusions: "As the last budget request of the Obama Administration, the FY 2017 request largely continues the shift from the large ground forces necessary for the stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and towards greater investment investment in the high-end capabilities necessary in a new strategic era that holds the potential for great power competition. Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter has publicly listed Russia and China at the top of the list of DoD's challenges, followed by North K, Iran, and global terrorism. Accordingly, the United States has renewed its focus on those that exploit US advantages and impose asymmetric costs on potential adversaries. However, the investments within the FY 2017 budget reflect the tensions between investments in capability and capacity, and between a global "presence: force and a "surge capability" force. The greater costs of these advanced capabilities have prompted trade-off cuts to capacity, as illustrated by the curtailment of the Littoral Combat Ship program in favor of greater investment in undersea capabilities. However, the high costs of these advanced capabilities pose their own challenges, as demonstrated by the airforce's decision to procure 243 F-35As over the FY 2017-FY 2021 FYDP, forty-five fewer than last year's budget anticipated procurement in FY 2017.

As in recent budgets, the FY 2017 budget projects future defense spending levels higher than the enacted Budget Control Act caps, anticipating a $23 billion jump in defense spending FY 2018, followed by a more gradual increase in topline funding between FY 2018-FY 2021. These anticipated increases in defense spending are baked into the outyears of FY 2017 budget, with senior defense officials stating that DoD would need sequester relief to at least $15 billion for FY 2018. Without this additional top-line headroom, DoD would have to consider further reductions in force structure and end strength , including possibly reducing the size of Army's active-duty end strength below the 450,000 currently planned. Overall, DoD's planned spending exceeds the BCA caps by 105.3 billion over the FYDP and is projected to increase after FY 2021 once the BCA caps are no longer in play.

Beyond the immediate FY 2017 budget and FYDP, the planned acquisition of major high-end systems over the next ten to twenty years, including the ramp-up of F-35 procurement, the B-21 bomber, the KC-46 tanker, various space systems, the Ohio-class replacement submarine, and the replacement for the aging Minuteman III ICBM force, will strain DoD's procurement budget - a problem termed the "acquisition bow wave." CBO projects that acquisition costs for these major systems could exceed DoD's budget projections by about 2.3 percent over the FY 2017 FYDP, and by 7.3 percent FY 2021- FY 2030, resulting in an additional $4.5 and $13.3 billion annual shortfall of acquisition costs compared to DoD's procurement plans. At the same time, rising O&M costs and personnel costs will make it more expensive to sustain the same level of force structure. Dod has been able to slightly slow personnel costs in the past four years, but has had less success in controlling O&M costs. Given that the current level of readiness challenges and the increasing age of operational systems, O&M costs are likely to increase more rapidly in the outyears of the FYDP and beyond.

The FY 2017 challenge of meeting the current threats while planning for long-term strategic challenges will also face the incoming administration in FY 2018 and beyond. Enduring the budget constraints and complex strategic challenges require the next adminisatration to keep focusing the Department on the most urgent priorities and foresting a culture of innovation and efficiency while making difficult tradeoffs between capacity and capabilities."

2017 Index of US Military Strength:
index.heritage.org/military/20…
"Readiness: The consequences of the sharp reductions in funding mandated by sequestration have caused military service officials, senior DOD officials, and even Members of Congress to warn of the dangers of recreating the “hollow force” of the 1970s when units existed on paper but were staffed at reduced levels, minimally trained, and woefully ill-equipped. To avoid this, the services have traded quantity/capacity and modernization to ensure that what they do have is “ready” for employment.

As was the case in 2015, the service chiefs have stated that current and projected levels of funding continue to take a toll on the ability of units to maintain sufficient levels of readiness across the force. Some units have reduced manning. Though progress has been made in some areas due to funding provided by Congress in 2014 and 2015, the return of further cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011 threaten to undo these gains."

'US Military Forces in FY 2017: Stable Plans, Disruptive Threats, and Strategic Inflection Points'
csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3f…
"DoD defines operational readiness as, "the capability of a unit/formation, ship, weapon system, or equipment to preform the missions or functions for which it is organized or designed." And distinguishes it from force structure and modernization. Sequestration in 2013, which required DoD to cut $32 billion in six months, severely reduced readiness because cuts had to be made quickly, and readiness accounts are easy to adjust in short term.

The services are still rebuilding readiness after those cuts and have made progress. However, as shown in table 12, progress has slowed because the budget deal reduced expected FY 2017 funds. The services will not achieve targeted levels until FY 2020, 2033 for the Air Force."

'Analysis of the FY 2017 Defense Budget'
defense360.csis.org/wp-content…
"Beyond the current five-year planning horizon, the next administration will also need to address the looming modernization bow wave. According to previous analysis, funding for DoD’s major acquisition programs will need to increase 23 percent in real terms from FY 2015 to the peak in FY 2022. This bow wave is due to the alignment of many major modernization programs so that their peak years of funding occur just outside the five-year planning horizon in the early 2020s."

HASC hearing titled, 'Damage to the Military from a Continuing Resolution' from the 5th of April 2017: (Skip to 12:48)
armedservices.house.gov/legisl…
By the numbers, if a 2017 budget isn't passed with supplemental funding,
Army:
"Funding under a CR will result in a dramatic decrease of all training, except
aviation training, starts in May of this year and by 15 July will include a shutdown of critical homestation collective training for five Army BCTs preparing to deploy to Combat Training Centers (CTC), as well as the possible cancellation of one BCT CTC rotation. Concurrently, all efforts to increase Army end strength to 1,018K, an increase of 28,000 Soldiers across all components – as authorized in the FY 17 National Defense Authorization Act – will also cease. The cumulative effect of training shortfalls combined with personnel constraints will result in an Army less ready to meet the current requirements of combatant commanders and limit our ability to assure allies and deter adversaries now and in the future. Procurement efforts currently on hold will remain on hold, preventing the Army from immediately addressing known shortfalls and gaps in combat systems and munitions, electronic warfare and cyber programs, air and missile defense capabilities, long range fires, protection, and mobility programs, and other modernization efforts critical to maintaining, and in some cases, re-gaining overmatch. Planned FY 17 production rate increases for current funding lines will cause operational delays in procurement and research across the Army and to specific initiatives, such as the European Reassurance Initiative – critical to deterrence in Europe. The programs most affected include ammunition, air and missile defense capabilities, and protection and mobility programs.
The resulting net effect of a year-long CR means a further degradation of Army
readiness in both the current and future fiscal years, and no progress toward reducing the risk in modernization. In short, a year-long CR and a return to BCA funding risks deploying forces that are not fully ready for combat. We must never allow that to happen."

Similar and worse impacts will occur to ALL services. This highlights just how underfunded the US military is, as of April 2017.

Missile defence:
'Missile defence 2020: Next steps for defending the homeland'
csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3f…
"Comparing topline MDA spending to projected Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) of the previous year's request also indicates budget instability and therefore difficulty with long-term planning. The shortfalls between enacted funding levels and previous FYDP projections can have a corrosive effect on programs. Occasionally, this has even included reductions for particular programs after the appropriations process had concluded. In 2011, for example, GMD received $100 million less than the amount of originally enacted by Congress, including a cut of $94 million to BMDS level testing, due to congressional reductions and recessions based on different DoD priorities.

Caps put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011 also played a part in this downward budget pressure. In 2013, budget caps took effect and MDA funding fell to 7.7 billion, including a cit of 668 million in the third quartet of 2013 due to sequestration, the impact of which is still being felt."

'The Missile Defense Agency and the Color of Money: Fewer Resources, More Responsibility, and a Growing Budget Squeeze'
csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3f…
^"...Accepting increased risk is hardly a strategy at all, but there is no question that path could be taken. Indeed, one might say it already has been, as the result of failing to address the current trends and strains described above.

The serious choice therefore is between the first and second paths: Either making MDA leaner and more focused or making it larger and more comprehensive. This choice hangs ultimately upon the question of its identity - its roles, missions and relation to the services. Either the first or second path may require topline increase to the missile defence efforts, wether in or out of MDA. At bottom, the squeeze on R&D is fundamentally about the overall topline allocated to missile defence efforts, wherever they are located.

The ballistic missile threats to the US and its allies are not diminishing. In the coming years, North Korea could well enter into serial production of ICBMs. Iran has also no sign of abandoning its long-range efforts. It could be quite difficult and costly to face significantly greater threats in, say, 2015, and attempt to catch up. Outpacing rather than chasing these threats will require continued stewardship of R&D, and of science and technology - what Secretary Carter has called the "seed corn" - and on ensuring that this effort is not squeezed out by necessary procurement and operations, or by rising foreign assistance demands."

Common myths:
csbaonline.org/about/news/seve…
^Debunks several myths of US DoD spening, and the flawed arguments people make to cut it.
"America spends plenty on defense. Yes, the Pentagon has a budget of nearly $600 billion -- more than the next seven countries combined. Yet American military dominance is less impressive than this statistic implies. For one thing, in constant dollars, defense spending has declined from $768 billion in 2010 to $595 billion in 2015 -- the fastest drawdown, percentage-wise, in many decades. Moreover, the U.S. is a global superpower that confronts an increasingly dangerous array of threats: from great powers China and Russia to smaller but equally worrisome adversaries such as the Islamic State, Iran and North Korea.

Today, the Pentagon simply does not have the capacity to face all these challenges. Recent assessments by the RAND Corporation have shown, for instance, that the U.S. would struggle to defend Taiwan in a conflict with China, and that Washington and NATO would face a nearly hopeless situation should Russia invade the Baltic region. The U.S. may still be superior to any single rival, but its military power is nonetheless insufficient to support its global strategy."

AEI, American Interprise Institute:
www.aei.org/publication/the-my…
"In sum, the real readiness crisis is not measured in the fight against ISIS, or in Afghanistan, but in the capacity and capability needed in a more demanding contingency. As the House Armed Services Committee found in its version of this year’s defense bill, “the services are very good at counterinsurgency, but they are not prepared to endure a long fight against higher order threats from near-peer competitors.” Nor are they prepared to fight two advanced adversaries at once. Through the pose they strike, Petraeus and O’Hanlon not only mischaracterize the nature and extent of today’s problems. They also lead readers to underestimate the risks of a real crisis."

'The US Military: Ready or Not?'
www.thecipherbrief.com/article…
"Initially it was believed that these caps would force the Army to downsize to a level described as very high risk in addressing potential conflict. Recent relief from Congress has slowed the downsizing, but the risk remains high. As the Chief (Milley) says, “Deterrence is expensive, and the only thing more expensive than maintaining capable ready forces is actually fighting a war. And the only thing more expensive than fighting and winning a war is fighting and losing a war.” That really sums it up.

The adverse effects of the budget cuts and sequestration are likely to be long-term—and may even get worse. General Milley recently testified that “while the Army is reducing end strength, we made a deliberate decision to prioritize readiness, reduce infrastructure maintenance, and decrease funding for modernization. These choices devote resources to today’s fight but decrease investments in the future."

This clearly is not sustainable over the long term. The new geopolitical reality that has emerged since the Budget Control Act was passed in 2011 makes it imperative that sequestration be repealed – now. Without such relief, the Army will take longer to respond to crises, and the potential for unnecessarily high casualties is greater. America owes too much to its troops to ever let this happen again"

Future full spectrum readiness requires improved equipment to meet the complex threats being developed and proliferated among potential adversaries. However, the BCA has forced the USAF to trade modernization against readiness. It is the only place the USAF could go for funding, and it is putting our ability to modernize over time at risk. For example, the FY17 budget request defers the purchase of 45 F-35As over the next five years to a later date. This reduces the capacity of the USAF by roughly two full squadrons of 5th generation fighters that will now be unavailable for any near-term contingency against growing threat capabilities.

The potential impact of the BCA in FY18 are all bad choices:

Force structure cuts—the USAF is already too small for the current demand placed on it;
delay modernization—the USAF capability advantage is already shrinking;
halt readiness recovery—this would result in a USAF even less ready than it is today;
defer advancements in space and cyber—the USAF is being seriously contested in these domains;
reduce spending on infrastructure—base support would suffer and the bow wave of needed improvement would grow. The USAF is already too small and less capable than necessary to meet the needs of the current national security strategy. This point does not just apply to the Air Force, but to each of the services. That said, a concerted focus on expanding our air and space forces would serve America well, as they are uniquely positioned to underpin a defense strategy appropriate to deal with a future of threats growing in both capacity and capability. Finally, it is important to remember that the only thing more expensive than a first rate Air Force is a second rate Air Force."

FY2018:
'Preventing a Defense Crisis: The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act Must Begin to Restore U.S. Military Strength'
www.heritage.org/defense/repor…
"Years of underfunding and overuse have created a U.S. military in crisis. The military services testified before Congress in February 2017, and the picture they painted was dire. Of the Army’s 58 brigade combat teams only three are ready to fight, more than half of the Navy’s aircraft are grounded waiting maintenance or parts, the Air Force is short 723 fighter pilots, and the Marine Corps reported that its equipment is obsolescing and increasingly unable to meet the demands of the modern battlefield...

The DOD’s budget can and should ramp up by more than 3 percent from President Obama’s planned FY 2018 defense budget. The Heritage Foundation believes that, combined with the implementation of the savings described previously in this Backgrounder, the Defense Department (budget function 050) should be funded at $632 billion in FY 2018, in addition to the Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) funds commensurate with years past."

On Trump's Military proposal:
'Sizing up the Trump defence budget'
www.thecipherbrief.com/article…
"Twenty-six percent of DoD’s base discretionary spending funds military personnel. Add in the Defense Health Program (DHP) and civilian pay, funded from the operations and maintenance accounts, and DoD has already spent more than 55-percent of its budget before allocating any funds for military modernization, maintenance, or training. Moreover, the cost per active-duty person has grown by 60-percent since 2001...
Almost 48-percent of the base budget funds operations and maintenance (O&M) accounts, although roughly 61-percent of that sum funds the DHP and civilian pay. Most of the remaining O&M spending funds the training and maintenance requirements of each service. Since DoD can quickly save money by cutting training hours or maintenance, these accounts are often targeted when DoD must slash spending. While financially effective, it also harms overall readiness."

'The state of defence acquisition on the cusp of a new administration'
www.thecipherbrief.com/article…
"Throughout the current budget drawdown, DoD R&D contract obligations have declined notably more steeply than overall DoD contract obligations. While overall DoD contracts have declined by over a third since 2009, R&D contract obligations within DoD have declined by a remarkable 53 percent, and have declined by 39 percent just since 2012. In 2015 alone, R&D contract obligations fell by 17 percent, over three times the rate of overall DoD contracts...

As discussed in a recent CSIS report on trends in federal R&D contracting, the key driver is a massive decline in mid-to-late stage R&D tied to a six-year trough in DoD’s development pipeline for major weapons systems. As large programs have either matured out of development (i.e. F-35) or been cancelled (i.e. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS)) in recent years, there has been a dearth of new development programs to fill the gap. This problem is particularly acute for the Army: since the failure of FCS, budgetary constraints and continued uncertainty about future missions and capabilities left the Army unable to start and sustain new development programs for major weapons systems, a problem that seems likely to persist for the foreseeable future, even if the size of the Army expands."

www.aei.org/publication/trumps…
"Placed in context, President Trump’s defense increase is looking smaller by the hour. Most of the money will go to plugging readiness gaps, but that will lead to an imbalanced force. If today’s modernization is tomorrow’s readiness, Trump will need to spend much more than the $54 billion in this plan to both restore readiness and recapitalize the services fleets and inventories. And he’ll need to find a way to pay for it that has bipartisan support. Otherwise, $54 billion will be zero for defense."

Operational Tempo:
csbaonline.org/research/public…
"The cumulative result of these trends has been to create a creeping and unprecedented crisis of America’s post–Cold War military primacy. To be clear, at a global level the United States still possesses vastly more military power than any single challenger, particularly in the crucial power-projection assets—from aircraft carriers and fifth-generation tactical aircraft to defense satellites and aerial refueling tankers—that constitute the basis of America’s global reach.38 Yet even that global primacy is not what it once was. The United States now faces a Russia that once again possesses significant extra-regional power-projection capabilities as well as peer or near-peer capabilities in areas such as strategic nuclear forces and offensive cyber. Moscow has not confined its competition with the United States to Europe; it has conducted significant military operations in the Middle East, while also seeking to revive (albeit in lesser form) the broader Soviet-era pattern of global power projection. The United States also faces a China whose military budget is now more than one-third of the U.S. budget and climbing rapidly, and which is increasingly developing advanced power-projection capabilities of its own.39 China is now competing geopolitically with the United States not just in Asia but beyond; the prospect for more serious military rivalry in the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa, and perhaps other areas cannot be ruled out in the coming years. And perhaps more importantly, American global primacy is not only being challenged; it is also becoming increasingly irrelevant. During the post-Cold War era, it was America’s ability to deploy unmatched military power not just globally, but also within any given region, that gave U.S. primacy its geopolitical bite. Today, American military power is losing that bite. For the most intense geopolitical competitions are primarily regional rather than truly global in scope, and here the trends have been running hard and fast against the United States...

As both Army officials and independent analysts have observed, U.S. and NATO forces are “outnumbered and outgunned” in this crucial area.41 Recent moves to strengthen U.S. and NATO posture are welcome and necessary, but they have contributed only marginally to redressing this situation. In the Middle East, the military balance remains more favorable—U.S. capabilities are vastly superior to those of Iran or any other hostile actor. But here, too, the development of Iranian A2/AD and ballistic missile capabilities are likely to complicate U.S. operations in any conflict, while the reemergence of Russian military power in the region has already narrowed U.S. freedom of action in regional crises.42 The world has changed since the 1990s; in key areas across Eurasia, the U.S. military edge has eroded."

Navy:
'Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the United States Navy'
csbaonline.org/research/public…
"Today’s Navy emphasizes efficiency over effectiveness. This was a rational reaction to the presumed end of great power competition with the fall of the Soviet Union. In the decades that followed, the U.S. Navy pursued a deterrence posture that relied on modest levels of forward deployed forces that were smaller representations of the larger force. To avoid instability caused by regional powers, deterrence was premised on the promise of punishment that would arrive with follow-on forces. This approach to conventional deterrence will likely not work against the potential great power aggressors of the 2030s, who are likely to seek the ability to achieve a quick, decisive victory over adversaries. Efforts to reverse the results of aggression would require a much larger conflict and would likely have global consequences that would create international pressure to reach a quick settlement. To be deterred in the 2030s, aggressors must be presented with the possibility that their goals will be denied or that the immediate costs to pursue them will be prohibitively high. The architecture proposed by this report would achieve that effect with a more powerful day-to-day Deterrence Force tailored by region. Bolstering that immediate deterrent would be the Maneuver Force, which in peacetime would hone its skills in multi-carrier, cross-domain, high-end warfare. These two forces would be comprised of some of the same elements, but packaged and supported differently. This proposed fleet architecture emphasizes effectiveness over efficiency. Built on new operating concepts the Navy is already pursuing and incorporating a new approach to conventional deterrence, the new architecture offers the prospect of protecting and sustaining America’s security and prosperity, and that of our friends and allies around the world, in the decades ahead. Deterring great power war demands the readiness to contest and win it, and a fleet that supports this approach."

index.heritage.org/military/20…
"The Navy’s overall score for the 2017 Index is “marginal,” the same as for the previous year. This was derived by aggregating the scores for capacity (“marginal”); capability (“weak”); and readiness (“strong”). However, given the continued upward trends in OPTEMPO that have not been matched by similar increases in capacity or readiness funding, the Navy’s overall score could degrade in the near future if the service does not more robustly recapitalize and maintain the health of its fleet."

Size, does it matter:
Center for a New American Security:
www.cnas.org/publications/repo…
"Measured in terms of personnel and major weapons platforms, the size of the U.S. military has been on a generally downward trajectory for decades. The path has not been simple, uniform, or smooth, and there have been important exceptions in certain areas. Nevertheless, the overall trend is unmistakable and, viewed from a long-term perspective, quite consistent...

Trends in weapons inventories paint a more complex picture, depending upon the particular force structure elements considered. For example, the overall number of battle force ships in the U.S. Navy has declined dramatically over time – from over 1,000 ships in 1955 to some 560 ships in 1975 and about 270 ships today. However, the size of the carrier force – still very much the core of the U.S. Navy – has been reduced at a more measured pace, falling from 15 in 1975 to 10 today. Similarly, while the number of Air Force fighter and attack aircraft has been cut significantly since the mid-1980s, falling from some 4,400 in 1985 to 2,500 by 2000, and to 2,000 today, the Air Force’s fleets of transport and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and related aircraft have been cut much more modestly – respectively, by about one-third and one-quarter since the 1980s. Despite this more complex pattern, however, the overall trend in numbers has clearly been consistently toward a smaller force, whether measured in terms of military personnel or major weapons platforms."

National Defence University, Institute for National Strategic Studies:
'Managing Military Readiness'
"Over the last several years, not only have Defense budgets
been shrinking, but also they lack the stability needed to plan multi-year investments that are crucial to supporting long-term readiness recovery.12 In February 2016, then–Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that the diversity of threats to our nation and allies has been unprecedentedly broad for the last 5 or 6 years.13 Fifteen years of high-demand counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan created serious degradations in the DOD ability to generate other high-end capabilities. While the Services have invested in recovering those capabilities over the last 5 years, serious readiness deficiencies will likely persist into the foreseeable future.

A nascent version of the approach outlined here was used over the last 5 years to communicate readiness status, challenges, and consequences to the Office of Management and Budget, the White House, and Congress, especially as furloughs and sequestration hit. Its use is documented in the series of Quarterly Readiness Reports to Congress from 2013 to 2016. Using these techniques, readiness managers from across the department were able to explain why DOD did not enter sequestration with full-spectrum capability or capacity and, specifically, how furloughs and sequestration made this bad situation worse. They explained the consequences of those degradations in terms of the ability to execute specific operational plans, and once degradations occur, they typically take time to resolve even with funding. These effective narratives, not from one person but from throughout DOD, were instrumental in earning the Bipartisan Budget Act of 201315 spending levels that offered some relief from the original Budget Control Act spending limits,16 albeit in 1-year contingency funding. Within DOD, this framework allowed the Services to effectively argue the imperative of continuing investments in readiness recovery."

Other near-peer competitors and their budgets, military status:
csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3f…

US Government spending of its budget:
Now some will say this is too much, and the US should spend on education, healthcare, and social security more... this is due to a lack of education in the budgets already.
It should be well noted to anyone that pays attention, that the US already does indeed spend far more on those than the DoD.
On a state and local level, they collectively spend far more on education, than federal level Defence.
www.usgovernmentspending.com/y…

If we want to compare to an even better few graphs highlighting the same inherent fact, over a number of budgets:
federal-budget.insidegov.com/c…
^2012-2016, as seen clearly the DoD budget has fallen, while social security and others have been well ahead.

federalbudgetinpictures.com/ho…
^Also highlighting just how over-budget social security and healthcare are.

And lastly a better visual comparison from CBO (Congressional Budget Office), on the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending in FY 2015:
www.cbo.gov/sites/default/file…

www.cbo.gov/sites/default/file…

FY-2016 CBO figures for mandatory/discretionary spending breakdowns:
www.cbo.gov/publication/52406 (For FY-2016, non-defence discretionary was MORE than the military spending), this was the same (by a far less amount), in FY2015....