I’m not enough of a military tactician or strategist to get into the weeds, but I think that’s essentially the point of a lot of our problems. Plus decades of shifting away from Cold War priorities towards endless conflict with non-state actors. Now we have to shift the other way, with tech upgrades.

I think that could generate net savings at some point, but I think the transition and ramp up will require upfront investments. Probably significant. I’m not opposed to tax increases to pay for them, but I also think savings could be found as well. SS, and starting to move the needle on health care entitlements.

Thing is - our budget woes are not urgent, unless our endless (repub led) obstructionism and brinksmanship so badly kills our “willingness to pay” bonafides that we make the urgency a self-fulfilling prophecy. All rating agency downgrades to date, over the last decade, resulted from repub brinksmanship games, and essentially represent growing doubt about our willingness to pay.

If we don’t kill ourselves, we have the luxury of time. Our debt to gdp could get significantly worse, as long as we put ourselves on a path towards sustainability at the same time. With measures to address entitlements, and looking at both the revenue and expenditure side. In other words, we certainly don’t need self destructive draconian tax increases, even if we need significant upfront military investments.