Rumsfeld Fights for Change

Against heated opposition from Congress and the Pentagon, who have much to gain in keeping alive Cold War era weapons, Secretary Rumsfeld continues to push for transformation in our increasingly antiquated military:

A hint of what Rumsfeld had in mind - and the political hurdles that stood in the way - came in a document called "Program Budget Decision 753" that leaked in January. It proposed shifting resources away from several expensive Navy and Air Force programs to help pay for the ballooning cost of the Iraq War, which is being fought mostly by the Army and Marines. Worried Air Force and Navy partisans knew
where to go for help. The day after the document leaked, members of Congress from affected districts were racing to save the very aircraft carriers and
fighter jets Rumsfeld had proposed to cut. In the end, PBD 753 was shelved and the decisions were postponed.

Still Rumsfeld continues to battle the traditionalists:

The transformationalists had a powerful intellectual weapon in a document that came to be known as "the quad chart." It was a standard matrix, graphing threats to the U.S. according to their likelihood and the nation's vulnerability. At the top right, the zone of greatest
likelihood and vulnerability, were
"catastrophic" threats such as a terrorist WMD attack. At the bottom left, the
area of least likelihood and vulnerability, was a "traditional" attack involving
conventional air, sea and land forces or established nuclear forces.
The quad chart suggested that the imminent danger to America came
from Al-Qaeda, not from a rising
conventional-nuclear power such as China. That obviously was more bad news for the services that would fight
a war against China, the Navy and Air Force. You don't have to be a cynic to recognize that recent studies warning of the Chinese military threat are, in the code of Pentagon budget wars, arguments for more Navy and Air Force spending.

We can only hope the secretary will prevail in his quest to create a military better suited to the realities of the 21st century, as opposed to the old ideas of the last one. I think our very future is on the line in the upcoming Quadrennial
Defense Review.