Kagan anticipates that his call for greater defense spending will "inspire howls of protest in certain quarters," and he is right: there will be howls from members of the Bush administration, the Pentagon, and Congress, all of whom realize that the 41 percent increase in baseline defense spending of the past four years cannot and will not be duplicated in the next four. This is why the Department of Defense and others are busily prioritizing for leaner times. The five-year plan submitted to Congress last year called for a $30 billion reduction in defense spending between fiscal years 2006 and 2011, and the Pentagon has been instructed to reduce its 2007-12 plan by another $30 billion. Ryan Henry, the Pentagon's principal deputy undersecretary for policy, has acknowledged that the defense spending levels of the past few years are unsustainable, and he is planning accordingly. And as the chief executive of Boeing's military division lamented, "[It] has been a great ride for the last five years, but it's over. There will be a flattening of the defense budget."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200611...-shortage.html

I think they're right, that we need to start choosing between people and machines, and not soon enough.