Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millenium

By Daniel Doure, Daniel Gouré, Jeffrey M. Ranney

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892063505
• ISBN13: 9780892063505
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Center for Strategic & International Studies
• Length: 160 Pages

Customer Reviews

Brilliant on Numbers, Need Same Focus on WHAT We Buy

The authors provide compelling evidence of a forthcoming "train wreck" in U.S. defensive capabilities, and make a compelling case for increasing the defense budget by $60-100B a year for a mixture of preserving readiness; acquiring mid-term capabilities needed to replace a 20-30 year old mobility, weapons, and communications base force; and implementing the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This is a well-documented and heavily fact-laden book-the authors as individuals and the case they make in general terms-must be heeded by the next President and the next Congress. Where the book does not go, and a companion book by the same authors would be of great value, is into the detail of WHAT threat, WHAT force structure. They accept, for example, the Navy's 304-ship Navy that keeps adding gigantic carriers and does nothing for littoral warfare or putting Marines within 24 hours of any country instead of 6 days. Similarly, they accept Air Force emphasis on fewer and fewer bigger and more sophisticated platforms of dubious utility in a 21st Century environment that requires long loiter, ranges of several hundred nautical miles without refueling, full lift in hot humid weather, and survivability in the face of electromagnetic weapons in the hands of thugs. This book demonstrates a clear mastery of defense economics, and it is an important contribution to the bottom line: our national defense is desperately underfunded, and this must be in the "top three" issues facing the 43rd President and the 107th Congress. What we buy, and why, has not yet been answered to my satisfaction.

Averting the Wreck

This is through book that for the first time addresses the breath and depth of the defense crisis--an issue that the Clinton Administration has been dodging for the past eight years. Finally, analyst Jeffrey Ranney and Dan DOure cuts through the nonsense and provides an indepth and quantified analysis of the defense crisis. Hopefully, the next administration will address the problem with decisive action with the intent of averting the defense train wreck in our lifetimes--but most importantly for our youth who may be called to fight with out-dated equipment--putting them in harm's way.