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Editorial: Maintain strong defense

The new year has not been rung in with the traditional hope and optimism — 2009 has all the makings of a historically tough one, with the worst economic crisis in decades straining budgets worldwide.

The year will likely see a classic guns-or-butter debate as governments that have announced giant economic bailouts, grants and subsidies struggle with the staggering costs of their actions. Already, U.S. government borrowing to cover emergency economic moves totals more than $1.7 trillion, with hundreds of billions in additional spending to be announced over the coming months.

Clearly, defense spending will have to take a share of the pain.

But if the U.S. government overreacts, ill-reasoned cuts in defense spending could threaten the military’s operational capabilities by shrinking supplies, eroding skills and curtailing research and development. Once lost, such assets are difficult and expensive to reclaim.

While Washington debates rescuing an uncompetitive auto industry and the 3 million jobs it directly and indirectly creates, few realize that the U.S. aerospace and defense industry directly employ 831,000 people, according to the Aerospace Industries Association, and supports more than 2 million additional related jobs in a world-leading industrial sector. Aerospace generates the largest trade surplus of any U.S. manufacturing sector, totaling $61 billion in 2007, AIA says.

Clearly, defense is not a jobs program. But cutting defense spending does not produce savings. Rather, it results in various types of losses — in jobs, innovation, capabilities and, ultimately, national security.

Those are cuts we can’t afford.