Solving the Nation's Security Affordability Problem: With Costs Going up and Funds Going Down, The Department of Defense Needs to Make Major Changes in How It Operates (Defense AFFORDABILITY‪)‬

There is a clash coming in the next few years between the multiplicity and complexity of the security concerns facing the United States and the shrinking resources available to address them. Unfortunately, solving this growing mismatch between national security needs and declining budgets is being made far more difficult by cost trends within the Department of Defense (DOD). Almost across the board, including in equipment and personnel costs, the trends have been upward. At the same time, the trends for the federal budget are probably heading downward, driven by growing interest in controlling and even drastically cutting the nation's spending. To put this problem into a larger perspective, numerous historians and economists have highlighted the strong relationship between a nation's security posture and its economic strength. Yet the escalating and huge projected costs of paying for retirement and health care for senior citizens are beginning to put enormous pressure on all other government spending, including spending for long-term investments in economic growth and national security. Every day, 10,000 more people become eligible for Social Security and Medicare. With this growth in nondiscretionary expenditures and the need for the nation to borrow in order to pay its tab, by 2017 the annual payment on the national debt will equal or exceed the defense budget. As Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated in August 2010, "The single biggest threat to our national security is our debt."