Making life better for people, while it costs money, is still cheaper than war.Military stuff
Please note any major items purchase (planes and ships and tanks) have to go through Parliment (cause its not in DND budget- personnal and maintenance and operational cost).
One thing this report dose not hit on is the repair of items/equipment. To save money on holding parts years ago the wiser and alknowning bean counters decided not to house too many items for the equipment they had, in order to close down a few bases/hangers/supply houses to save on heating cost in the winters. Then they went on to changing the supply system 3 times. Within 10 years everything was fucked up.
Today to save money they outsource repair (which takes weeks if not months) to repair a single vehicle (that is if they have the budget to fix the vehicle or spend money on part to the vehicle).
Some of these parts are patented items which are expensive.
The military should be allowed to make its own parts, to bring equipment back into service asap. It should have its own technicians to fix equipment on the spot to get the equipment back online ASAP.
Unfortunately the senior people have forgotten that things break down. Usually when you really need them.
When a unit has 100 tanks. You expect 40% looses (or so). There fore you should have 40-60% more tanks to make up for the loss. that is 140-160 tanks.
Now if you are expecting to use 100 tanks in peacetime and expect to be deployed anytime, you need 100 tanks to deploy.
Therefore if half the tanks are being in a maintenance cycle, you will need 200 tanks; to deploy 100 tanks.
So you will need in the end 240 to 260 tanks, for maintennance and loses.
Yes we have 78 tanks....
What has happened since the 70s is the depletion of major equipment in ships and tanks. Mostly though Liberal governments spending more and more on social reform and buying voters or lucrative deals for their Liberal buddies. (not saying that PC did the same shit, just less of it)
The problem with the USA is that they spend way more money preparing for war instead of making life better for people.