The single, most urgent priority of the House and Senate GOP ought to be passing Reconciliation 3.0 and thus funding not just President s request of $1.5 trillion, but also the out-years when a likely Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate will not support the military we must have and especially address the munitions gap the battle with Iran has exposed.Â
The United States simply does not have the stockpile of interceptors we need in the age of missiles and . Whatever the definition of a “crash program” is, that definition ought to be put aside in favor of something far more ambitious.Â
We need enough interceptors for our own stockpiles, as well as enough for our allies in Israel, the Gulf States and Taiwan. Our Arab allies will pay cash on the barrel. From Israel, we should expect ongoing and expanding cooperation between the robust defense industry of the Jewish state and the Pentagons acquisition process. Taiwan already has a backlog of orders waiting to be filled.Â
“Our procurement system is not designed for serious war fighting,” Dr. Eliot A. Cohen told Aaron MacLean on the latters recent edition of the “School of War podcast. “You can see in this conflict the consequences of having had effortless superiority for a long time,” Cohen added.
Dean Cohen is the 9th Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and a widely admired national security strategist and former Counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the second term of President .Â
Cohen was an original “Never Trumper” who admits in this podcast his regret at having been so absolutist in his opposition to President Trump, but does not relent in an objective assessment of the battle with Iran to date.  Give the entire episode a listen but focus on the quotes above.Â
We have enjoyed complete in every conflict since the start of the First Gulf War. That era is over because of missiles and drones.
We could not suppress enough of Irans firepower to protect our Arab allies’ infrastructure on land or ships passing through the Strait. Perhaps we did not try hard enough to do so, but after demolishing the remnants of the nuclear weapons program still left standing after 2025s Operation Midnight Hammer as well as obliterating more than 75% of the defense industrial base of the Islamic Republic via tens of thousands of strikes by American and Israeli forces, the equation changed to favor the by the MOU.Â
(I expect the negotiations to extend at least past Novembers . It is very reasonable to expect a return to combat similar to Richard Nixons order for the Christmas Bombings of 1972 following Henry Kissingers declaration that “peace was at hand” in October of that year. If the junta atop the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does not, in fact, deliver on the destruction or removal of all of their enriched uranium as well as inspection and destruction of Pickaxe mountain, I expect the battle to resume.)
In the meantime, we have to surge more defensive capabilities to our allies in the Gulf and Israel while also preparing our own military to open and keep open the Strait for as long as Iran attempts to close it in the future. Thats an expensive proposition.
The good news is that innovations in technology are surging through the Wests defense industries, including Ukraines, Israels and our own. But, Congress must send the unmistakable demand signal of the enormous uptick in spending and double or triple down on that signal with out-year appropriations just as it has just done with the Department of Homeland Security.Â
This is actually the most important reveal of the 40 days of combat beginning on February 28 and the week of renewed hostilities after Iran hit our Apache helicopter. (The second burst of combat should have told the Iranians that they will receive ten times back for every blow they attempt to land during the talks.)
