Mitt Romney: The need for a mighty US military (and my inability to stop making stupid comparisons)

By: a snarky, liberal college student

Mitt Romney continues to make the same stupid comparisons that led to, in my humble opinion, the 3rd best debate retort of all time.




Romney recently wrote an OpEd piece that appeared in the Washington Post arguing for increased military spending, and in a few spots calls for reduced spending on domestic things, like healthcare and benefits. All in all, its a fairly generic, establishment GOP essay. He even raises several valid concerns; the rate at which the PRC is expanding their military forces and the rising tension with Russia. Yet, despite a multitude of of valid reasons to emphasize a need to expand our military, or emphasize it's size, he's back to the same comparisons to the early 20th century, which completely neglect changes in technology and geopolitics. Or real numbers. The actual quote is:

"...the Army is on track to be the size it was in 1940, the Navy to be the size it was in 1917, the Air Force to be smaller than in 1947 and our nuclear arsenal to be no larger than it was under President Harry S. Truman."

Lets break this down and see what we can do with it:

"...the Army is on track to be the size it was in 1940..."

So, looking at this piece, you can tell what the connotations are. Everybody knows that the US was woefully underprepared at the start of WWII, and it was only though hard work and capitalism that we built up our military forces to defeat the Japanese and the Germans. (Little bit of sarcasm here)

I decided to look up just how badly US troop numbers had fallen over time. I found a table of numbers from 1940 to 2011, with some gaps. Let's look at the graph below.

So, for reference, in 1940, the US had ~270,000 active duty in the army. That huge spike is from WWII, and following that there are minor spikes for the Korean and Vietnam wars, followed by returns to normalcy. The end of the cold war saw a reduction of about 33% from ~750,000 active duty to ~500,000 active duty, which has remained fairly constant for the past 2 decades or so. So, as Romney is implying, a cut back to 270,000 active duty would be a major issue and would represent a massive reduction in US military power, if it was happening.
That's right, it's not happening. The best numbers I have found indicate that the Army's target for 2017 troop numbers are ~490,000 active duty, down from about 520,000 at present. So yes, cuts are happening, but they are about in line with the average over the past 20 years. Considering the US military is working to draw down from a decade long war, the defense cuts we are going through are actually fairly minor, when compared to those that followed Vietnam and Korea.

"...the Navy to be the size it was in 1917..."

That would mean that the US Navy had shrunk to the size it was when the Ottoman Empire still existed. For the numbers on this, I'm not going to be making my own graph, since the US Navy actually has a series of wonderfully annotated tables describing force levels on their website. As the Navy charts show, in 1917 the US Navy had 342 total ships with 160 surface combatants. The US Navy presently has 290 active ships (as per USN website), so the factoid is true.

The counter to this point is two-fold. For starters, while the USN only has ~115 surface combatants (less than 1917), there are currently 72 submarines in service, pushing the number of major combatants in service up to 187, about the same as the first year of WWI. Furthermore, there's a bigger point to be made, which is the USN has been this size since 2000. Throughout the entire Bush administration the shipbuilding plans called for under 325 ships in the navy, as per the CRS. This trend has continued, and I doubt it will change. As President Obama very condescendingly put it, the Naval force structure has changed such that there is vastly more capability available than there was throughout even WWII, when US Naval ship numbers peaked.

"...the Air Force to be smaller than in 1947..."

Basically, the Air Force would be smaller than when it was founded. This has also been true for the past 20 years or so. This has come as a result of draw downs at the end of the Cold War, increasing capability (cost) of existing airframes and a larger portion of the defense budget going to C3, ISR and space systems. Even 20 years ago, the US didn't have the ability to keep an ISR asset on a target continuously, but today it can do that for multiple targets in disparate areas of the globe. There are further reductions in maned aircraft planned, which make for good talking points, however, they do not reflect that the nature of conflicts has changed, and in many cases there are other platforms that can complete certain jobs better across a wider range of environments. However, I will grant the Governor this point, although he is a few years late to be making it and it is in the wrong tense.

"...and our nuclear arsenal to be no larger than it was under President Harry S. Truman."

I'm fairly certain this statement comes from a misreading of the New START treaty. New START limits countries to 1550 deployed weapons at any time, with no restriction on number of stockpiled warheads. When Truman left office in 1953, the US had 1,486 nuclear warheads of all types, not just deploy-able ones. Referencing raw numbers also underestimates the destructive power of today's nuclear weapons. The biggest nuclear weapon available in 1953 had a yield of 160 kt, compared to high yields of up to 475 kt today. Accuracy has also vastly improved, from 2000' on a B-29 (nowhere near accurate enough for a counterforce strike) to about 300' for modern ICBMs. This means that while the warhead numbers might be close, compared to the 1950's, the US can put far more destructive power on targets today.

All in all, with the exception of the piece about the Army, the Governor is using easy numbers to make political points. These numbers do not reflect the reality of the situation, but they do sound good, and I'm sure they'll get lots of air time on Fox News and the Sunday talk shows. As always, if anyone has better sources or different information, I'd love to hear it.